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Post by Bob on Aug 28, 2020 15:14:58 GMT -5
Good grief, the photos are in my Cloudinary website account! They just aren't getting through to this forum. Will print out instructions all over again, and doublecheck everything again.
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Post by Bob on Aug 28, 2020 15:31:35 GMT -5
Double checked everything, all okay, and here is another attempt.
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Post by rockjunquie on Aug 28, 2020 15:47:46 GMT -5
Double checked everything, all okay, and here is another attempt. I'm tagging Tommy for you to get you someone who can help. Sorry for your troubles. I do know that cloudinary can be tough to set up, but once it's set up it works really well with this forum whereas others have not worked out so well.
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lordsorril
freely admits to licking rocks
Member since April 2020
Posts: 766
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Post by lordsorril on Aug 31, 2020 11:42:09 GMT -5
Hey Bob, I'd love to see your photos. I use Imgur.com. You can create a free account and then upload your images to your personal account, and then link to them directly.
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Post by Peruano on Aug 31, 2020 13:24:42 GMT -5
I'm sure you will be pleased with the Cerro Pedernal material from Northern New Mexico. It does shine up nicely. Just for others, Pedernal chert was widely if not universally used by the Ancient Pueblo Indians for their arrows and tools. Its was widely traded and even transported as rough to distant villages so the fabrication processes could occur around the homesites. I have successfully picked up smaller tumbling sized pieces by following the edges of roads where the road grader was flaking off desirable pieces of chert.
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Post by Bob on Aug 31, 2020 13:35:13 GMT -5
Peruano, just last night I washed the Cerro Pedernal material and took a few photos. Some has started rough grind. It's certainly beautiful and different I think than any material I've ever found on this continent. I'm thinking about heading back out there when the weather turns cool. I got pretty far up there, and my family was afraid at times of the orientation of my 4Runner and I even damaged the body a little. It would take me 12 hours to drive there directly from my house. I might instead fly to Santa Fe and rent a SUV and do it that way to save over 2 days of boring driving. A rockhounding friend wants to come with me.
lorrsorril, I just don't have time to create a website and then upload photos to it just have a place from which I can then after post photos to a forum. If I was retired, I would have time, but I'm not yet.
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Post by Peruano on Aug 31, 2020 20:44:47 GMT -5
Forest Road 100 is a quite passable road for the first 7 to 10 miles and might get dicey further in if it rains or snows. There is much waste to this material because of imperfections but when you find solid material it's spectacular. Let me know if you want more encouragement. Since one of Georgia Okeefe's favorite mountains was Cerro Pedernal, I think of it as a two star material (Pueblo Indians and Okeefe focused). '
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Post by Bob on Aug 31, 2020 21:58:45 GMT -5
The aboriginal connection matters to me also. I tumble a lot of chert which together with Vanport chert from OH and red coral from FL was some of the most valued trading "money". It's found in Spiro Mounds in OK, Cahokia Mounds in IL, and has been found all the way to MA.
I can't wait to get into this material. I have some pieces that are in 10-30 lb range. Some have areas like sunsets. Unlike the western Oklahoma chert, which is almost entirely opaque with uncommon translucent areas, this is just the opposite. I saw images of that Cerro in her museum gift shop in Abiquiu.
Do you want to go also when I return? How far away are you?
Also found some odd red/orange jasper near SW corner of the Lake. Didn't look like much in the field, but a close cleaning look shows some really pretty patterns. Just started some in rough grind. Looks brittle.
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Fossilman
Cave Dweller
Member since January 2009
Posts: 20,676
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Post by Fossilman on Sept 1, 2020 9:35:43 GMT -5
howdy and welcome!
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Post by Bob on Sept 1, 2020 11:27:47 GMT -5
Peruano, I read a few scientific papers on geology in central N Mex this week. Apparently what we call Pedernal chert is really chalcedony. I must admit in no way does it look like chert or feel like chert, so I'm not surprised. But once a name gets used a lot, it's hard to correct. I also learned pedernal is Spanish for flint.
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Post by Bob on Sept 16, 2020 14:13:26 GMT -5
"...There is much waste to this material because of imperfections but when you find solid material it's spectacular. Let me know if you want more encouragement..." I have some that has now completed 2 weeks rough grind. Agree 100% with what you wrote. The patterns and unique colors in this light usually whitish base rock is a whole new type of tumbling material for me. Am kind of excited about it. Have some very solid pieces now too big even for my 40 lb barrel. Am going to wait and see how small pieces come out before I cleave these large ones. Then I will make a few that are going to be large grapefruit size more or less. Was back there a week ago and got much more picky about avoiding rocks with pitted areas. After taking a lot more time on the ground really looking hard at this material, I'm convinced most of the gorgeous reddish colors are only skin deep and most of it might tumble off. Did find some pieces though 1/2" or less thick that had the red all the way through. This makes me think exposure to sun or rain is what colors this stuff maybe. And more rocks are opaque than translucent. Also went to the San Pedro Mtns to the W and found some more, as was predicted in the geology papers, but the primary surface color was butterscotch or bright yellow. About died when I found it because seeing a yellow rock on the ground was so startling to me. But alas, it also seems to be a surface only discoloration maybe only 1-2mm deep. However, much of the base rock by San Pedro was a gemmy translucent and few opaque. Damaged my 4Runner on both trips. I get a little enthusiastic at times. First one on Pedernal dented in right rear quarter panel a little. Second on near San Pedro Mtn dislodged left end of bumper where it almost meets the wheel wheel--was able to fix that one myself. Trucks are made to be used, not pampered. Next time I want to explore other side of San Pedros heading in eastward from between La Jara and Regina. Ever been in there? One of my daughters want to do that with me the day after we climb to the top of Pedernal from FR100 rather than driving partway up.
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Post by Peruano on Sept 16, 2020 20:11:29 GMT -5
Indeed there is some confusion about this material. The base material is pinkish, salmon, or brownish, but as you pointed out it appears to oxidize or metamorphose into the blacks and reds. I specifically select the rocks that show reds, and blacks as bands on the exterior of the specimens. One of my first creations with this stuff was a set of ear rings with a slender piece of pink, and a black tip. They came off look for all the world like feathers. tumbling thin shards in the vibratory unit can result in some unique free form specimens for pendants. Around San Pedro, there are large deposits of obsidian (also quite commonly used for tools by the ancient pueblos). I just finished polishing a batch of obsidian nodules (black and some with light clear streaks). The guide books tend to talk about agate between Abquiu and Cuba and indeed it appears to be a distinct material from the supposed distinct layer of Pedernal Chert. I seem to recall that folks heat treat the Pedernal Chert to produce brighter colors.
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Post by Bob on Sept 17, 2020 10:56:00 GMT -5
I found 2-3 small pieces of obsidian on some roadsides on east side of San Pedros, barely bigger than a quarter.
"between Abiquiu and Cuba" is a huge area that would take a lifetime to explore! Did you really mean some book mentions it that way? As of yet, I've not seen agate in the area.
One idea I've had is to lay out some thin pieces on my roof or somewhere, photograph, and see if a year later the color has changed. If this were to work, the tumbling implications are interesting. One could do rough grind to get the rocks all shaped, maybe go further to 600, then lay them out, have even more of that pretty fire color occur, then finish in polish.
I tried hard to find some mostly blacks w/o bad pitting or porous areas. Didn't have very good luck, but my rockhounding partner found one pretty good one. I'm going to try to upload his photo for you next.
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Post by Bob on Sept 17, 2020 10:57:50 GMT -5
Here's the photo he sent me of some he has cleaned up. The one on the R is the one I'm talking about. Wish I had found a black one like that.
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Post by Peruano on Sept 17, 2020 16:00:10 GMT -5
The demarcation between calling this material chert as opposed to agate is a nebulous one. As to calling it chalcedony I'd say all toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads. Chalcedony is for me the general term for all of the micro and cryptochrystaline quartz family. From some source I recall that cherts tend to be deposited in layers (marine) and flints tend to be in nodules. Back to the subject. Rock Hounding New Mexico lists agates at and near Abiquiu Dam, near Coyote, and near Gallina. The stuff near the dam tends to be black and reds and potentially different but not markedly so from the weathered stuff on Pedernal Peak. The material from the Coyote road is similar to that at and south of Youngsville, but the geologists seem to identify a specific layer on Pedernal Peak as the chert so important in tool making and where the ancient quarries were. I've been told by anthropology types that the pueblos loved the stuff so much that they carried the rough from Pedernal south at least as far as Bernalillo so they could work at home (pandemic restriction?). In short I think some of the material being called agate is really the same as Pedernal chert. As to obsidion, there are major sources in the Jemez and near Cochiti but others closer to the area we are talking about.
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Post by Bob on Sept 17, 2020 22:59:28 GMT -5
I work with a lot of chert. Pedernales in no way resembles any chert to me. That why I dug into the scientific literature the very night after collecting there in early August. I was expecting chert from some anecdotal rockhounding notes, yet I could find nothing there that looked like chert, so I was suspicious. One geology paper says it's clearly chalcedony, then mentions it will after that warning be called chert in the rest of the paper because so many publications have referred to "Pedernal chert" that it's a known misnomer that has taken as a name. Like green tree agate misnomer I guess. It needs banding to be an agate I think. Regardless of what a geologist, which I am most definitely not, would determine it to be, I love it and am excited about it!
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Tommy
Administrator
Member since January 2013
Posts: 12,647
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Post by Tommy on Sept 18, 2020 9:31:46 GMT -5
I'd love to see your photos. I use Imgur.com. You can create a free account and then upload your images to your personal account, and then link to them directly. Just a word of caution about Imgur - among other things their terms of service state as follows: It's all fine and good while it continues to work but it's not prudent for us to encourage hosting on Imgur when they are clearly against it and could literally pull the plug and crash all of your photos at any moment. None of us thought Photobucket could or would do such a thing but they did it and we are still dealing with the thousands of broken images they created several years later.
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Post by TheRock on Sept 21, 2020 18:30:39 GMT -5
Welcome from sw/Michigan .
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Post by Bob on Sept 22, 2020 10:03:43 GMT -5
Thanks for all the contacts, comments and welcomes. I feel like I'm making new friends or fellow addicts here and it's fun.
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Post by Starguy on Sept 22, 2020 12:27:52 GMT -5
Hi Bob Welcome to RTH. Cloudinary works good once you get it set up. I will never forgive Photobucket for what they did to everyone’s photos.
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