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Post by washingtonrocks on Jun 13, 2015 20:26:08 GMT -5
These are local finds, within walking distance of my house which is nice. Both of the agates were found as "sills" or caps on top of large basalt rocks. The *serpentine* was found along side the street lol. This first agate is full of marcasite and manganese plumes and the center is full of druse. Moss agate: Back side: Black/Dark Green Serpentine with Chlorite:
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Post by stephan on Jun 13, 2015 21:29:00 GMT -5
Cool stuff. I like the druzes. Does the marcasite polish well, or undercut?
Nice swirlies in the jade. That's a keeper.
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Post by washingtonrocks on Jun 13, 2015 22:21:09 GMT -5
stephan, I haven't tried anything with this material yet, so I'm not sure how it will work up. I've seen Nipomo agate with Marcasite from California and that stuff looks like it takes an excellent shine. Hopefully mine will turn out similarly!
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rockroller
spending too much on rocks
Be excellent to each other.
Member since October 2013
Posts: 359
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Post by rockroller on Jun 14, 2015 0:23:01 GMT -5
Awesome that you find so many cool things close to home! Can't beat that!
~Roland
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Post by stephan on Jun 14, 2015 1:17:17 GMT -5
stephan, I haven't tried anything with this material yet, so I'm not sure how it will work up. I've seen Nipomo agate with Marcasite from California and that stuff looks like it takes an excellent shine. Hopefully mine will turn out similarly! Well, let's hope that a gentle touch keeps the plumes from being plucked out. I'm eager to see how it turns out.
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Post by orrum on Jun 14, 2015 6:43:28 GMT -5
Man those are nice finds! We got nothing hete, no rocks at all! Just a lot of sand and pine trees!
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Fossilman
Cave Dweller
Member since January 2009
Posts: 20,711
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Post by Fossilman on Jun 14, 2015 8:33:31 GMT -5
Nice to score rock locally!!! NICE!
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Post by washingtonrocks on Jun 14, 2015 21:35:34 GMT -5
So I spent the better part of the day today testing some of my recent finds, including my "jade" (ahem) slab...SG, hardness, etc., and I think I jumped the gun a little bit on giving my pretty green-black rock the jade moniker. I did a quick scratch test initially, and as so many of the local hard serpentines (Hi there! )around here do, it checked out near 5.5, just squeeking by for nephrite, but I wasn't thorough enough... SG was too low and the scratch test results varied a bit from spot to spot on the slab. Some definite soft chlorite numbers were evident. I don't run into many black serps all that often, so that definitely helped sway my bias in the jade direction. Lesson learned. Just wanted to correct myself on my rash ID.
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