ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 10, 2016 17:01:57 GMT -5
Some of our summers haul of Petoskey stones and septarian nodules that my hubby has been busy shining up. We've been thinking about opening a stand up out in front of our rural home and offering these as palm stones and paperweights along with some jewelry we made. He has a mess of rocks to get done before we can do it though. Seems like he's off to a good start and has the rest of the fall and winter to finish them up.
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Fossilman
Cave Dweller
Member since January 2009
Posts: 20,709
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Post by Fossilman on Oct 10, 2016 18:52:22 GMT -5
Those are so cool!!!
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Post by spiceman on Oct 10, 2016 20:51:21 GMT -5
Nice job and lots of work.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 10, 2016 20:54:23 GMT -5
We lucked into a really great spot just before it got too cold around there. Can't wait to return there in the spring after ice out. There is supposed to be Michigan Puddingstone there too but haven't found any yet.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 10, 2016 20:57:37 GMT -5
Nice job and lots of work. He spends probably 2 to 8 hours to polish one Petoskey depending on size and shape. Hardly worth the $10.00 to $40.00 it might bring at retail if we're lucky. But at least we have the fun of traveling to find them and it recoups some of the gas spent on the rockhounding trips.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 10, 2016 21:09:22 GMT -5
The five pieces circled in red with no x mark on them are all cut from one awesome almost perfect 6 inch by 3 inch stone. I forgot to x mark the light colored stone sticking into the red at the top.
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Post by accidentalrockhound on Oct 11, 2016 23:27:07 GMT -5
Nice petoskeys! I always wanted to hound some , is it true the best way to polish petoskeys is by hand?
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 12, 2016 8:18:26 GMT -5
Nice petoskeys! I always wanted to hound some , is it true the best way to polish petoskeys is by hand? Hubby grinds them to the rough shape he wants on his belt sander using 80 grit. Then he switches to 180 wet dry used dry and by hand, then he switches to 220, then he goes to 600 all by hand. Then he'll shorten things up by going directly from 600 grit (after rinsing it off of course) to his buffing wheel and some white compound.
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Post by accidentalrockhound on Oct 12, 2016 8:46:22 GMT -5
Thank you ziggy! Don't forget to play my guess the miles game on the comp board, open to everyone and will cost you nothing! Tell hubby great job!
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Post by 150FromFundy on Oct 13, 2016 16:43:54 GMT -5
Hand polishing Petosky stones for 8 hours at a time! I think hubby needs a hobby. Rock tumbling perhaps?
Darryl.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 13, 2016 19:03:06 GMT -5
Hand polishing Petosky stones for 8 hours at a time! I think hubby needs a hobby. Rock tumbling perhaps? Darryl. That is his hobby silly. Poor guy used to work hard 10 and 12 hours a day before he retired. Now he's bored enough to polish rocks. Seriously though, he never does it for 8 hours straight though. He might sit and polish for a half hour here and an hour there. Some rocks only take a little work because they're small and others take longer because they need more work or whatever. Hand polishing a petoskey is surprisingly easy due to the relative softness of the rock. It really doesn't take too much to smooth down the rough edges left by the sander using the 180 grit by hand so most of the work isn't too bad. The tedious part is the finer grits and making sure the scratches are all gone. Living where we do here in Michigan we naturally have access to mostly Petoskey stones. It's 90 percent of what we find. They don't tumble very well because they're so soft so to do it right they all need hand polished at some point. The other 10 percent of what we find is 5 percent septarian nodules and 5 percent other stuff ranging from agate to native copper. Also, he typically doesn't waste much time on small petoskeys unless they are really outstanding looking in the polyps, preferring to polish larger "palm stones" and paperweights. Ironically, the 5 percent septarians we find are almost the exact same hardness as the petoskeys and the same hand polishing is required. Fortunately, we try and never keep too much unakite on our collecting trips, and we got over the "pretty colored rock syndrome" a long time ago, preferring to keep our eyes open for what we are there to collect be it agate, petoskey or whatever. Also, for the 5 percent of rocks that are of something harder in our stash, he has built an awesome 6 wheel 6 inch cabbing machine that we will be using for the harder stuff when we get around to it this winter. Besides, if he didn't take the time to hand polish these beautiful rocks, they would just sit there in a pile and keep building up, not doing anyone any good. Our choices are A. Keep the raw rough until we die, passing it on in our estate sale after we die. B. Sell the rough stones to another vendor who will double his money like we would have if we polished them ourselves instead. C. Polish them up, set them out by the road for sale, and use the proceeds to fund more hounding. Half the fun of this hobby is the hounding part and we have no plans on not looking for more. The choice is clear. Polish and sell them puppies.
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