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Post by snowmom on May 25, 2014 16:10:50 GMT -5
today we went to a heavily visited beach and I was surprised to find these at one end of the beach. The only one I can identify for sure is the little round piece of purple and tan breccia - as travertine. the others I am not sure of... oolytic rhyolite for the small spotted one, and some sort of fossil for the white one with the dots and dashes on it. It is by far the softest stone of the group, and actually jumped out at the beach, where I had to look hard to see the others among all the beautifully colored stones. The green is serpentine or greenstone??? maybe? Any guesses as to the rest of them? The white one with the pink bands seems to glow in the sun, the pink is almost transparent and there is a slight rainbow effect in one photo I took.
thanks for looking, your input is valued!
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Post by jakesrocks on May 26, 2014 10:27:49 GMT -5
WOW !! The big piece the travertine is sitting on has some killer patterns in it.
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Post by snowmom on May 26, 2014 14:11:01 GMT -5
yep, not sure what that is all about, they are little ridges that stick up a bit from the light yellowy- green matrix. It is like that all over, sides and back too. I think it is very eroded from living in the lake for a few hundred(thousand?) years. Lake just changes the way things look, maybe a chalcedony or banded chert now morphed to this thing, whatever it is. I don't know if I want to cut it, it is pretty cool the way it is. Lake changes so many of the rocks so much. Thought maybe that last one on the right is an agate, all the swirls and blistery surface, but it is so iron stained you can barely see the colors. That I want to cut and see if the iron stain goes all the way through, and to find out if it really is an agate.
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Post by snowmom on May 26, 2014 14:16:03 GMT -5
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Post by Jugglerguy on May 26, 2014 15:32:58 GMT -5
The green one on the lower left is unakite. The white one with pink or orange on the left looks like quartz. That green one in the middle with the swirls is really cool!
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Member since January 1970
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on May 26, 2014 22:44:05 GMT -5
I think snowmom is bringing new adventure to great lakes rock hounding. Petoskey, unakite & puddingstone are all cool, no doubt, but you guys needa widen your horizons. Snowmom is killing it!
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Post by snowmom on May 27, 2014 8:20:12 GMT -5
gave it a bath with iron out last night and learned not to EVER use that stuff again! Newbies be warned this stuff is too strong and too dangerous to mess with. But the results were gratifying. Now I can see inside this thing. I am ready to cut this puppy! Maybe banded chalcedony, I don't see any windows though the whole wide bottom of the thing seems white which may turn clear with polishing... it seems to have tried to make some bands but got interrupted by the swirls. Not sure if it is red and white only, or if yellow and green/purple is in there too, dratted iron staining (but that was what disguised it on that beach so that nobody else recognized it for what it had beneath the stains). maybe a little blessing in there somewhere.
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Post by jakesrocks on May 27, 2014 9:25:54 GMT -5
Yup, Iron Out is an outdoors only thing. I have a small crock pot that I set on the warming setting for Iron Out. Works good if you can put it outside and let your rocks cook all night. One rainy night I set it up in the breezeway to keep it dry. Fumes in the breezeway the next morning darned near killed me, but the agates I was cleaning were sure nice looking.
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Post by mohs on May 27, 2014 16:02:04 GMT -5
Scotts analysis is right on no doubt your the great lakes rock monster magnet always insightful posts and great pictures u should be rock'nmom
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,466
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Post by Sabre52 on May 28, 2014 16:47:14 GMT -5
Nice! Yup, the one with the swirls is chert with Liesegang banding. The layers, when deposited, sometimes have slightly different hardness thus resulting in a slightly irregular weathered surface....Mel
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Post by snowmom on May 28, 2014 19:44:01 GMT -5
thanks Mel, now I have to go google "Liesgang banding"! you all are surely feeding my mind!
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Post by snowmom on May 28, 2014 19:50:45 GMT -5
OK, googling done and I just realized that I have a couple of other pieces almost the same color out in my garage with a more obvious type of ridging, chipped, and banding look to them, found on other beaches or in gravel on roads near here... probably all came from the same place before the glaciers got ahold of them. Had not thought to compare them before or that they had any relationship to each other. Don't you love it when the obvious finally leaps out at you?
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