Thank you!!! I am absolutely loving this hobby so much already and I just can't seem to stop looking at, reading about, watching videos about, and just researching about rocks constantly!! LOL

Fantastic!  Remember that rotary tumblers take a long time each grind so don't get rushed and skip a step or take them out too soon.  Rough grind is the most important to soften those edges and wear down the rough to get a smooth surface to take to the next grits and make sure you do a solid cleaning between grit stages for the best possible outcome.  Glad to have you join the rock frenzy.

Love the 3 tooth shapes hanging from the bails, gives them an almost Turkish look to them.  The Montana when I first saw it, the top dendrite reminded me of a destroyer coming out of a cloud bank.

Great seeing you back at it!  nicely done!

It turned out wonderfully, great work and obviously a lot of love in that collection and passing it along!

For number one I don't think Condor as black and clear aren't the norm there but there are other Argentina agates and Brazilians that display the black banding.  Also Texas has some superb black banded agates north of Alpine Texas.

number two is not from the stone canyon deposit but there are many jasper deposits in that region with those colors.  Your piece does not have the needed brecciation to be from stone canyon and although the colors are similar the jasper in your piece tends to have splotches of color rather than the fracturing and recementing that occur in stone canyon due to the earthquake activity.

Your 3rd piece I think I would go with Teeter ranch plume but not a graveyard from my opinion.  Colors are correct from Sheep Creek plume but the plumes are wrong and are more distinct than sheep creek and I haven't come across any stinking water with that tan combo.

The 4th I could agree with the red hot or a couple other Mexican locations.

For the 5th there are way too many locations that this material could be from and no distinguishing features to identify.  But to throw one possibility out there would be a balmorhea, texas and several other west Texas Locales.

I buy them in lots of about 10 at a time off walmart.  I keep a large supply that I have with the pins ground down and ready to go.  The Canoes are great knives to work and the knife only requires a hair over 1/8th inch of material per scale making the material easy to come up with.

Sorry for response delay been out of town and a daughters wedding etc.  Good times.

Ill answer as many as possible here in one.

For the attachment I use Loctite brand epoxy 325 and activator 7075 (thanks to info from Michael Hoover's suggestion to me long ago).  The 325 epoxy is a pressure epoxy and it creates a very! stable bond that if if for any reason needs to come back off you are going to need to grind the scale off.  There is a trick to the activator though and that is that the 705 you spray and need to wait about 3.5 to 5 minutes before joining.  I made a couple mistakes on other blades because it is not an exact science given air temps etc.  In the ones that went a bit "challenged" I had applied too soon and the activator made the bond in seconds and I didn't have time to adjust the scale into position.  If you wait long enough you have 15 to 30 seconds to adjust.  I only use this epoxy for blades that have no bolster or only one.  For the canoe folding knives, since they have front and rear bolsters I use 330 2 part epoxy and that works just fine.  with both epoxies I wait at least 20 hours before doing any work after attaching.

As for grinding yes I use a dremel and lay the blade in my Titans water trough and rotate the blade to wet the surfaces every time i can see the fluid diminishing.  For the Finger grooves I use a Harbor Freight diamond 3 pack that has a large wheel and knife point wheel that i just throw in my drawer as they are too big to really use with my dremel at about 2" the 3rd wheel is a 1" wheel that is perfect for the finger grooves.  I use my saw blade or a diamond cut off to make a lot of slices in the excess agate covering the finger area and trim those out to get the bulk of material out and then clean up with the HF 1" wheel.  Once I have the finger groove cut I use the 1" to do a rough grind of the radius from the scale sides into the finger well.  The I switch to the Diamond Pacific Nova points you can but from Kingsley North and these I get in flame and cylinder shapes from 220 thru 14k and finish the work with those since only a dremel can get in that tight.  I use these same combo of wheels and points when doing the well of the canoes too since the radius is too tight for my wheels even if I were to go to my 4" pixie.  Dremel for the win.

Any more questions I am more than happy to answer what I have learned thru the different projects and thanks for the kudos.  I give Michael Hoover a big shout out for giving me the initial knowledge to get going.

      If you let me know you are from the Forum I will always give you a discount. 20% off with a few exceptions of newly listed items. Possibly more on some stuff I will be listing that is a little older or common. I will try and remember to post here if I have a sale. I do have over 1,000 sales so Etsy has been good in the past. We shall see how the future goes.
Thanks for the support.

The re-work idea is a great way to get some expensive material that you cannot buy rough for. I have done this too and enjoyed it. Glad you mentioned it.

I'm bookmarking that shop.  I would much prefer to buy form a North American Artist than someone from overseas.