Post by NevadaBill on May 16, 2020 12:02:43 GMT -5
With the introduction of Social Distancing, the last couple of months have been ... interesting.
I mean, for some people who depended on restaraunts, clubs, casinos, sporting events, travel, or just hanging out at your favorite pizza place, this has been trying times! Not saying me or anything .. but for others I can imagine that this peaceful quiet time has been a blessing, a relief in disquise. For some, it might even be business as usual.
I probably should have spent more time online. With the release of a new batch of games (Some of my gamer friends have been having the times of their life, playing online games, and socializing that way. Especially the Virtual Reality crowd that own HTC Vive, Oculus, etc. The Half-Life VR is an unreal experience. Having been a gamer for life, this should have occupied a lot of my time. But it didn't grab me.
Instead, I found myself visiting all of my favorite Copper Mines in the area (desert Southwest), and fine tuning my cabbing skills on the cool rock grinder I bought last year. And have not regretted a single minute.
OK, group photo. People probably don't read the words on these posts anyway!
The weather has been outstanding, and even thought it hit 100F in APRIL this year, I know that the good weather window is closing fast, and soon it will be 105F in the shade (if you can find any), and 120F in my garage like it was last year.
So I have been trying to collect the best rough that I can during this time. I have done write ups on a couple of the locations, but really I need to do more trip reports to cover the others too. But the Copper material is all over the Southern Nevada, and Western Arizona locals. So many in fact that in only an hours drive, I can be in the vicinity of a 100 smaller, functional mines.
The Mostly Malachite group. Here are some with mostly Malachite. I would say that finding good, solid (not crumbly) Malachite has not been so easy. Even after stabilizing, the samples are not hard enough to take a good polish.
With most rocks, the shape is always undetermined until you start whittling away at the little guy, and after an hour or two, it reveals itself. I have used ZAM on most of these. Some represent better in person, others are just poor quality. But Malachite will be heavily represented in some of the photos to follow as well. Because they are found with other types of rock too.
The Mainly Chrysocolla group. I would say that 75% of the rocks I find which cab out fairly well have a lot of Chrysocolla in them. As it turns out, then also have a brown colored material that also shines up pretty well too. It is called Cuprite.
The cab in the middle is probably 60 x 40. The others are normal sized. I love the mix of minerals, and the colors that came out from this. But I wanted to leave it in one chunk, and not break it up. The one right above it is my favorite, and the light in this picture is not doing it justice at all; it's a much deeper blue than it appears.
The Dioptase Mostly group. One particular mine, hosts a great deal of this mineral, and it looks a lot like Malachite. Actually I think that it shines up a whole lot better than it too. It's another lousy picture, but oh well. I am too lazy to go back and take another.
The Dioptase, is a bright green. I have a few larger chunks that I have not cut or rendered yet, even better than these. But I like when I see it, because it can have wavy patterns in it, much like the piece in the middle (which has an eye that won't leave).
I think that it looks really nice when mixed with that brown mineral. I should have probably taken close ups of these instead, as the light washed out a bunch of these which actually represent better in person.
The Runt Group #1 - Here are mixes. All of the prior mentioned rocks are kind of thrown together here. Funny. When I look at the picture, it doesn't represent these very well either. And the shot is blurry too. Ugh.
But I like these because they have character. I threw these in now, and will throw in the next group of Runts, because I would like to show some of my favorites in the last picture. I like the two on the bottom right in this slide. Even though the blues are much stronger than what appears here. Even the greens. Hmm.
Runt Group #2 - I don't know if any of these will actually get turned in to pendants or not. I think with the exception of maybe one or two here, they are outshined pretty much by the prior photos. But these guys took work at any rate. The colors are off, again, but probably because I shot on black background.
The Mixed Group #2 - So, some of my favorites are in this shot. I like the pink mineral, but I don't know what it is. I have only 2 other rocks with this pink in it, but they are burried somewhere for now, under a huge pile of future rock candidates.
I should probably take this shot again, and use a different background. Hold on while I do that. Maybe it will wake things up a bit...
Well, thats the best I could do on a white background. Not sure if it is an improvement, but the colors come out a bit better.
Now that this Social Distancing experiment is starting to wind down, I am seeing a lot more buzz around town. The quarantine has been lifted for small businesses, we are seeing less and less masks *especially by the young adults* being worn around town in places like grocery stores, etc, where is used to be mandated.
I will probably have less time to visit my favorite Copper mines. But I think I have a good stock of quality candidates to render out on the rock saw and grinder in the upcoming months.
I expect that when the weather gets especially oppressive , I will stay indoors and turn as much of this in to jewelry as I can.
At any rate, I am happy to have been able to share the focus of my work over the past couple of months.
Thanks for stopping by!
