jamesp
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Member since October 2012
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Post by jamesp on Feb 22, 2017 11:21:14 GMT -5
This cobble from cross cut/quarter sawn/parallel sawn. Red is heated, yellows are not. Been cooking large loads of coral. Samples of Rio Grande petrifications. Texas wood and palm doing great. Could dial back heat and turn them orange instead of red. Sabre52-This stuff heats like a petrification by soluble silica from diatoms and NOT volcanic ash. Guessing you are correct on your suspicions. cross outside of cobble quarter parellel. two on lower right are a pair cross sawn left two cross sawn, right two cross sawn. Left rock superb color. quarter palm bog was yellow palm
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Post by txrockhunter on Feb 22, 2017 12:14:26 GMT -5
Damn, James! Taking this to a whole new level! Never would have thought about heat treating the TX woods. Beautiful stuff as always! Thanks for being curious!
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jamesp
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Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,561
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Post by jamesp on Feb 22, 2017 12:34:48 GMT -5
Damn, James! Taking this to a whole new level! Never would have thought about heat treating the TX woods. Beautiful stuff as always! Thanks for being curious! Gotta use secret weapons on you Texan's Jeremy. First time for Texas material. First time a finished tumble was cooked. No ill effects. I found no noticeably heated rock while out there, and very few artifacts. Texas palm is famous for reacting well to heat treatment. Apparently the wood is no different. Apparently the SE Natives were active heat treaters. Find heated chips commonly here.
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Post by Garage Rocker on Feb 22, 2017 13:02:39 GMT -5
Making your own AZ pet wood? It does give color to some of the otherwise drab pieces. Exciting stuff! I need to start drinking coffee to get a can for heat treatments.
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Feb 22, 2017 13:16:34 GMT -5
Making your own AZ pet wood? It does give color to some of the otherwise drab pieces. Exciting stuff! I need to start drinking coffee to get a can for heat treatments. Could have stopped at orange, probably 525-550F. But the coral was the target at 600F. Yes, next time I will collect differently. Lots of drab yellow wood I left that would have been set on fire in the color dept. Figured it would cook, but did not take chances. Collecting rocks opens up, rocks as are and rocks for heat treating. Some butt ugly coral can really be beautiful heated. And most collectors leave the heat treatable colored rock on the ground. Here is bulletproof no-fracture Texas wood converted to almost Arizona colors without the delicate fractures. Could have filled the car with 'yellar wood'.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 22, 2017 14:12:02 GMT -5
I dont know how much you paid in postage, but i bet it would have bought a trailer and additional fuel to drag all your finds home. And bring home more!
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jamesp
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Member since October 2012
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Post by jamesp on Feb 22, 2017 17:28:18 GMT -5
I dont know how much you paid in postage, but i bet it would have bought a trailer and additional fuel to drag all your finds home. And bring home more! Scott, I busted my butt to collect 1500 pounds. Well, 19 days doing 6-8 hours. Me and captbob cleaned the area available to us out. I could have bought another 800 pounds of wood for heating now that I see what to cook. but that area we picked over hard. Maybe 5% of exposed rock on US shore. The Mexican shore is probably untouched. Time to get permission to more land, of which there is many miles of shore to collect on. I have enough rock to keep me busy for 2-3 years. But would go back before that time frame. It takes about a week to collect 500 pounds of AAA rock where we were. It had been picked over before, I found rock hunter's windows. Probably not thouroughly.
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Post by pghram on Feb 22, 2017 18:33:07 GMT -5
The heart really makes them pop!
Peace, Rich
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Post by MrP on Feb 22, 2017 18:39:29 GMT -5
jamesp keep up the work!..............................MrP
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jamesp
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Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,561
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Post by jamesp on Feb 22, 2017 19:40:55 GMT -5
jamesp keep up the work!..............................MrP The heart really makes them pop! Peace, Rich MrP, heating is about the most coolest thing I do with rocks. Can't hardly wait to open that oven. Turned the power off noon yesterday. Still too hot this afternoon, sand stores a lot of heat. PATIENCE I could replace the sand with pea sized soapstone and double the length of the cooling process. the wood did well Rich.
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Sabre52
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Me and my gal, Rosie
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Post by Sabre52 on Feb 22, 2017 19:49:46 GMT -5
Wow, that colored up real well. Got to say I'm surprised it didn't show fractures. But then, last time I tried to heat treat rock I had them explode and blew sand up all over my wife's stove and got in a heap o trouble. I'm not good at heat treating....Mel
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Feb 23, 2017 4:26:58 GMT -5
Wow, that colored up real well. Got to say I'm surprised it didn't show fractures. But then, last time I tried to heat treat rock I had them explode and blew sand up all over my wife's stove and got in a heap o trouble. I'm not good at heat treating....Mel It takes a year or two to dry cherts and corals found in permanently wet clays and soils. And it is often the rocks that have stayed wet for a very long time that have the most chemicals in them that react to heat. Even after a couple of years sitting in a hot greenhouse they still fracture or explode from trapped moisture. Dry is the trick. No problem thus far with Texas rocks. For instance the shelf coral that sits on top of early limestone bedrock. Then an acidic river cuts a gorge through the limestone and the shelf coral rolls into the flow. The corals in the middle of the river have been incubating in the water are effected by chemicals for the longest time do well with color increase or alteration. Or where a permanent spring has been inundating the soil around coral. Coral that has sat in dry sand is usually white or gray and drab.
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vera
spending too much on rocks
Member since December 2016
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Post by vera on Mar 9, 2017 1:34:05 GMT -5
The work you do simply amazes me! I still have not gotten to use my AO80 grit, because I did not notice the use of size 30 grit to save time on my rough. Now I am going to have to find some yellow or drab stones to throw in under my pig roast this year. You sure are giving us lots of stuff to keep us busy! ;-)
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Mar 9, 2017 5:23:16 GMT -5
The work you do simply amazes me! I still have not gotten to use my AO80 grit, because I did not notice the use of size 30 grit to save time on my rough. Now I am going to have to find some yellow or drab stones to throw in under my pig roast this year. You sure are giving us lots of stuff to keep us busy! ;-) Heat treating is cheating in a sort. To change to color of a $10,000 gemstone to a $20,000 gemstone using heat is perhaps immoral. However, we are only talking tumbled rocks, so why not be immoral lol. If you have access to yellow/brown chert or petrified wood or some agates you can sure give it a go. Usually 500F to 600F is the magic spot. But you have to heat up slow and cool down slow to avoid cracking rocks. If you are building a ground fire simple bury your target rocks about 3 inches under the soil under your ground fire. They may crack. If they do so what, you will still see their color potential. Then you may want to do a more controlled heat treatment if your rocks show potential. The tumbles in this post were heated terribly wrong. I was cooking coral and chunked these tumbles in the oven late, directly in at 400F. Surprised they did not shatter from rapid heat UP. Telling that this petrified wood is very durable and user friendly for heating. I heated some more porous pet wood in another batch properly, slow up and slow down and it shattered to bits. Good luck with the pig/rock roast.
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vera
spending too much on rocks
Member since December 2016
Posts: 259
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Post by vera on Mar 9, 2017 18:05:15 GMT -5
Thanks, we always have good pig roasts, everyone loves them. We use a pit that consists of 3 feet by 4 feet cinderblocks 5 rows high and the bottom has a good heavy layer of ash I can rake aside to put rocks under. We keep the fire mostly to the outside walls of the pit, so the center would be pretty much like the videos you had of the campfire method. My as well kill two birds with one stone. ;-)
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huskeric
spending too much on rocks
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Post by huskeric on Mar 9, 2017 21:34:30 GMT -5
That's really cool how you can get the colors to change. Does it matter if you do it before/after they go through polish?
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Mar 10, 2017 7:43:52 GMT -5
That's really cool how you can get the colors to change. Does it matter if you do it before/after they go through polish? Those are the first rocks I ever heated that were tumble polished. Had no effect on the polish. I was prepared to run them thru polish again. It is risky to heat rocks that you have spent time tumble polishing, they may crack. That Texas wood is so dang dense it probably has little voids for water pockets that will cause them to crack. It has taken me years to figure out what type of rocks to collect for heat treating. Most collectors leave them behind-the ones that can change to fine colors because they are drab in the field. So that is the heat treater's advantage if he knows how to pick leaverites and turn them pretty.
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