More Texas stuff 10/11

Used to do that once and awhile Nate. Also used a couple of different slab grabbers. Too much rock, too little time and too lazy to mess with it these days. Just cut 'em a bit and I gets what I gets *S*.....Mel

Yep, In most Texas nodules of the biscuit type, the plume runs, not always, but mainly, parallel to the top and bottom of the nodule. These are cut across the plume which usually makes those fluffy looking structures. Course, this one was full skin so, as is often the case, I really did not know for sure it was a plume nodule....Mel

James: My very first trip to Woodward, I met up with some Cajun guys who showed me how to hunt plume biscuits. At that time digging was allowed and we actually attacked the vesicular basalt and got agates in situ. Not all were biscuit shaped but, because they formed in bubbles in the basalt ( vesicles) that were basically mostly teardrop shaped, many were. When digging, spots were hot and cold and my hole was not great. Largest nodule I found was a couple of pounds. Other guys, one found an incredible hole and he was getting ten plus pounders right out of the bedrock and most were red plume. My hole had the dang black mostly. I've seen pics of hunks almost a hundred pounds from the canyons right near the headquarters but never found any that big myself except for ones that were more mossy with maybe a bit of flower garden. Way back then, we did not even drag that in to the scales. Price was 50 cents per pound and back then, my entire trip budget was not all that much money ( I'd usually spend most at the Milky Ranch on wood, the rock shop at Terlingua, and I'd set aside the $35 for a Bishop Ranch trip). Those were lean days and I had not a lot of money for rocks *L*. Most biscuits do not seem to be that large and the larger ones tend to be geodes or full of megaquartz with just a bit of plume in the corners. Seen huge geodes from Woodward, in one canyon especially. Best plume biscuits actually seem to be in the 1-4" size range. The huge plume hunks I've seen tend to be big vein sections or maybe broken or weathered from huge nodules but I've never seen a huge one with intact skin over ten pounds.

The Woodwards used to insist on sorting your finds and they would exclude the big nodules unless you fought them over them as they said they would be junk ( too much quartz) I kept and paid for all mine and sometimes the best plume was in small pockets in those quartzy nodules.

The great thing about Rios is, during river transport, most all the junk is eroded away. What you tend to get is really solid cores from the most solid nodules. I throw the quartz ones into a junk pile and am cutting a few now and will post some pics. Not great cabbing stuff but some are fairly interesting as they tend to have more tubes, lace etc, even though they have less color. When you guys hit the rock piles, check those carefully before you junk them as some are pretty interesting specimens. Most the plume and wood in the piles is so worn as to be hard to spot but both are really pretty. I cut a gorgeous cobble of wood yesterday thinking it was an agate...Mel