surreality
starting to spend too much on rocks
is picking up too many rocks at the beach again
Member since January 2012
Posts: 217
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Post by surreality on Sept 9, 2018 13:29:40 GMT -5
It's a really cool location. Sort of a perfect storm of sorts? Some pretty dendritic agate comes from around there, too. Like you said, small pieces, though. Speaking of "perfect storm" - hope that Florence doesn't do a direct hit on your beaches, though who knows what else might get exposed? Things should be clear there by Tuesday -- and we already have plans to make the drive. Usually, it's worth it. Sometimes, with the more-toward-summer storms, it's just the reverse of what you'd hope: sand, sand, and more sand is all that comes up by the heap. I'm hoping to get some pics, either way, even if it's of some downed telephone pole that prevents us from getting anywhere. The beach is about 2 hours (normally) from where we live -- just cross the river and head southeast. So not a hard drive to check. We're going to try to go once a week until Florida (mid-October) to get our 'walking in sand every day' training in. Where we are, we're in a weird little notch just south of Philadelphia, in northern Delaware. Somehow, the worst of weather tends to pass us by, while everything in the surrounding directions gets completely hammered. We're right along the river on the other side, just far enough from where it begins to narrow from the bay to usually divert weather one direction or another around our one piddly tiny county. (We joke that DuPont, which started here, surely has some kind of dodgy James Bond style weather satellite that usually spares us the worst of it.) So, thankfully, we will be fine -- but we're in a constant state of worry for all of our neighbors. Even during Sandy, we did lose power for 2-3 days, but other than a few downed trees, we were mostly fine in this area. Meanwhile, the two southern counties were completely flooded and everyone was losing homes, without power for weeks -- and it was worse across the river in NJ by far.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Member since January 1970
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Sept 9, 2018 16:48:46 GMT -5
Hope your area continues to stay safe. LOL @ DuPont's secret satellite.
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surreality
starting to spend too much on rocks
is picking up too many rocks at the beach again
Member since January 2012
Posts: 217
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Post by surreality on Sept 10, 2018 14:20:31 GMT -5
Official irk of the non-quartz: most of it changes color dramatically (fading) as it dries. Still just as shiny, but the color lightens. Maybe that will help narrow down what it actually is? Here's hoping.
Upside of the day: ran out to pick up a bunch of clear containers to store 'em and organize all the finished rocks.
Downside of the day: ...realizing I should let these dry out another day or two before actually putting them away, since the containers are VERY good at preventing moisture escaping. (While not perfect, we learned with the shell collection that the Rubbermaid 'Brilliance' containers are perfectly clear, easy to clean, and while not the cheapest option, they're way less expensive than display boxes and lighter weight/more durable than glass. They stack, so it essentially becomes 'build your own modular display case with slightly awkward lids'.)
Forehead smack of the day: Still so far behind on pictures it'll be a while before I can put a lot of the other ones away, either. :/
I'm trying to record the batches as they come out per batch for flickr, so anything not photographed yet can't go into the mix of the containers. I usually plan a little better than this! D'oh.
Random discovery of the day: I've noticed that the combination of AO and dreft sometimes leaves a surface that is slightly tacky even after I have rinsed everything quite well. Borax didn't do this, so I'm thinking it's something about the formulation of the Dreft. Dish soap didn't make a dang bit of difference. This morning, tried the old Synthropol I have on hand from dyeing yarn for a few years, which is meant to strip out sizing and other stubborn fiber fillers and force out dye that hasn't fully taken. It's basically super-detergent. (...I may have run out of dish soap and been flailing and the Synthropol was still in my kitchen for reasons that I dare not even try to guess.) Worked like an absolute charm, and I think I'm sticking with it from here on out. If anyone else is crazy enough to try this, be warned: even the low foaming version is super-concentrated and will generate bubbles like mad. Fairly certain that if I put more than two drops of it into the UV-18, it would bubble over with froth in under 30 seconds, so I'm... not gonna try that yet, or if I do in the next polish round, it's gonna be one drop at a time, and I'll report back here with how that goes.
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Post by beefjello on Sept 10, 2018 19:24:13 GMT -5
Beautiful finds and tumbles! The fossils especially are top notch!!
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surreality
starting to spend too much on rocks
is picking up too many rocks at the beach again
Member since January 2012
Posts: 217
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Post by surreality on Sept 13, 2018 19:39:28 GMT -5
The rotary is getting its cleanout today -- well, everything is hosed off, and I look like a drowned rat for it, it's on to the sorting what can move along and what stays -- but this beach has managed to surprise me again. A lot of new material went in the last rotary round, and it's usually impossible to tell what any of it is under the rind. Some really have me on the fence because they still have very deep cracks in them, but to keep them going much longer would likely grind off the points of actual interest, so I'm finally butting my head up against that quandary: advance, or back into the coarse. The crack farm and new mystery rocks. These are all wet -- not polished, alas. r007xb by Dee F., on Flickr ...I have a love/hate relationship with that crack, I really do. No idea what the one on the right is, but I love it. r006xa by Dee F., on Flickr r005xa by Dee F., on Flickr r001xb by Dee F., on Flickr r004xb by Dee F., on Flickr ...hard to see, but the one on the left is absolutely full of vugs. One on the right? Pfffft, I have NO idea. r002x by Dee F., on Flickr ...need to get a better shot of the one with the huge holes. They aren't crystal vugs, but they look like bubbly orb bumps. They're kinda neat, so I decided to leave them and see how it does. So much scrubbing in my future...
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surreality
starting to spend too much on rocks
is picking up too many rocks at the beach again
Member since January 2012
Posts: 217
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Post by surreality on Sept 14, 2018 14:31:03 GMT -5
With the rotary set to run again today... well, I usually like to have one quartz barrel and two of the mystery mix. There's a quartz and larger (less fragile) mystery mix barrel, and the traditional mystery mix barrel, but the third got assigned to fossils today. There's not so many of them that they'll be replenished for long, but since I really want to see how they come out and they seem to be what folks are most curious about, they got their own barrel until they're through.
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grizman
freely admits to licking rocks
Member since July 2011
Posts: 878
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Post by grizman on Sept 19, 2018 20:09:22 GMT -5
Well you not only have access to some wonderful beachcombing, you seem to find a wide variety of stones. My fav? The same as the other folks including the quartz, and the very patterned quartz. Obviously, the fossils are wonderful. Are they hard enough to take a glass-like polish? Thank you so much for your time in sharing your finds, work, and experiences.
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surreality
starting to spend too much on rocks
is picking up too many rocks at the beach again
Member since January 2012
Posts: 217
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Post by surreality on Oct 3, 2018 3:41:38 GMT -5
Storms are a roll of the dice. It's either rock heaven, or... Nada by Dee F., on Flickr ...welp! I've only seen it this bad once before in twenty years; there wasn't even a high tide line bank of stuff to pick through dry. I dug down to find the bank of rocks that's always in that spot, and it was three feet down before anything started turning up. (I'll omit the spluttering of creative profanity that followed for obvious reasons!) We wandered much further afield than we normally do as the tide was coming in to run into anything at all. Almost nothing but the view. ButTheView by Dee F., on Flickr For reference, the distant jetty is where things normally pile up so deep you could scoop a bucket through the rocks at some spots and get all rock, no sand! This is about halfway as far as we had to wander to mostly-fill two 1 gallon buckets over about 2 hours with a handful 'oohs', a lot of my husband loving every piece of quartz on the beach (sigh), and lots of 'this craggy bit of weirdness could be something'. The latter group is what we have the most of; most of the time they're pretty but boring, but often enough they surprise us. Most of the nicer pieces thus far started out as a lump of 'meh, maybe there's something in there under the scrunge and matrix and calcification'. As things get picked through and sorted -- quartz in one pile, 'this doesn't get tumbled' in another pile, 'is/obviously has fossil material in it' in another pile, and then small, medium, and large of 'mystery lumps' in another -- I'll try to get pics of the few 'oohs'. There were a few fossil bits this time for the fossil lovers out there that were worth getting soaked for. (With things that thin on the ground, my standards for that dipped precipitously, so... there's that; nothing that's likely spectacular.) Progress is hitting a roadblock for a bit, since we're traveling the latter half of October, and we're out of coarse grit, so the rotary isn't getting refilled until we get back, when we can order more without dipping into 'we might need the cash for a travel emergency' funds. We're a little tempted to try grabbing one of the 50lb bags of 80 AO from Harbor Freight locally to fill with fresh med+large 'we have no clue what this even is' material we're not going to cry over if it gets screwed up (while the current lot in progress sits in water) to run while we're gone, though, in part just to see what happens with it over that 2+ weeks. (My father comes by daily to feed the felines, so if something blows, he knows how to turn things off and shut them down, and he'll have to walk right past the machines to get to the kitchen, so I'm not super worried about that.) Since the AO apparently continues to break down a bit more steadily than the SiC, it should be an interesting experiment, if nothing else.
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surreality
starting to spend too much on rocks
is picking up too many rocks at the beach again
Member since January 2012
Posts: 217
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Post by surreality on Oct 15, 2018 8:30:01 GMT -5
...fossils (and craggy bits) getting cleaned of polish day(s, this is taking forever... ). fossil-cleanup by Dee F., on Flickr ...my poor little work table is more of a disaster than usual!
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victor1941
fully equipped rock polisher
Member since November 2011
Posts: 1,982
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Post by victor1941 on Oct 15, 2018 10:01:38 GMT -5
Your picture quality is really very good and shows the great variety of material you have collected. We used to live at Fort Myers, Fl. until the late 70's and collected at Boca Grande Island for shells, Venice Beach for sharks teeth, and Honeymoon Island for material dredged from Tampa Bay. I would think that after a storm new material should be available at all three places.
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surreality
starting to spend too much on rocks
is picking up too many rocks at the beach again
Member since January 2012
Posts: 217
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Post by surreality on Oct 15, 2018 10:14:44 GMT -5
I'm pretty sure there's a progress shot of this one upthread: fossil001a by Dee F., on Flickr fossil001b by Dee F., on Flickr Closeup of patterns, any ideas on ID? fossil001c by Dee F., on Flickr This one may be upthread in-progress as well: fossil002a by Dee F., on Flickr Some of the mini-vuggy 'I have no idea but I like 'em': pits004a by Dee F., on Flickr pits005a by Dee F., on Flickr The ooh-shiny thus far: fossil003c by Dee F., on Flickr fossil003b by Dee F., on Flickr (I am really glad how well this cleaned up.) fossil003a by Dee F., on Flickr
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Post by MsAli on Oct 15, 2018 10:31:00 GMT -5
Really like that last one!
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Member since January 1970
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2018 13:18:15 GMT -5
Closeup of patterns, any ideas on ID? My first reaction was petrified fern.
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surreality
starting to spend too much on rocks
is picking up too many rocks at the beach again
Member since January 2012
Posts: 217
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Post by surreality on Oct 17, 2018 11:17:30 GMT -5
Two more I really love thus far: fossil018c by Dee F., on Flickr pits009a by Dee F., on Flickr (complete with contribution from Tesla of the cat hair that can never escape being in at least a few pics... ) No clue what the latter one is, but it's not something I've found anything else to match in years of collecting there. The crystal sections are fully cleaned out, and I was surprised they have the same 'milky' look as some of the clear quartz we sometimes find that's almost opalescent. (Not as in actual opal, but more like the milky quartz. Supposedly we do get low grade opal potch sometimes around this general area, but I've never found any that I'm aware of. I only wish!) Slowly adding them to the album here as I clean them out and get pics. Most have multiple views. This group is all the ones I know are not flawless and/or will have either pits or vugs or other issues, so I kept trying to get images where the light isn't catching the shine so much as the patterns in them or whatever features they have that I liked, which isn't always easy! This is the 'fussbatch', and there's another half of the fussbatch that still has to go into polish and then cleaning after we get back from travel. Going to try to get the whole batch in photos, heavens help me, over time.
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Post by MsAli on Oct 17, 2018 12:47:34 GMT -5
Really love all the lines in the top one
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surreality
starting to spend too much on rocks
is picking up too many rocks at the beach again
Member since January 2012
Posts: 217
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Post by surreality on Oct 17, 2018 13:04:49 GMT -5
That's how a lot of the coral ends up coming out, if I'm lucky. Other bits, not as crystally, really. It's the most common fossil type we find there, but the ones with little vugs tend to be rare. I <3 them when I find them!
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