Snakes and Stones

OMG,that must be bait designed for me. Alas the fish will not bite. Wasn't easy though.

Don't apologize, KEEP IT UP! iF IT HAS TO DO WITH THE WORLD, I it!

Photo #32


Here are a few pieces from Nipomo California (collected in the 60's).  The rough material was in super bad shape when I got it (like swiss cheese)-still managed to break it up and tumble some decent pieces...

I call this the 'blue variant', I have tumbled a similar material in Photo #23 I call the 'red variant'.  This material is multi-mohs, it undercuts, fractures, and pits--at some point during the tumbling/polishing process I have to say 'good enough'.  The blue variant tumbles a lot better than the red variant...

The guy I bought it from owns a rock shop in California: he sold me a wide selection of his 'discard material'.   He said the blue and red material I tumbled is Agate with Marcasite.   

I haven't really noticed anything odd about the tumbling slurry.   I am working on a apple sized piece of red stuff right now (without too many pits)--can't use anything coarser than 120 SiC on it...have to coarse grind with cushioning or else it will fracture...ughhh...going to take a long time...

When I first started trying to understand rocks, I made lots and lots of notes and got them organized and I refer to these notes a lot. I just looked up Marcasite in those notes. It only appears as marcasite agate in CA. That I wrote only CA after it should mean that it was found only in that state. And I noted further "named for feature (inclusion of Marcasite--metal related to Pyrite)" because I tried hard to find out why all rocks are named the way they are, whether for place, person, feature, inclusion, etc. So apparently no way what I found in CO could be this. Your rocks in that photo are some of the most unique, and beautiful, I have ever seen.

If you want to trade one not yet done for something I have, I'd enjoy that. I'm about to start the process, contemplated for several years, of diluting Epoxy 300 in acetone, and soaking porous rocks in it for several weeks, curing after for several weeks, etc. in order to hopefully produce some tightly polished results from material that is problematic. For instance, I have a grapefruit size piece of gorgeous ocean jasper, but anyone who has worked with this unusual material knows what I mean about voids. This process might work with your marcasite agate material. My notes reveal that I found it for sale somewhere for $25/lb, but I noted not where.

That mostly silvery one just above the real red one in the lower left just blows my mind. I will be in LA heading up toward Atascadero this fall. If you know of any places I might find some of this or buy some of this, I'm very interested. My goal would be to get a few sizeable pieces rather than a lot of small pieces, but I won't be picky either.

I'm going to refrain from herpetological comments on how super cool that sallie is and how much I know that "about to go for it look" nor will I comment about how it looks like it has chili pepper powder all over its head or that my tiger sallie ate 2 mice in only 4 days last week and how my sallie moves so aggressively in its terrarium that it startles people including me or about the time I found a tiger sallie, huge tarantula, and a giant centipede all living under the same rock in separate dirt compartments.

That is one cool and unusual rock!

I'm not expecting miracles out of the diluted epoxy method. After all, diluting something that is designed to fill voids sounds about as logical as expecting to drink 1 pint of water and feeling full when one normally needs a quart of water. If the acetone evaporates, which it will, no way I can see how voids could be filled. But, my hope is that this diluted epoxy step will "set" the rock in a way no matter how porous such that the rock material itself can't "wick" up fluid. Then, if I later actually pour undiluted epoxy into the voids, after warming the rock slightly so that the epoxy flows readily, the voids might be filled.

I have polished rocks with the epoxy 300 product in some large pits. I'm satisfied with it maybe 50% of the time. It certainly polishes well and in a similar way to the rock itself. But, if the epoxy spot is hit by another rock, it seems to at times fracture itself (the epoxy plug I mean) or make the bonded surface of the epoxy with the rock a little more visible. So it's a mixed bag, but allows saving some rocks for which there are unaVOIDable problems.

On Cloudinary Now:
Photo #34

Warning:  Video has audio!  My girlfriend gets angry when I do this: 

Very nice snake and an equally magnificent image.

Where did you catch it?

I've been fortunate enough to collect both southern and northern types. Corvallis was the local for the northern and we saw over 50 that day.

Nice piece of wood.  I think I may be more impressed that you got that snake to go around a rectangular rock!