Applying to join this forum, you HAVE to activate your membership in YOUR email in the notice you recieve after completing application process. No activation on your part, no membership.

Lapidaryforum.net

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

News:

Welcome new members & old from the Lapidary/Gemstone Community Forum. Please join up. You will be approved after spam check & you must manually activate your acct with the link in your email

Congratulations to Bobby1 and his Brazilian Agate Cab!

 www.lapidaryforum.net

Another cabochon contest coming soon!

Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: Once people know...  (Read 1235 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

ToTheSummit

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1011
Once people know...
« on: February 15, 2017, 04:36:29 PM »

People find out you are a rockhound and suddenly everyone has a rock they want to share with you.  And then they find out you cut and polish your rocks and suddenly everyone has a rock they want you to "pretty up" for them.  Most of the time I have to tell them that there is not much I can do with the chunk of leaverite they hold so dear, but occasionally someone has a rock thats fun to cut.

A woman that works with my wife picked up this piece at her parents cabin somewhere in Southern Utah.  She asked if it I could polish it. This is what it looks like on the rough side (I took no pictures before cutting it up but this side stays natural).


I cut off the face and polished it.  It took a surprisingly nice shine.  Not perfect, but good enough.


She wanted me to cut off the bottom so it would stand there on display.  I had to cut a wedge-shaped piece off the bottom to get a nice base and I thought "What the heck, lets make a pendant out of the cutoff".  Heres the bottom and the some pics of the pendant.





I'm still waiting for someone to unknowingly share something really spectacular with me, but this one passed the 'worthwhile test'.
Logged

Ranger_Dave

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 261
Re: Once people know...
« Reply #1 on: February 15, 2017, 04:47:43 PM »

Funny you mention that. Today I had someone bring me a chunk of dirty bull quartz. Milky quartz with lots of iron in it. He was all excited that he found gold. I had to burst his bubble and tell him that the "gold" was just mica.
Logged

Kaljaia

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 812
Re: Once people know...
« Reply #2 on: February 15, 2017, 06:48:54 PM »

Funny you mention that. Today I had someone bring me a chunk of dirty bull quartz. Milky quartz with lots of iron in it. He was all excited that he found gold. I had to burst his bubble and tell him that the "gold" was just mica.

Got a few people out this way who get excited over that too. Told one man today that if he really wanted to make a show of going after gold, he had a good five mile hike ahead of him out to the last known place but he was welcome to try. I have the write-up from the mineral survey conducted on the "high grade ore" there back in 1948. Tests came back.... negligible, negligible, .01 ounce per ton, and negligible.

The rest of my coworkers still think rocks are too nerdy to acknowledge, which is probably a blessing.
Logged
- Erika

I rock hunt in the Antelope/Ashwood area of the John Day river basin in Oregon.

fossilman

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 186
Re: Once people know...
« Reply #3 on: February 16, 2017, 07:08:15 AM »

You did a better job with the stone,than I thought would become of it....NICE!
Logged
God,family and life!!

Asianfire

  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 727
Re: Once people know...
« Reply #4 on: February 16, 2017, 08:10:24 AM »

Should have taken a slab off that one and taken the middle-part. That section looks like a picture of some kind of moon-scape.
Super job though as is.
Logged
Anything not given, is lost.

lithicbeads

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3214
Re: Once people know...
« Reply #5 on: February 16, 2017, 08:53:17 AM »

Portions of the jade streams around here that have very easy road access are often littered with giant holes dug around very low quality green chert boulders. At times I have been tempted to tell the diggers , " Nice piece of jade there! " but wouldn't as that is just mean. Often you can find a real piece of jade within a few steps but they always choose to believe that the small rind covered rock could not be jade because jade is green.I have actually seen 1,000 pounds boulders moved a few feet by these folks. The next big rainstorm will rebury the boulder and eventually a piece of the boulder will appear at the surface  to exhaust and entertain  "jade" hunters for another season.The cycle of life.
Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up
 

Page created in 0.067 seconds with 34 queries.