jamesp
Cave Dweller
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Post by jamesp on Jun 18, 2018 7:52:35 GMT -5
A person could fill a 100 tumbler barrels in a day collecting petrified coral in these rivers. Not heat treated. Heat treatment would intensify colors. Glassy sharp material. Rarely a fracture. Easy to pop tumbling chips off the 2 to 20 pound petrified coral heads. Some over 500 pounds.
These collected on safari trips down the Withlacoochee River on the FL/GA border using customized swamp boat during low water droughts.
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goatgrinder
spending too much on rocks
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Make mine a man cave
Member since January 2017
Posts: 368
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Post by goatgrinder on Jun 22, 2018 15:04:41 GMT -5
I would love to see the end results.
As a reward I promise to never again transpose apatite for aragonite. Dang medication.
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Post by MsAli on Jun 22, 2018 15:15:34 GMT -5
Ok this is cool.
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surreality
starting to spend too much on rocks
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is picking up too many rocks at the beach again
Member since January 2012
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Post by surreality on Jun 23, 2018 14:40:23 GMT -5
Absolutely wow! I adore coral, especially agatized or fossilized. This is really amazing.
...I would end up sinking the boat on the return trip for sure!
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jamesp
Cave Dweller
Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,371
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Post by jamesp on Jun 24, 2018 5:09:31 GMT -5
Absolutely wow! I adore coral, especially agatized or fossilized. This is really amazing. ...I would end up sinking the boat on the return trip for sure! That was a serious issue. 2 to 3 hours downstream dragging boat over shoals meant dragging a loaded boat upstream. Many a time getting back to the boat ramp at midnight in large lizard habitat. The little black line about 8 feet behind the head is the middle of his tail sticking up out of the water. ~1200 #. I saw him sun bathing on the way down. Not shy. ![](https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8324/28521623604_953fe9a384_z.jpg)
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surreality
starting to spend too much on rocks
![*](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/stars/star_teal.png)
is picking up too many rocks at the beach again
Member since January 2012
Posts: 217
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Post by surreality on Jun 24, 2018 6:16:42 GMT -5
That would be a pretty effective deterrent to me, yep. I doubt that wearing a tee that says 'I'm not tasty, trust me!' would help much.
(I am that person who counts herself lucky she hasn't been eaten by a shark yet for collecting rocks on the beach. Knowing my luck, one would flop right up onto the sand to gnaw on my kneecaps.)
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Post by grumpybill on Jun 24, 2018 6:38:39 GMT -5
Q: What does a gator call people in an aluminum boat? A: Canned lunch.
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jamesp
Cave Dweller
Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,371
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Post by jamesp on Jun 25, 2018 7:01:37 GMT -5
grumpybill surrealityA 4 mile kayak trip from Florida camp at Lake George collecting aquatic cuttings and seeds for my business for 30 years out of spots like this. Prime gator shallows in a lake noted for the biggest gators in the world. Wading in knee deep water in August with plenty of grumpy breeding season gators. Probably disturbed 2 dozen this morning within 100 yards of my collecting spots. The large ones resemble a torpedo making a high wake as the propel thru the shallow water usually leading away. Emphasis 'away' www.flickr.com/photos/67205364@N06/albums/72157672800944516![](https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8050/29091192182_af53d22784_b.jpg)
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Post by fernwood on Jun 25, 2018 7:16:06 GMT -5
I love coral, but prefer to find it on dry land. Yes, photos needed of what refinement was done to the coral.
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surreality
starting to spend too much on rocks
![*](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/stars/star_teal.png)
is picking up too many rocks at the beach again
Member since January 2012
Posts: 217
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Post by surreality on Jun 25, 2018 10:20:22 GMT -5
That looks much scarier, when you can't see what's under the water!
For this year's Florida trip, we're hoping to finally make it to one of the beaches where the fossil coral (supposedly) washes up a lot, but not the other one where I now know it does. We just figured the chunks were big but relatively normal there, and some certainly are, but we found a few this year that have a lot of calcite inclusions, and one chunk that has some amazing bands.
It's big, though, so it sits there, whispering, "Sell all the old stuff no one has used in years in the garage, clear it out, and get a reeeeally big saw... " (The pile of rocks like that is slowly growing, and we go to that place once a year, so there's ideally a promise of more.) It has wavy bands of dark and light in the whorls of the coral, so it looks almost like a brain in places. It's maybe 12-15lbs at a guess? I would love to be able to cut it in thin slabs all the way through, pick a side to polish somehow, and frame the results all the way across a long wall. I need to inspect the others we collected this year more closely to see if they're older than we thought. They have lovely exterior textures, so we were going to paint them with a bronze metal paint I have and hit them with a patina to use them for jewelry displays. Now, though... they all need a much closer look first.
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jamesp
Cave Dweller
Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,371
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Post by jamesp on Jun 25, 2018 11:12:03 GMT -5
That looks much scarier, when you can't see what's under the water! For this year's Florida trip, we're hoping to finally make it to one of the beaches where the fossil coral (supposedly) washes up a lot, but not the other one where I now know it does. We just figured the chunks were big but relatively normal there, and some certainly are, but we found a few this year that have a lot of calcite inclusions, and one chunk that has some amazing bands. It's big, though, so it sits there, whispering, "Sell all the old stuff no one has used in years in the garage, clear it out, and get a reeeeally big saw... " (The pile of rocks like that is slowly growing, and we go to that place once a year, so there's ideally a promise of more.) It has wavy bands of dark and light in the whorls of the coral, so it looks almost like a brain in places. It's maybe 12-15lbs at a guess? I would love to be able to cut it in thin slabs all the way through, pick a side to polish somehow, and frame the results all the way across a long wall. I need to inspect the others we collected this year more closely to see if they're older than we thought. They have lovely exterior textures, so we were going to paint them with a bronze metal paint I have and hit them with a patina to use them for jewelry displays. Now, though... they all need a much closer look first. The beach coral stays collected over for the most part. A boat and knowing where to remove sand is about the best way to go but moving sand has been outlawed. some of the rivers in Fl/Ga are loaded with it but about all access is by boat during drought. access to coral is a real challenge. I took a 2 month coral adventure back in the 13' drought. Travelled about 200 miles on 3 rivers in the little swamp boat. The coral was to be tumbled so I broke most of it into tumble sizes in the field. From Tampa Fl. to Valdosta GA, 'the coral zone': ![](https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7427/10098855375_ccebb2b3bb_b.jpg)
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jamesp
Cave Dweller
Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,371
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Post by jamesp on Jun 25, 2018 11:22:30 GMT -5
I love coral, but prefer to find it on dry land. Yes, photos needed of what refinement was done to the coral. A 200 foot long shoal on the Suwannee River. About 12 miles downstream from ramp. Rough trip. River level has to be spot on. Only made it here one time and it was the end of the day. Yummy coral picked up in a quick just before dark. Return trips have been foiled by river level. Must have been a high iron content where this shoal/clay vein was for these colors to form. Gotta go back. www.flickr.com/photos/67205364@N06/sets/72157646653965727
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Post by fernwood on Jun 25, 2018 11:40:29 GMT -5
Nice stuff. I am partial to anything with vugs in it. Based on the variety of colors, a whole lot of minerals there.
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Post by aDave on Jun 25, 2018 11:55:35 GMT -5
I love coral, but prefer to find it on dry land. Yes, photos needed of what refinement was done to the coral. A 200 foot long shoal on the Suwannee River. About 12 miles downstream from ramp. Rough trip. River level has to be spot on. Only made it here one time and it was the end of the day. Yummy coral picked up in a quick just before dark. Return trips have been foiled by river level. Must have been a high iron content where this shoal/clay vein was for these colors to form. Gotta go back. www.flickr.com/photos/67205364@N06/sets/72157646653965727That's pretty neat stuff, James. The colors and patterns are awesome.
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surreality
starting to spend too much on rocks
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is picking up too many rocks at the beach again
Member since January 2012
Posts: 217
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Post by surreality on Jun 25, 2018 12:55:47 GMT -5
That is downright amazing. Pardon me while I drool a little over here. If I could do that (without being eaten), I would in a heartbeat. We've been lucky sometimes with the beaches, since in Florida we go to ones where everyone's looking for shells, toward the southern part of Florida. 'A big ugly crusty rock' is all it is to them much of the time, so it stays. (We may try tumbling some of the pretty flat shell shards we've gathered over the years some day as well in their own little batch some time once the beach rock pile gets done. The thick ones, anyway.) It seems like a lot of the Florida beach 'crystalized' coral is calcite rather than quartz, though, so the stuff we have is either 'pretty specimen' or 'maybe slice it up some day' more than tumbling it with the rest of our beachy stuff, which is harder. (The two pieces of it I threw into the rotary got really eaten up.) Most of what we found has that yellow color I've seen in pics of the fossil shells with crystals from Fort Drum/Ruck's Pit. (We now have that place penciled in for not this year, but next, oh, yes we do. ![:D](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/smiley/grin.png) ) Up here we just go to Cape May NJ. All the stuff in the avatar pic is from there. We find smalllllllll bits of fossil coral here, a lot of it with little crystal vugs all over them that are more tumbler size along with piles of quartz, a few agates, some jasper and chert and flint. The spot is right where the bay (opened out from the Delaware River) meets the Atlantic, so the mix is interesting sometimes, depending on the season/weather/tides. It's been mostly the rounded quartz pebbles over the last few years, hence our ongoing recovery of the yard buckets that had a lot more of the more colorful fun crusty stuff in them. My mother looked at me like I was a crazy person for ever picking those up, but when she saw the few I managed to get polished a few years ago, she immediately stopped wondering!
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surreality
starting to spend too much on rocks
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is picking up too many rocks at the beach again
Member since January 2012
Posts: 217
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Post by surreality on Jun 25, 2018 16:27:15 GMT -5
One whole piece of the local coral got polished in the olden days, and a piece from Florida. Dime for scale. That's one of the smaller beach pieces we found, though. No way it would work in a tumbler without breaking it apart first with all of those holes and valleys and bulges without losing most of the piece, but the shape and texture variations make me really want to cut it up some day. ![](//storage.proboards.com/1258779/thumbnailer/wtKAhDrZuJROJyvDoYSb.png)
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