ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Dec 30, 2016 17:50:38 GMT -5
My hubby wants to know how much of the surface of the stone can be removed from a solid nodule without ruining the pattern. He is working on a stone but it doesn't have the classic turtleshell look. It seems to be almost in reverse on the colors with small areas of dark green surrounded by big wide areas of the lighter white-ish stuff. He wants to know if he grinds it down a little more will the white areas shrink and a turtleshell pattern likely appear? Or maybe not?
He doesn't really want to experiment too much with it because they are pretty small to start with.
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Post by toiv0 on Dec 30, 2016 20:26:24 GMT -5
My experience is less is more. The ones I have done the further into the stone the less the turtle pattern if it doesn't disappear all together. Centers of the ones I have tried to find more of the turtle shell were kind of mottled in the center. Dark green with clear to cloudy spots. I have not done that many though. I have about a hundred that are smaller than a small pea and a dozen bigger than a pea, only a few have the turtle shell. Let me know if he finds if he decides to experiment.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Dec 31, 2016 8:57:46 GMT -5
My experience is less is more. The ones I have done the further into the stone the less the turtle pattern if it doesn't disappear all together. Centers of the ones I have tried to find more of the turtle shell were kind of mottled in the center. Dark green with clear to cloudy spots. I have not done that many though. I have about a hundred that are smaller than a small pea and a dozen bigger than a pea, only a few have the turtle shell. Let me know if he finds if he decides to experiment. Well, the way it looks right now isn't too bad. It's an 8 carat stone as it sits and I don't think hubby wants to make it a 7 carat one so he will wait until we find some more this summer before he messes around too much trying to figure out how polishing one of those the right way works. We got a bunch (15 or so) of the smaller than a pea sized ones. We got about 12 carats total in larger stones and probably 12 more total in the little stuff. All of that was broken out of one 4" by 2 1/2" piece of basalt. Is that how you get yours? Thanks for the info.
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Post by toiv0 on Dec 31, 2016 9:06:44 GMT -5
I had a huge boulder full and chipped some out. I had the big boulder (maybe 150 lbs) sitting in a landscape, when I had a renter move out he stole the boulder and my supply of green stone. Need to get back and hunt some more down.
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Post by toiv0 on Dec 31, 2016 9:07:49 GMT -5
My experience is less is more. The ones I have done the further into the stone the less the turtle pattern if it doesn't disappear all together. Centers of the ones I have tried to find more of the turtle shell were kind of mottled in the center. Dark green with clear to cloudy spots. I have not done that many though. I have about a hundred that are smaller than a small pea and a dozen bigger than a pea, only a few have the turtle shell. Let me know if he finds if he decides to experiment. Well, the way it looks right now isn't too bad. It's an 8 carat stone as it sits and I don't think hubby wants to make it a 7 carat one so he will wait until we find some more this summer before he messes around too much trying to figure out how polishing one of those the right way works. We got a bunch (15 or so) of the smaller than a pea sized ones. We got about 12 carats total in larger stones and probably 12 more total in the little stuff. All of that was broken out of one 4" by 2 1/2" piece of basalt. Is that how you get yours? Thanks for the info. The ones that were chipped were they like a turtle all the way through?
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Dec 31, 2016 10:38:17 GMT -5
Well, the way it looks right now isn't too bad. It's an 8 carat stone as it sits and I don't think hubby wants to make it a 7 carat one so he will wait until we find some more this summer before he messes around too much trying to figure out how polishing one of those the right way works. We got a bunch (15 or so) of the smaller than a pea sized ones. We got about 12 carats total in larger stones and probably 12 more total in the little stuff. All of that was broken out of one 4" by 2 1/2" piece of basalt. Is that how you get yours? Thanks for the info. The ones that were chipped were they like a turtle all the way through? No, the inside of the one that is chipped looks so dark it's almost black.
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metalsmith
Cave Dweller
Member since October 2012
Posts: 1,537
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Post by metalsmith on Jan 5, 2017 17:02:14 GMT -5
What do you call Greenstone ... nephrite jade / bowenite / serpentinite / something else?
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Post by Drummond Island Rocks on Jan 5, 2017 18:45:25 GMT -5
What do you call Greenstone ... nephrite jade / bowenite / serpentinite / something else? The state gemstone for Michigan is the greenstone. Pretty pricey and rare. The main place to find it is on Isle Royal but the whole island is national park property so it is illegal to collect any there. photos are borrowed from a google image search Chuck
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Jan 5, 2017 20:22:36 GMT -5
What do you call Greenstone ... nephrite jade / bowenite / serpentinite / something else? Yes, what drummond island rocks said. The actual name of it is chlorastrolite, a variety of pumpellyite and they are also found in the Keweenaw peninsula basaltic rocks. The average size is about the size of a pea. Masses up to 5 or 6 hundred carats of it can occasionally be found in amygdules that are inside of the poor rock piles of the old copper mines. These are the greenstones we are after. The ones we found in our rock are from smaller than pea sized and on up to 8 carats. A little 4"x 2"x 1 1/2" oval shaped beach rock of basalt was all we had to work with and there was more than twenty carats in it total. We found an outcropping of basalt bedrock full of greenstone amygdules up there on a beach last summer and we are going to go back and break some rock out of that. The beach where that is also has a mess of the beach rocks like we found the greenstones in. If we would have known more when we were there we could have brought home hundreds of carats inside of beach pebbles instead of just twenty carats. Well, that's why they make next year I guess
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