My best rock hunting find ever happened yesterday

Yesterday's load and some closer in's of unique textures. Might not be the finest but the variety and quality formation makes it interesting. Headed back tomorrow, maybe this time I will spread out and find material further away that is different.












Note 10 inch long splinter running with grain on long piece running left to right.
weird rock structure...just a tap of the hammer caused it !

Forget the tumbling Jim - those would make some nice cabs - beautiful colors.

Patty

Thanks Edward

Why can't us southerners just walk out onto a desert and find petrified wood forests laying on the ground where they were when they were alive right out in the open ? Oh no, over here the old ocean washes the trees into recently well forested camouflaged giant piles along along complex shorelines and over time creeks/rivers wash them back out. Creek/river erosion can flow in any direction and is complicated and covers vast amount of lands that is covered with briars and poison Ivy and nasty critters. Nothing is easy here.

Large sedimentary deposits covering miles of forested land with desirable rocks mixed in their contents makes for difficult collecting.

Even along the Rio in south Texas higher elevation limestone exposures were almost always peppered with fine local pet wood. The Rio Grande agate/jasper/non-local wood cobbles were washed down from Mexico and about 4 states along with megatons of volcanic ash to form thick layers of caliche. Some deposited caliche had unattractive local rocks/cobbles, some had the fine imported agates from the upstream lava/basalt fields. Figuring out where the elusive imported agate bearing caliche was deposited was the trick.

Where the Suwannee River cut thru the occasional 80 to 120 foot elevation hills is where you would find coral. The fossil coral formed at the 90 to 110 foot elevation, when the river eroded the tall hill the coral came tumbling down and fell into the river for us to collect. Once you understand that you can look at a topo map and go straight to the coral everytime. Otherwise it is all covered with forest or sand.

IMO, the Rio, south Alabama and the Suwannee sedimentation events happened quickly by huge quantities of deep water carrying boulders, soil, trees and ash. Especially the mass depositions of ash forming thick caliche at the end of the Rio Grande because so many of those upstream agates had to be carved out of hard upstream basalt by tremendous forces. The south stretch of the Rio is an insane rock hunt due to the variety of agates woods jaspers and cherts that all seem rounded by extreme forces. Most of the imported Rio cobbles have half-moon surface fractures related to high speed surface impacts that must be tumbled or ground off. Those half-moon fractures are rarely caused by tumbling down a river at slow velocities in cushioning water.

Two worlds apart Ed. A big country with totally diverse environments no doubt. Add the other types of environments and it is totally diverse. Curious if the wood on the Show Low lot was attractive material. Even though we are covered with vegetation the geology under the vegetation is diverse making creeks, lakes and rivers about the only exposures to the deeper geological structure. Those with fears could experience agoraphobia in open deserts and claustrophobia in thick forests lol.

I drove to and stayed in Mclaughlin near Needles Cali for 3 weeks. Drove around and hiked the very open Mojave. In driving back I hit eastern Texas and got motion sickness when driving into the thick forests. For a few days the green foliage and thick vegetation was overwhelming.

Dig a 5 to 40 feet hole to limestone bedrock over a 300 mile track from Valdosta to Tampa and you are likely to hit fossilized coral. As it is not 1% of 1% is exposed by rivers and is the only places I get to collect coral. With so little of it exposed it is difficult to know just how pretty some of it may really be. Who knows, it may be the largest expanse of a single type fossil in the entire country. There are probably large expanses of single fossil species out west - massive pet wood forest or coral reef, whatever. Just saying that large flat conditions can be habitats for large fossilizations.

Funny thought, a back hoe and a trailer mounted rock crusher could make petrified wood gravel easily on a small budget. The chunks break into small hard pieces easily. Buy or lease an acre of the wood rich land and you would have enough wood to make mucho attractive landscape gravel due to the mix of colors and it's wood like appearance. Find a farmer that wants a pond... Bet you could sell all you produced at a high price.

This section bought home yesterday reveals fast growth at a 1/4" per annual ring. Solid and dense.

Congrats! I would say say something along the lines of what a lucky find but I know luck had nothing to do with it.🤣 I’m glad you shared pics of your gold mine here. I can’t imagine how exciting your find must be! To say they are gorgeous, amazing, etc etc still can’t do them justice…so I’ll simply say, wowwwww and continue to drool!🤣🤣🤣

Some gorgeous wood there, jamesp . Are you sure you didn't head west to get that? LOL

Leave it to you to get right on that and start tumbling. Were it lazy me, it would sit a while and age before I got around to it!

If out west I would have had to beg you for a visit ! Thanks for the compliment but it ain't as nice as most west wood IMO. Hey, it's all I got over here !

I even did some tumbling volume and weight reductions when using two larger 8" diameter barrels at higher speed with the super coarse SiC. I usually use the 6" barrels... After a week of hard tumbling the volume reduced 50% but the weight only reduced 25%. I know this because I have 4 staged reduced sized 8"(and 6") barrels 22,18,14 and 12 pounds that I dump the reduced load into(instead of adding more rock). The sharp edges rounded fast and had a big effect on decreasing the volume, not so much on the decreasing the weight.

Started with 4-22 pound barrels filled, 2 started last week and two started today. I'll keep each batch separated based on where they were collected.

You ain't lazy.