Snakes and Stones

Yes, I find this very true to my experience as well.  Hit or miss with most places, definitely agree that larger rocks are the safer way to go over crushed stone.  What they can't see they can't 'pick out'.

holajonathan  and his follow-up post is nearly an identical experience to my own with the vendors he listed.   I do like the Baby Brazilian Agate and Crazy Lace from Kingsley North, but, I've received such low quality material on all my other rough stone orders that I am really annoyed with them at the moment.

No one has hijacked anything in this thread.    This thread is for Snake and Stones and all topics therein--Snake related? Great!  Rock related?  Great!  Photos?  Even better!
I just happen to add photos periodically--some place to put them...
  You called it!  Got them all.  SD prairie agate was the first stone I ever purchased for tumbling. 

I called Kingsley North once to complain about the quality of a $200 rough order.  I told them that half of the rocks were almost 100% quartz, even though the listing was for "agate" and the website photos showed little quartz.  The guy I talked to went through the normal disclaimers -- photos are examples only, rocks necessarily vary, agates contain quartz... But he was friendly about it and quickly offered to reship me rocks to replace the bad ones, and I didn't have to return anything.  The replacement rocks were obviously picked out just for me, as they were good -- better than the website photos.  So I will give them two thumbs up for good customer service in that instance. 

The guy also told me that I can call before ordering rough, tell someone in the sales department what I am interested in, and they will pull those rocks / send me a photo before I to purchase.  If I don't like them, they can try swapping out for others, and sending another photo.  There is obviously a limit to picking out rocks remotely via photos, but he seemed very willing to do so.  This might be an option for cutting rough from Kingsley if you've got the patience for a little back and forth.  

Rockindad I agree with your sentiments for the most part.  Add T-Rocks in Quartzsite as another vendor with highly variable quality.  They sold me some nice Mexican agates on a few occasions at a fair price of around $4 a pound.  Another time they fulfilled a $250 order with pure garbage.  Sagenite "agate" that I could break into dust with my hands, pet wood that was full of holes and with no pattern or colors, and other pieces of cutting rough that were 50%+ matrix.  I have not bought anything from T-Rocks since.  

I've had the same experience as you with Kingsley and The Rock Shed. With Kingsley, rather than quality being inconsistent, they seem to just sell a lot of low quality rough. Consistently low quality.  Their baby Brazilian agates are nice, however, and quite the deal if you buy 25 pounds+. Their crushed crazy lace is fine also.  The Rock Shed is slightly better than average in consistency, but I, too, bought quite a bit of the Mozambique agates and what I could see through the bags hasn't even motived me to cut them all open.  Their Bots have been highly variable, with some bags being mostly tiny, fractures orange pieces.  Their Bahia agates have never disappointed, however, and their large crazy lace crushed rough is good, even at $7 a pound.

My experience is that the Gem Shop is better than most.  At least they try to grade their rough that is worth grading and set different price points accordingly.  Their higher grade rough is expensive but almost always worth it if you value quality over quantity.  I recently bought 10 pounds of their $10 per pound Mexican Crazy lace cutting rough to see if it is any different than what I can get for around $3-$4 a pound elsewhere.  Their crazy lace is, indeed, superior quality.  There is almost no scrap or quartz in any of the pieces of rough.  Very solid with nice patterns and colors.  It is high grade material chosen by someone who knows how to grade it.  

With some rough, TGS has 3 different grades, and they say a few words about the grades, e.g., "B grade with broken nodules and lots of quartz" or something like that.  I appreciate this info.  Too many vendors do not bother to say one word about the rough.  

I have never gotten the sense that rough from TGS had been picked over.  To the contrary, it appears that whoever is compiling online orders actually puts some thought into the process.  For example, the first time I ordered their whole Botswana nodules I got just 2 pounds to try them out.  They sent me about 15 smallish (1-1/2" to 2") but mostly very nice whole nodules.  For a 2 pound order, I liked receiving more, smaller nodules.  I later ordered 20 pound, and recently 50 pounds of the same Botswana nodules, and they sent me mostly larger ones (2-1/2"-3-1/2") which were also very nice as a whole.  I thought this was an intelligent approach to fulfilling these orders.  The Gem Shop is the only online vendor where I actually make assumptions about quality based on price, and those assumptions are usually true.  That's not to say that every rock they have sent me has been stellar, but the quality has never been embarrassingly bad.  

My only gripe with TGS is their shipping calculator will only allow up to 10 pounds in a MFRB and up to 20 pounds in a LFRB.  In their defense, they do package very well, putting different types of rough in separate brown paper bags, which are taped shut and labeled.  And they add sufficient padding.  But they could still do this and up the weights to at least 15 lbs and 25 lbs respectively.  TGS has also sent me partial refunds for shipping (without me asking) when the shipping calculator overcharged for some reason.  Another nice touch that shows they are trying to run an honest business.  

Tony (catmandewe ) at the Idaho Rock Shop can fit almost 50 pounds of Montana agates in a LFRB.  He needs to teach TGS how to stuff those flat rate boxes.  Add him to my list of vendors who has never disappointed.  I've only bought his Montana agates, but the boxes come stuffed full of mostly whole, mostly nice nodules, and he's even accommodated special requests.  

I'm not trying to hijack this Snakes and Stones thread with a long review of vendors, but I consider this epic mega-thread to be something like a place to publicly chat with lordsorril , and on occasion he treats us with more snakes and stones.  Since lordsorril also lives in a place without a lot of local rock shops, it sounds like he, too, has bought from a lot of different online vendors and is interested in discussing experiences with them.  I can't imagine that anyone who came for snakes and stones will be too put off by some vendor review insights.  

Rockindad

Another T-Rocks gem. I call this boulder-opal-matrix-jasper. It is almost 100% matrix, but there are little veins of jasper almost like the opal veins in boulder opal. If you work a rock very carefully with a Dremel tool, then after an hour you can expose the thin layer of jasper. Which is solid brown. Only $8 a pound for this stuff. Stock up!



Not much jasper on this side....



I bet the other side is better.



No, just more matrix.

I cut a few and the inside looks just like the outside. Tons of beautiful white matrix.

Photo #145


This material seems to have endless amount of names.  
I've seen it called:  Kaleidoscope Agate (no ), Kaleidoscope Jasper (no ), Prism Agate (no ), Kaleidoscope Prism Stone (OK-this name is fine )

Google says this material can be a combination of Agate, Fluorite, Azurite, Malachite, Cuprite, Amethyst, and Chrysocolla.  So...a little bit of everything I guess?

I really like the look of the material, but, it is very challenging to tumble.
Shaped with 220 SiC in a 3lb. barrel with lots of cushioning, then sent to vibe @220/500/1000 AOx, and finished by dry polishing with TRS polish and corn cob media.

One of the best things we can do here is share the good, bad and ugly...

Certainly true.

Photo #146

This photo came out a bit odd. I was hoping the mirror polish on the obsidian would reflect the image of the stones around them, but, I only really caught the quarter and a little bit of the carnelian. In retrospect: I think I put the obsidian pieces too close together and they are scattering the light.  My camera is specific enough to think they look 'dusty' (which is entirely possible).  I should have really redone this photo (set), but, I am pressed for time as my ball python clutches are hatching and I am rehoming (selling) dozens of hatchlings to pre-established vendors.

A while back I mentioned that I have a small incubator I set up to create time lapse videos of ball-python eggs incubating/hatching.  For those interested: linked below is a video of my 2021 clutch #7 incubation/hatching (added some music to make it less tedious--first pip at 2:33).