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Post by puppie96 on Jun 28, 2005 0:03:11 GMT -5
First, I recall a thread about hopelessness with almandine garnets, so I took this picture.... These had been through everything up to prepolish (I believe!) and had been put aside, I found them and threw them in the vibe prepolish with the other stuff and finished them. So for me, at least, they didn't crumble into sand. This next one is a backyard rock (Baltimore area) that started out a near sphere about the side of a tennis ball. I was trying to preserve the shape and send back to the property owner -- who happens to like crystal balls. This one is a rock ID question. Those gray ones looked possibly interesting because of the strata and inclusions. After several tries this is the best polish I've gotten, and they actually do have some shine though not mirror finish like the others. Curious what anyone thinks they might be. At the top of the pic, theres a greenish rock that's something else, and I am puzzled about it as well. Thanks!
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Post by Alice on Jun 28, 2005 6:05:36 GMT -5
great job on those garnets Pup! Makes me want to try them again. The Hopeless garnets I had were seam Garnets... not the same ones that you have.
Sorry, can't help you on ID-ing them. But in the last picture, on the right (Colorful one) looks a lot like some rocks hubby brought over from Iraq.
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Post by americanbulldogsnj on Jun 28, 2005 6:36:27 GMT -5
beautiful garnets! I'll have to remember to get "Almondine" garnets instead of the glossular and seam garnets. The other stuff I don't know but they all look great! Marian
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Post by Cher on Jun 28, 2005 7:37:45 GMT -5
Puppie your garnets are gorgeous, they came out beautiful. Sorry I can't help you with the id either. I found a gray rock like that with a white band in Lake Superior so tossed it in the barrel. It came out nice and smooth but did not take a good polish. Can't imagine having a rock the size of a tennis ball banging around in a barrel, did it beat the stuffing out of the other rocks in there?
Cher
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Post by puppie96 on Jun 28, 2005 9:38:28 GMT -5
Thank you everybody. I haven't tried any other type of garnet except for one that I found in a creek and it took forever to get the matrix off. These garnets didn't have much matrix. They are small but pretty. The bright one with stripes is a piece of prairie agate I got from the rockshed -- there are a few in this batch. Later on last night I was looking in an old R&M guidebook and got to thinking the gray might be a shale?? The pink rocks might be mozarkite. Or maybe not. As long as you can stuff it through the hole in the top you can do any size rock in the lot-o-tumbler and it didn't harm the others at all. I've got some others nearly this big in prepolish right now in a 6-lb lortone barrel and the other rocks have survived.
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rollingstone
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since July 2009
Posts: 236
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Post by rollingstone on Jun 28, 2005 9:57:28 GMT -5
Those garnets are amazing. Same for the two really colourful rocks in the upper right of the last photo. Can't really help with the rock ID either, except I don't think it is shale. Shale is so crumbly I can't imagine it holding together in a tumbler, and even if it did I'm pretty sure it would come out very chipped. Great shine on the Fred Flintstone tennis ball!
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stefan
Cave Dweller
Member since January 2005
Posts: 14,113
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Post by stefan on Jun 28, 2005 10:05:46 GMT -5
I'm thinking that the grey could be a flint? Shale or slate probably would break down in the tumbler!
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Post by hermatite on Jun 28, 2005 10:32:09 GMT -5
I'm loving the garnets. The grey looks, to me, like the granite I have in my yard.
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chassroc
Cave Dweller
Rocks are abundant when you have rocktumblinghobby pals
Member since January 2005
Posts: 3,586
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Post by chassroc on Jun 28, 2005 16:28:35 GMT -5
Puppie, That Garnets are amazing...I am about to try some. We found a few on our own while looking for sapphires...While looking for sapphires we met a women who lived by ruby creek(or lake or reservoir); she showed us some garnets she found walking around Ruby Reservoir. We remarked on how nice and she gave them to us (Aren't people nice and isn't it great to be alive!)..They are pretty fragmented, though, still they are 1/2 inch or so in diameter!...we drove down by the reservoir but with the wet roads we didn't want to explore uncharted terratory. I did find one stone embedded with 20 or 30 really really tiny garnets(1/16th inch). It's a nice souvineer of the area for me. csroc
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Post by puppie96 on Jun 28, 2005 23:34:07 GMT -5
Hi -- Wow, these are great responses! Everybody knows something different and it is all fascinating. Now to manage to digest it all and answer. csroc, these garnets were super easy. I don't remember offhand where I bought them, but I googled until I found somebody selling almandine garnet, and it wasn't too expensive. They had very little matrix and finished fast, and were small, so really, I'm not too surprised that they ground into oblivion for other people putting them in a barrel with other rocks. The garnet I found in the creek took forever. I want to go to Ruby Res. now that I hear your story. I've got some rocks speckled with tiny garnets from South Dakota last summer -- located the site with the rocktrails book, not too far from Shawn.
Upper right last photo: the top one is a local rock as far as I recall, the striped one below came from rockshed, prairie agate and jasper that he sells. Definitely some nice stuff in there.
The gray rock: I always thought that slate split into sheets and that shale was much the same way. I looked in a very old rock book, and on its "shales" page there was a picture of something that looked somewhat like this and some of the description sounded right. But, this rock actually did polish -- much more apparent in real life -- and I wouldn't have thought shale would polish. I just don't know.
Stefan, it isn't flint. We've got tons of that around here, and it is very different. The main thing with flint is that if it breaks it's glassy and has sharp edges and conchoidal fractures. This rock isn't that hard or naturally sharp.
Herm, not granite either. I'm pretty sure I know granite and this rock would be much more fine grained and uniformly textured than any granite I've seen, plus, granite polishes beautifully (just check out a cemetery!)
I really think that this gray is some sort of very ordinary rock, sometimes those are the hardest to ID.
thanks, pup
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Post by puppie96 on Jun 28, 2005 23:41:25 GMT -5
The ones I am really curious about: in the first post, second photo, the rock in the center is an elongated one in shades of gray and black mainly, with perfectly parallel stripes around it, and several black lines that are inclusions of some sort. What's up with this rock, anybody? I thought for a while it might be pet wood, or maybe that the black lines are some kind of plant fossil.
The other mystery is the greenish rock above the grays. This one has a funny texture and some sheen in it, don't know quite how to describe but sort of a grain.
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