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Post by helens on May 20, 2012 15:52:37 GMT -5
Oh wow... um... just looked up the Ellensburg blue... and er... I think THREE of the slices I bought from the fossil man are identical to the photos of ellensburg blue... I thought they were blue some weird type of thunderegg slices because they're round... LOL! I thought... wow... wedgewood blue in a thunderegg slice!! Beautiful!!!
Going to get pix!!!! What the heck.
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Post by NatureNut on May 20, 2012 16:33:54 GMT -5
Helen that end of your piece, IMHO, looks to have been whacked with a hammer. Many a rockhound will whack a corner or end off to see what's inside. Or, it could have been hacked in half. Here are some pics of Blue Quartz from PA: rough, slabs and cab I would like to repeat that I have seen something similar to the agate you have.
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Post by helens on May 20, 2012 16:44:03 GMT -5
Ok... does anyone recognize these? I have more Blue Agates, but these look most like the Ellensburg one, and they're all the same shade of blue. To start, the first little rock is the one I tried to cut with the brand new 303C blade I bought from John... which trimmed everything else, including porcelain jaspers beautifully, until I got to this horrible little blue rock. I decided to take a slice off the blue agate... it bogged the blade down so bad I thought the blade was going to break. I think I stood there frozen for about 30 minutes slowly trying to feed a millimeter of this stupid agate through at a time... and it was so hard, the out of the box blade could not get a grip on the edges to bite, and I couldn't start a cut with any metal tool either. It was SOOO bad, and took SOOO long that I missed meeting the 2 ends in the center by about 10 millimeters. The rock is a bit mangled looking, as is the 'slice'. I thought it was just because the blade was so thin .020... but after reading about the Ellensburg... it may just be the rock was so hard!!! Nothing else I cut was even close to that rediculous, the blade moved through everything like butter except the below stupid blue agate. Here is blue agate, now mangled (pix taken before I mangled it - but I can take another later if anyone wants to see the mess I made). It's a whole little blue rock, not a slice: Here are the slices of blue agate I bought from the man yesterday. Because they were shot in sunlight, they are a bit washed out in color, they are a tad bluer, but it's like a powder baby blue like the photos of the Ellensburg I looked up: Third one (was already polished, so water just beads on it and will not even spread out): This is the 4th slice, and I KNOW it's not like the above blue agates, but it's got blue in it too. All 4 are polished almost to a mirror shine **correction: 2 little blue ones are NOT polished, they are just very evenly cut. Only the 2 big ones are mirror polished: Here's a blue one I got from Cal that I wasn't sure what to do with... it's a FLAT blue agate... how do you cut this?? It is in my, 'what do I do with this rock' pile to figure out for later, but I just saw a photo of an Ellensburg that was flat like this: Here's the flat ellensburg one I saw online: Above photo from THIS site: thefossilfreakshow.blogspot.com/2011/01/mineral-report-report-4-agates.html- says it's the 3rd rarest gemstone in the world, so why's it all over the internet? And look at the main pix in the below, doesn't it look like the blue slices I have? www.ellensburgblue.blogspot.com/My blue agates are not color adjusted for the effect of bright sun washout on my photos. They are actually bluer, and the same shade as the photos in the blog above. If mine aren't Ellensburg blue...what else might they be??
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Post by helens on May 20, 2012 17:09:29 GMT -5
Hi Jo:). Kewl:). Thanks for posting the pix:). While I like to ID the more bizzaro rocks I posted on the first page, I have lots of odd rocks like I just posted above too... which I just thought of collectively as 'blue agate'. I would have lumped even the one on the first page with 'blue quartz/agates' too. I didn't even realize that blue agates could be differentiated so much!!! Further, it was only today that I found out that blue agates aren't as common as pink quartz... I have a relative lot of blue agates! (more than the pix above, I only posted the ones I thought looked like the Ellensburg blue). Also... I'm wondering if the BC Disdero are actually from the same geological event as the Washington Ellensburg... because Warren't blue Disdero are this same shade of blue TOO, and look JUST LIKE THIS!!! Here's a pix of blue disdero Todd posted: canadianrockhound.ning.com/photo/disdero-agate-1It's the same shade of blue as Ellensburg too!!
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Post by helens on May 20, 2012 17:36:53 GMT -5
Oh. Here's my itty bitty piece of disdero blue:
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Post by NatureNut on May 20, 2012 17:51:21 GMT -5
Not sure, I was addressing your concern about the end of #5 looking "all fractured" by offering an explanation of what rockhounds do... and was offering pictures of PA Blue Quartz just for comparison.
Sorry I can't help you with any of your other questions. I have a headache. Jo
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Post by jakesrocks on May 20, 2012 18:00:42 GMT -5
Helen, just to set the record straight. There are many types of blue agate being passed off in the jewelry and lapidary trades that are called Ellensburg blue. Some on purpose to fool buyers, and some because the seller doesn't really know what they have. The real stuff is extremely rare, and can only be ID'd by a jeweler experienced with it, or some of the old timers who have actually collected and worked with the real stuff. I'm not one of them, having only seen it a few times in all of the years I've been playing with rocks.
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Post by rockpickerforever on May 20, 2012 18:11:37 GMT -5
I'm not even going to get into the blue agate debate, but the "pinecone" is a thunderegg. I'll dig one out that I have, take a photo and post it. I had a chance to pick one up just yesterday for a couple bucks at a local club's silent auction. There's a lot of different kinds of thunder eggs/geodes, not all of them feel like "scratchy rock" on the outside. There are ones that have a smooth, mocha brown covering, with lumps, bumps and sometimes straight seams on them. Unfortunately, when people take photos of them, they almost always show the inside of them, not the outside. Look at the photo you took of the thundereggs from Christopher - do you show any backs? Still think it's a pinecone? Go to www.buriedtreasurefossils.com/pine_cones.htm to see what a fossilized pinecone looks like. Or Google "fossil pine cone" and check those out. There's a bunch for sale on eBay as well. I'll wait and see what sticksinstones says, but you may have to cut it open to believe it.
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Post by helens on May 20, 2012 18:20:44 GMT -5
Not sure, I was addressing your concern about the end of #5 looking "all fractured" by offering an explanation of what rockhounds do... and was offering pictures of PA Blue Quartz just for comparison. Jo Oh, I see. You meant that the reason it could be all broken up looking internally is because someone hit it with a hammer at the end, and crackled up the inside? I don't think so, only because the breaks are so even, and not along any fracture lines. Of course, I'd find out for sure if I tried to cut a piece off and the piece fell apart:). They look solid tho... because there's no staining/dirt/rust in any of the 'fracture' lines that are on the surface, except for the very top, where it's near the edge of the rock. That small area has yellowish rust stains in the cracks. The reddish coloration on the white outside I believe are rust spots, so the rock's definitely been exposed to rust, which would have gotten into fracture lines, and it did, but at the very top, not the bottom. In person, the fractures LOOK solid, like rose quartz with those inclusion lines, and there's zero staining on the face, except for that area on top. Hope your headache goes away soon:).
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Post by helens on May 20, 2012 18:32:20 GMT -5
I'm not even going to get into the blue agate debate, but the "pinecone" is a thunderegg. I'll dig one out that I have, take a photo and post it. I had a chance to pick one up just yesterday for a couple bucks at a local club's silent auction. There's a lot of different kinds of thunder eggs/geodes, not all of them feel like "scratchy rock" on the outside. There are ones that have a smooth, mocha brown covering, with lumps, bumps and sometimes straight seams on them. Unfortunately, when people take photos of them, they almost always show the inside of them, not the outside. Look at the photo you took of the thundereggs from Christopher - do you show any backs? Still think it's a pinecone? Go to www.buriedtreasurefossils.com/pine_cones.htm to see what a fossilized pinecone looks like. Or Google "fossil pine cone" and check those out. There's a bunch for sale on eBay as well. I'll wait and see what sticksinstones says, but you may have to cut it open to believe it. I did google it, and the pinecone it most looked like I posted a link for, but you're right, it's not an exact match. I figure I'll wait and see what sticks and stones says, plus see if someone with a daughter that works with petrified woods says, who will compare the photos. In either case, I think given the amount of doubt, I'm not selling it til I cut it, because *I* want to know. Anyway, IF it's a pinecone, a little slice on ebay is going for $50, so I don't see how cutting it would be a bad thing:). IF it's a thunderegg, the inside is going to look wild either way:). I just hope I don't mangle it like I did the blue agate, but it should be little enough to push through in 1 straight pass.
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rockingthenorth
fully equipped rock polisher
Member since January 2012
Posts: 1,637
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Post by rockingthenorth on May 20, 2012 19:50:03 GMT -5
those are cool your lucky to find all that stuff I have to go out and hound...LOL
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Post by helens on May 20, 2012 20:56:12 GMT -5
You know Tammy... a HUGE chunk of the goodies I've gotten are from my local rock club. They find the local sales, anyone who's got to liquidate a local thing gets in touch with them first too, and of course members sell too. I was told that the man I bought the fossils from had been a member of the club for almost 50 years. 50 YEARS!!! I also got my cabmate from them too. If you haven't hooked up with your local club, it's well worth it. Plus, some of them offer classes and have fun meetings:). I have a LONG drive to get there, so it's not so easy for me to hang out at the club, but I still try to go at least once every 2 weeks if not more often. If people don't join the clubs, they eventually die, and that's a great resource to lose. PLUS, if you join a nationally chartered branch, your membership lets you go on Field Trips with other clubs if you happen to be visiting those areas where there's a lot of hounding, you can meet new people in those areas maybe too. OR, if you're off hounding somewhere, and can't lug everything home, you might be able to stop in a local branch and use their saws to slab down your rocks. That way, you can see what the keepers are and not lug the poop all the way home to toss. While there's a huge cross section of people on the forum, and over time, we all get to know each other, there's still plenty of rock people who aren't on the forums we never get to meet here. So if you haven't yet, you may want to think about look into your local club (plus, they may know where the BEST hounding spots are locally:P) .
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Post by rockpickerforever on May 20, 2012 21:08:18 GMT -5
Dug out a couple of the ones I have. The first two photos are of one rock, the last three are a different rock. This first one is still whole. A Quartzsite purchase a couple years ago. Smooth, as opposed to "scratchy." See the bumps on it? Second rock... Picked this one up at an estate sale, or garage sale - I don't remember which. Looks smooth, right? From the side From the "front," or good side. Some kind of opal? I haven't done anything with either of these. They've been collecting dust on the patio. I also have another one I purchased in Quartzsite last year, that I have cut. But it'll take a while to locate it. Gotta go catch the end of the eclipse!
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Post by helens on May 20, 2012 21:30:05 GMT -5
Hrm... I do see why you'd think that they were the same.... but if mine's a smooth thunderegg, it doesn't look like yours:). First of all, the bottom of mine is not blobs of anything (yours looks like opal to me too). Mine looks like the bottom portion of a broken off pine cone. That is, there's a central 'stem' area, with radiating things off it that look an awful lot like the bottom part of a pine cone.
I pm'd sticksinstones from the forum, but haven't heard back. He may not get email notification, so I'll try emailing his website. I know he's cut several of these, so at the least, he can tell us which way to best cut. I just shot a few more pix of it from the bottom, so will put those up too in a bit.
Thanks for posting the pix, very interesting. While I do not think that mine looks like that, there IS a resemblance to your 2nd picture. But you know that pinecones can be opalized too... so maybe you should cut yours open and see if there's a pinecone pattern inside:).
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Post by helens on May 20, 2012 21:48:19 GMT -5
Ok. It just dawned on me that absolutely no one is going to help me ID the rocks I started this thread for with all the pinecone discussion! LOL!
So I'm going to start a new thread in the FOSSIL section, and request that everyone come over there to discuss pinecone fossils and thundereggs that look like pine cone fossils. I'm sure there's some knowledgeable fossil people who don't even look at Rock ID section because they are fossil people, not rock people.
So I'll repost ALL the pix there of the pinecone, including the ones I just took there. Also, sticksinstones has a better chance of seeing it there anyway:). Thanks:).
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Post by jakesrocks on May 20, 2012 21:59:38 GMT -5
You might try fossilman (Mike) too.
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Post by rockpickerforever on May 22, 2012 10:38:55 GMT -5
I forgot to thank Yurilla, Rockpicker and Rockhound... both for their persistence, and the extra mile they went to post the pictures today. I know it was anger driving you to do it, but it was very educational, and I'm sure anyone wanting to know more about Richardson eggs AND fossil pinecones will be referencing this note for years:). I rarely lose an argument, but it was bound to happen:P. hehe.
Can't speak for the others, but my persistance was not anger driven, but rather I wanted you to admit that you were wrong! Good luck with the rest of your IDs.
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Post by helens on May 22, 2012 17:00:57 GMT -5
I forgot to thank Yurilla, Rockpicker and Rockhound... both for their persistence, and the extra mile they went to post the pictures today. I know it was anger driving you to do it, but it was very educational, and I'm sure anyone wanting to know more about Richardson eggs AND fossil pinecones will be referencing this note for years:). I rarely lose an argument, but it was bound to happen:P. hehe.
Can't speak for the others, but my persistance was not anger driven, but rather I wanted you to admit that you were wrong! Good luck with the rest of your IDs. LMAO!~!! That's splitting hairs! Same difference:P. Any help with the rock ID's:P?
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Post by rockpickerforever on May 22, 2012 18:58:26 GMT -5
How do you figure that is splitting hairs? Same difference? I think not!! I was not, and am not, angry. In fact, I am ROFLMAO, to see you eat crow!!! Isn't it an eye-opener to see that you do not know everything about everything? Limit your tirades to things you know something about. Let's just see how many people will help with your IDs after this. Jean
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Post by helens on May 22, 2012 19:10:41 GMT -5
Wow Jean, I hardly think I'm eating crow to ask people what they think of something I admit I knew nothing about? I don't collect fossils, and I said so in the first post. So how exactly did you make me eat crow when I was ASKING for advice and confirmation? *scratches head*.
Eating crow would occur if I said THIS IS A PINECONE and it CAN"T be anything else.
When a fossil collector says something's a fossil, THEN it takes pictoral evidence to prove it's not. I said, if someone can show me a photo of an egg that looks JUST LIKE this, then I'll cut it open to find out. And that proof was provided. And YOU weren't the one who provided it, so what are YOU so smug about? The only thing that's crow-like about the situation is you.
The person you proved wrong was Don (Jakesrocks) and the fossil collector who sold it to me. I never knew to begin with, and never claimed to. I don't collect fossils, so keep on crowing.
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