Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on May 10, 2013 9:14:30 GMT -5
Helen, Here's a pic of the nodular form of poppy jasper from Hornitos. It's not too unlike what you have but as you can see, hematite ( black to purplish in color) is a major component and polishes out very metallic. In your pic on my monitor, I can't tell if your example has hematite or not. The cab pic I've included is perhaps closest to what you have and was a nodule of the Sierra Primrose type that I picked up in the Stinky Horse Hole pit. The poppies there seem to be more of the flower type than orbs, similar to yours....Mel
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Post by helens on May 10, 2013 10:05:59 GMT -5
Your 'nodules' pix is what I saw before that you posted, and what I thought resembled mine. But now that I look at it, the poppies on mine are bigger and more widely spaced. I may have to cut it to tell for sure, but you already told me that:). Is it hematite? I can't tell... but the rock is not heavier than a rock that size, so I tend to think its not. I will try to take some dry pix later, maybe that's more helpful. You can still see that the poppies are super red, not orange, even when the rock is dry. Speaking of hematite, here's a piece I bought some time ago that is hematite, with red spots... but they aren't round. Would this be considered a poppy too?? Back:
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on May 10, 2013 12:08:33 GMT -5
Helen, that's Mary Ellen Jasper with stromatolites that are not well defined. It's from the Iron Ranges of Minnesota. It's associated with jaspelite and both are hematite and red jasper. The hematite polishes out real nice with kid of a purple black metallic sheen just like in the poppy jasper I collected. The Stinky Horse Hole pit actually was most all banded or blotchy jaspelite that looked very much like your specimen. Here are a couple of pics of Mary Ellen where the stromatolites are more well defined Also come in green or multicolors: :....Mel
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Post by helens on May 10, 2013 15:10:11 GMT -5
Ooh. Those are gorgeous! I really like the reddish purple of the middle one, you should cab that:)!!
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on May 10, 2013 18:56:31 GMT -5
I already did cut a cab out of those slabs. Here are a couple of shots of the same cab. The hematite is metallic purplish colored.
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Post by jakesrocks on May 10, 2013 19:55:40 GMT -5
Papaver somniferum. The same one they brew Obama Cool Aid from.
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Post by helens on May 11, 2013 14:55:16 GMT -5
Those are great mel!
I've found that with certain red rocks, when wet, they are a richer color than when polished. Not true with all jaspers, but the ones that are blood red seem to take on a browner/duller red tinge after polish. I had wondered if it's the hematite, or even the iron in them oxidizing?
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rollingstone
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since July 2009
Posts: 236
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Post by rollingstone on May 11, 2013 16:11:02 GMT -5
Well, just to confuse things, what kind of poppy is this? (currently being shaped in coarse grind) It seems closest to the poppy at the top of page 1 that Helen was asking about. PS, Mel, I bought it from you
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Post by helens on May 14, 2013 3:54:22 GMT -5
Don't know about the one on the left, but the one on the right look like the last cab that Mel posted:).
You need to put a better shape on them before polishing... just my opinion. While 'freeform' is great, there's usually a shape that the eye looks for when deciding if something is pleasing. Generally diamond, generally triangular, generally rectangular, generally shield shaped, etc. When you can't mentally do any categorizing at all, shapes tend to be discarded as 'blobs', which is less desirable. I would either bring the bottoms to some kind of point, or square them off.
Also in both cases, maybe stabilize before working more, because it looks like both have a chance of splitting during polishing otherwise. Those are going to be great cabs:).
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Post by deb193redux on May 14, 2013 8:33:35 GMT -5
Helen. Stop being a cabist. Those are tumbles and still in course. They will stay there until smooth.
Those will be great tumbles!
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on May 14, 2013 9:23:35 GMT -5
Rollingstone. Those are Hornitos ( Hunters Valley) material both from the tailings of big pit my buddy and I worked for a couple of years. Tom called it the Holy Grail pit as that's the original hole the beautiful red and pink poppy came from ( pic below). The pink and red was pretty much all gone.. Only found a couple of pounds in two years hunting. Unfortunately, the other types in the pit were more fractured than the red and pink, similar to Morgan Hill in some respects. I suspect those veins were more towards the surface so more weathered which is why it was not harvested with the rest, back in the 1960's ..Mel
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Post by helens on May 14, 2013 9:53:07 GMT -5
Helen. Stop being a cabist. Those are tumbles and still in course. They will stay there until smooth. Those will be great tumbles! Daniel, while people love tumbling, tumbles are not generally considered very pricey. You don't take a super rare gorgeous rock and throw it in a jar with other tumbles, that's almost sacrilege! (*have to add that this is tongue in cheek). Those poppies are pretty special was my point:).
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Don
Cave Dweller
He wants you too, Malachi.
Member since December 2009
Posts: 2,616
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Post by Don on May 14, 2013 11:09:31 GMT -5
high dollar materials are tumbled all the time. It's a great way to clean them up and prove the quality. Holy blue, chrysoprase, golden feldspar, purple chalcedony, fire agate, etc. Just take a look at New Era Gems cabbing parcels: www.neweragems.com/gallery_new.asp?catid=91
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Post by rockpickerforever on May 14, 2013 11:49:40 GMT -5
It's not always about the $ Some people do this just for fun, can you imagine? Jean
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Post by helens on May 14, 2013 17:15:23 GMT -5
What money? I tumble ALL my cabs. I just shape them first so they are shown in their best light... because they are beautiful and special rocks deserve special attention.
As for tumbling high dollar items, I just said I tumble EVERY cab. The rock however is impacted by the shape (if not the fact that it's tumbled), because a pretty shape shows off the rock better. Case in point, Don, your site link shows 12 tumbled SPECTROLITES for $25. Can you buy 10 spectralite cabs for $25? Even shaped chip spectralites are worth more than $2.50, and it takes 1 minute to shape them that small (spectralite/labradorites are SUPER soft and easy to shape).
I know a lot of people tumble expensive rocks... it's not about the price, it's about the rarity for me... how many beautiful poppies do you come across? I just think they merit special treatment. Obviously, not everyone has to agree, that's why everyone has an opinion:).
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rollingstone
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since July 2009
Posts: 236
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Post by rollingstone on May 15, 2013 1:15:15 GMT -5
Mel, thanks for the location info. I may have asked you about that before, but this time I printed out your reply so I will have it for future reference (if I remember that I printed it out, that is...).
Helen, I realize most people start with tumbling and then move to slabbing, shaping, cabochons, and maybe even knapping or facetting. I've never made that jump and doubt I ever will... I just like the simplicity of putting things in a barrel with grit and tumbling them until they have a nice shape, then making them shine.
I once got into a nasty fight with someone on this board who was really upset that I was tumbling material that he considered was too valuable or too rare to end up as a tumbled-stones (I think the material in question was Tahoma jasper/agate). I hope he's not reading this thread, because he'd blow a gasket to hear that the most recent rough I added to coarse grind was a 3 pound chunk of pietersite that I had laying around, so busted up with a hammer and chisel and dumped it into my tumbler ;D. That stuff has become crazy-expensive, but it wasn't doing anyone any good sitting in a box under my basement stairs...
Anyway, back to this poppy thread... as Mel noted and is also obvious in my photos, the poppy in those pieces I have is very fractured and is not cab-grade, it is tumble-grade material. I don't know if these will tumble OK or will fall apart, but they were 2 interesting pieces that I thought I would try to tumble. The jury is still out as to whether they will shape up well enough and the cracks will be acceptable enough for to tumble polish, or whether it was a fun thing to try but they really need to be bashed up to small tumbling size to take a nice polish.
-Don
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Post by helens on May 15, 2013 5:24:41 GMT -5
LOL! I tumble nearly everything too:). I have destroyed a whole lot of amazing rocks doing it too. It would be amusing to cite the litany of stupid things I've done with rocks, starting with my VERY FIRST TUMBLE EVER after buying a Lot-O was over a POUND of precious Ethiopian Welo Opals... with mad fire. And of which I turned many insanely fired pieces into grit: I started my rock journey with precious opals...I lost some beautiful opals, but I did manage to get some gorgeous 15+ carat polished pieces out of the tumble, and the opal that survived are TOUGH, with no potential to fracture from cabbing, so it was worth it to me. Point of this is that I'm in no position to throw stones at anyone for doing crazy things with expensive materials, and if tumbling jasper makes someone throw a fit, $10 a carat precious opal should blow a gasket. I didn't mean to sound critical about your tumbling, just trying to make a helpful suggestion about how best to display your poppies:). I've learned a lot about tumbling this past year, mostly from trial and error. If you stabilize the material first (coat it with a UV protected epoxy), then shape it, it will hold up to tumbling fine (not worth doing to opal, as it will impact the clarity and fire). Here's an example of a cab that I literally shattered, not once but 2x (my grinding wheel ZINGED it across the room 2x and each time it broke). It's crysocolla, so didn't break very cleanly with chips that couldn't be recovered, but glued, shaped and tumbled just fine: You can see the breaks in the photo, but then, the photo is magnified. You could not tell with the naked eye that the cab was ever damaged. If you don't have high grade epoxy, the next best thing is windshield repair epoxy. Just do the top of the cab, then throw it in the tumbler and it won't break up into little bits:). The rocks are yours, if you want to turn them into sand, it's your business. I am on a poppy kick at the moment, so I like to see poppies looking their best... but if you do a nice job, you can admire them for years to come, while breaking them down into little bits means garbage can eventually. If you have poppies you don't want or can't do anything nice with, I'm always happy to trade rough poppy slabs for finished stuff:).
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rollingstone
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since July 2009
Posts: 236
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Post by rollingstone on May 15, 2013 18:45:30 GMT -5
Helen, I think by tumbling precious opals, you win! ;D Those ones in the jar look very good and I can see the fire, very nice. I have tried filling pits and cracks in stones with epoxy before but I didn't like the effect. I could see the line or filled-pit in the finished product and it just bothered me. But for gluing together broken pieces like you have done, it seems to work very well. With the two bigger pieces of poppy I'm tumbling, they were two pieces I set aside when I did the initial tumble. I'm just trying to see how they look tumbled whole, instead of breaking them down into smaller tumbling material. I already have some tumbled as regular tumbled stones and really like the patterns: -Don
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on May 15, 2013 19:02:54 GMT -5
You know I think about tumbling more scarce material this way. If I slab and cab a stone, it takes me a lot of time and energy and I end up with only a few pieces for my collection or to give away. If I crunch up a big hunk for the tumbler, it takes little energy and turns out a big ole pile of pretty shiny stones I can give away to a bunch of kids and other folks. So the tumbling actually lets more folks enjoy a rock than does the cabbing. I do not consider that a waste of material....Mel
PS: One can go out and hunt more rocks while tumbling the others.
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Post by helens on May 15, 2013 23:54:07 GMT -5
Mel, that's the difference, you ruin your piece, you go get more... I can't get more!!! LOL!
Don, those look great, but the bottom right one looks phenomenal (and happens to look like a cab:P)
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