Montana agates & pet wood

I figure that someone who isn't familiar with whatever type of rocks I am posting might enjoy seeing a whole bunch of them.  

The sad thing about the MMAs is that only a handful those rocks will produce fracture free slabs.

Chopping them in half was the easy part.  Now I have to either glue them to pieces of wood so I can run then through a slab saw, or use a rip fence on my big trim saw and hand slab them.  Either way, the real work lies ahead.  

The 6th picture is awesome! The brightly colored water lines framed by those cool dendritic shapes in the surrounding transparent areas are fantastic!

Montana agates are easily one of my favorite rocks and those photos are excellent examples of why I love it.

Some really neat material thanks for sharing

Please excuse my heavy breathing. I just get excited when I see so much of my favorite rock. That's some great stuff

I may be your age and retired before I have the patience to cab more than a few of these.  I like large cabs, and large, low dome Montana moss agates cabs are a real test of my patience.  I am working on one right now that is about 70mm x 30mm x 5mm.  So far I've spent at 45 minutes on the 80 wheel, at least a half hour on the 220 hard wheel, and at least a half hour on the 280 resin wheel.  I finally got it smoothed out enough to notice some lingering 80 grit scratches, so now I'm going back to the 220 wheel.  I know how tough it is to get scratched out of the top of the dome, so I stopped early on the 80 grit and finished the dome on the 220 hard wheel.  Apparently that wasn't enough, or perhaps what I am seeing are 220 grit scratches.  Either way, I need to stop torturing myself with large cabs of this material.  Or I need to finish them like you -- in a vibe tumbler.     

I love that on too.  I have cut similar ones in the past.  The white waterlines appear to be opal.  Every similar one that I have slabbed has broken in half at the border between the water level part and the surround clear agate.  I will probably take one slab from that rock, but if it breaks in the same spot and all the others like it, it will be a good candidate for face polishing.  

Holajonathan, large flat or domed montana works very well in my UV-18 vibe.

I have vibe tumbled Montana agate flats with great success.  They get incredibly shiny in a vibe tumbler. 

For cabs I prefer at least a slight dome.  I have tried vibe finishing domed Montana agate cabs.  I ground the dome on the 80 and 220 grit hard wheels and did a little smoothing with a 140 grit resin wheel before tossing them in the Lot-O tumbler.  It took two runs (about 2-1/2 days each) through 220 grit SiC to remove the scratches from the Montana agate cabs.

Although the Lot-O does not alter the shape nearly as much a rotary tumbler, it does round off sharp edges to an extent.   After five days in silicon carbide the girdle was quiet round.  I generally like a well defined girdle line, especially on thin low dome cabs. 

I have been able to retain a sharper girdle line by spending a lot more time on the 140 and 280 grit resin wheels before putting Montana cabs in the Lot-O tumbler.  That way I only have to run them 2 days in 220 grit SiC.  But by the time I've worked out almost all the scratches on the 280 resin wheel, most of the work is done, and finishing them in the vibe tumbler is not a huge time saver.  

I will continue to experiment with this.  Do you have any photos of large flat Montana agates that you tumble finished?