Post by rolleyholeman1 on Dec 18, 2023 3:46:41 GMT -5
Howdy folks, I originally joined to get some help with rock identification here in east TN since I was finding (and still am finding) some weird stuff. I used to think I was hot stuff in geology a few years ago in college, but quickly learned I know nothing.
Anyways, I was looking through the forum tonight and noticed the "sphere making" section and started to browse through it. There's some really neat sphere machines and some pretty cool videos. What I didn't see though was the way I've been making them. Honestly I'm not too sure which process is faster but my process does have some more folk history and such going on so I figured I'd share it for those who are interested.
So, I make spheres... kinda. What I do is make marbles for the regional marble game known as "Rolley Hole" that is popular in a small region of the Upper Cumberland in Tennessee and Kentucky. Primarily this game is played in Clay and Overton counties in Tennessee, and Monroe County Kentucky, though it used to have a larger reach.
I can type on and on about Rolley Hole but I will hold back on it and keep things simple since it's a rock forum, but I'll do a brief rundown. Rolley Hole is a regional marbles game that can trace it's origins to games played in the United Kingdom and Australia, with almost identical versions of this game still being played in South American countries. Many people will say "oh we played this as a kid, but instead of what you're doing, we shot the marbles out of a circle and...". This is not the game that comes to mind when someone says "marbles" to say the least about it. In this game, two teams of two players play intense offense and defense in order to get their marbles into a series of 3 holes in the yard which are spaced around 10 feet or so apart (depending on the yard), with the yard being 40' long and 25' wide. Players must complete a course of 12 holes while preventing their opponents from doing the same. It really is in intense game and because of the shooting power, we have to use marbles made from local material.
So now we finally get to the "rock" part of it all. The marbles we play with and make are called "flint" marbles though they really aren't flint. I struggle with the geology aspect here and have started calling the material "quartz" because that's the base of it. Some people say material is Chalcedony or noncrystalline quartz as well. We find this material in nodule form usually in stream beds and rivers around the area, and we look for nodules with a good smooth outer surface since they are less likely to have sand deposits and junk inside them which could cause them to break when playing. We also have to avoid any cracks or fissures if we can, since those could also make a marble not last. Many marbles are heirlooms passed down from generation to generation, but with the powerful shots of today, they do wear out and become misshapen or fracture.
When we find a nodule of material, we cut a piece off of it using lapidary saws or tile saws. If we can shine a laser or flashlight through it, and it shows potential, we cut it into cubes. From there different people have their preferences for shaping them. Some guys hit every edge with a diamond wheel and then start rounding them off, others prefer to make a cylinder and then cone the tops. I may not be explaining that the best, but in the end we get a rough sphere.
Once you have your sphere, you place it into a stone cup made from various materials like old grinding wheel, bricks, sandstone, diamond blade dressing sticks, etc, and you place the marble and cup against a rubber wheel to spin the marble. This process can make a lot of dust, but with some work it will take 30 mins- 1 hr or so to spin that marble. We use calipers to measure marbles and stone grinding wheels to grind and make small adjustments, then back to spinning. We get them within a thousandth of an inch. If your marble is misshapen, it can pull to the side when shooting.
An important thing to note here is that the marble making process has gotten way more refined over the years. Originally marble makers would find a piece of "flint" and chip away at it with a hammer or steel file, then when it was a sphere they would either use a bow-drill (also called a whirlygig) or a hole in a stream to spin their marble. The stream method was risky because rising waters could take the marble away. The big change came when Bud Garret made marbles with his "marble making machine". I have seen photos of him holding various contraptions, but the main thing he used was a belt driven bench grinder powered by an old washing machine motor. I have made the same type setup and sure, a regular bench grinder would be better, but this sure is fun. Bud was using what he had and made some of the finest marbles around. His marbles carried a guarantee as well, which was if a marble broke due to a fault, all you had to do was return the pieces and he'd make you another one. Many of the marbles he made had crystal pits and other imperfections so when I have material like this, I keep on making marbles when others toss them. This will be evident in the photos.
So if I didn't bore ya'll to death, here are some resources for Rolley Hole.
Marble making from one of the local players (video)
Marble making by Matthew in Utah
News coverage of Rolley Hole in 1983 (short video)
Excellent video with Bud (1:37)
CBS news coverage from 2022
A quick note for the above CBS link. We did not like how they spun Rolley Hole and after hours of interviews they got a bit wrong while also making Rolley Hole sound like an impossible un-learnable game. It did get Rolley Hole into the minds of the general public though.
For those who can't get enough, here is my master list which has all my vintage news coverage along with some newer stuff. There's a couple 20 min videos in there where they do a great job.
Finally here is my marble making machine. Since this video I have done some mild revisions, but it still is mostly the same besides being more dirty. I am using a Briggs and Stratton WMB gasoline engine for main power so marbles can be made anywhere. Auxiliary power is a General Electric washing machine motor which is good for late night marble making. The GE has a step-up pulley on it so I can have the gas motor and bench grinder hooked to it at once, which is handy. The GE motor also acts as an electric start for the brigs which is fun. Does this count as lapidary equipment?
Well I did try to upload photos and it says "preset not found". Dang it. Can't have a marbles post without photos. I now remember trying a few times and failing (maybe because I use Linux).
The first post of this thread on the marbles forum will have some photos of marbles I've made. Most of the thread is just me talking about marbles since I've not got much else to do. Off-season is a great time to both make marbles and lose them.
Enjoy! I don't know how much responding I can do since I do not see the option for email alerts. With all the tabs I have open, it's easy to forget.
Anyways, I was looking through the forum tonight and noticed the "sphere making" section and started to browse through it. There's some really neat sphere machines and some pretty cool videos. What I didn't see though was the way I've been making them. Honestly I'm not too sure which process is faster but my process does have some more folk history and such going on so I figured I'd share it for those who are interested.
So, I make spheres... kinda. What I do is make marbles for the regional marble game known as "Rolley Hole" that is popular in a small region of the Upper Cumberland in Tennessee and Kentucky. Primarily this game is played in Clay and Overton counties in Tennessee, and Monroe County Kentucky, though it used to have a larger reach.
I can type on and on about Rolley Hole but I will hold back on it and keep things simple since it's a rock forum, but I'll do a brief rundown. Rolley Hole is a regional marbles game that can trace it's origins to games played in the United Kingdom and Australia, with almost identical versions of this game still being played in South American countries. Many people will say "oh we played this as a kid, but instead of what you're doing, we shot the marbles out of a circle and...". This is not the game that comes to mind when someone says "marbles" to say the least about it. In this game, two teams of two players play intense offense and defense in order to get their marbles into a series of 3 holes in the yard which are spaced around 10 feet or so apart (depending on the yard), with the yard being 40' long and 25' wide. Players must complete a course of 12 holes while preventing their opponents from doing the same. It really is in intense game and because of the shooting power, we have to use marbles made from local material.
So now we finally get to the "rock" part of it all. The marbles we play with and make are called "flint" marbles though they really aren't flint. I struggle with the geology aspect here and have started calling the material "quartz" because that's the base of it. Some people say material is Chalcedony or noncrystalline quartz as well. We find this material in nodule form usually in stream beds and rivers around the area, and we look for nodules with a good smooth outer surface since they are less likely to have sand deposits and junk inside them which could cause them to break when playing. We also have to avoid any cracks or fissures if we can, since those could also make a marble not last. Many marbles are heirlooms passed down from generation to generation, but with the powerful shots of today, they do wear out and become misshapen or fracture.
When we find a nodule of material, we cut a piece off of it using lapidary saws or tile saws. If we can shine a laser or flashlight through it, and it shows potential, we cut it into cubes. From there different people have their preferences for shaping them. Some guys hit every edge with a diamond wheel and then start rounding them off, others prefer to make a cylinder and then cone the tops. I may not be explaining that the best, but in the end we get a rough sphere.
Once you have your sphere, you place it into a stone cup made from various materials like old grinding wheel, bricks, sandstone, diamond blade dressing sticks, etc, and you place the marble and cup against a rubber wheel to spin the marble. This process can make a lot of dust, but with some work it will take 30 mins- 1 hr or so to spin that marble. We use calipers to measure marbles and stone grinding wheels to grind and make small adjustments, then back to spinning. We get them within a thousandth of an inch. If your marble is misshapen, it can pull to the side when shooting.
An important thing to note here is that the marble making process has gotten way more refined over the years. Originally marble makers would find a piece of "flint" and chip away at it with a hammer or steel file, then when it was a sphere they would either use a bow-drill (also called a whirlygig) or a hole in a stream to spin their marble. The stream method was risky because rising waters could take the marble away. The big change came when Bud Garret made marbles with his "marble making machine". I have seen photos of him holding various contraptions, but the main thing he used was a belt driven bench grinder powered by an old washing machine motor. I have made the same type setup and sure, a regular bench grinder would be better, but this sure is fun. Bud was using what he had and made some of the finest marbles around. His marbles carried a guarantee as well, which was if a marble broke due to a fault, all you had to do was return the pieces and he'd make you another one. Many of the marbles he made had crystal pits and other imperfections so when I have material like this, I keep on making marbles when others toss them. This will be evident in the photos.
So if I didn't bore ya'll to death, here are some resources for Rolley Hole.
Marble making from one of the local players (video)
Marble making by Matthew in Utah
News coverage of Rolley Hole in 1983 (short video)
Excellent video with Bud (1:37)
CBS news coverage from 2022
A quick note for the above CBS link. We did not like how they spun Rolley Hole and after hours of interviews they got a bit wrong while also making Rolley Hole sound like an impossible un-learnable game. It did get Rolley Hole into the minds of the general public though.
For those who can't get enough, here is my master list which has all my vintage news coverage along with some newer stuff. There's a couple 20 min videos in there where they do a great job.
Finally here is my marble making machine. Since this video I have done some mild revisions, but it still is mostly the same besides being more dirty. I am using a Briggs and Stratton WMB gasoline engine for main power so marbles can be made anywhere. Auxiliary power is a General Electric washing machine motor which is good for late night marble making. The GE has a step-up pulley on it so I can have the gas motor and bench grinder hooked to it at once, which is handy. The GE motor also acts as an electric start for the brigs which is fun. Does this count as lapidary equipment?
Well I did try to upload photos and it says "preset not found". Dang it. Can't have a marbles post without photos. I now remember trying a few times and failing (maybe because I use Linux).
The first post of this thread on the marbles forum will have some photos of marbles I've made. Most of the thread is just me talking about marbles since I've not got much else to do. Off-season is a great time to both make marbles and lose them.
Enjoy! I don't know how much responding I can do since I do not see the option for email alerts. With all the tabs I have open, it's easy to forget.
