Sabre52
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Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
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Post by Sabre52 on Feb 4, 2022 13:53:37 GMT -5
During winter low tides you need to check out the beaches above and below the Ventura River mouth in back of the fairgrounds. Any time there is a lot of rock showing after a storm there is lots of good material on those beaches.
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Sabre52
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Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Feb 4, 2022 13:49:39 GMT -5
Wow great cabs and great examples of that material. That first one shows why that used to be called Flower Agate. That one is really outstanding!
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Sabre52
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Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Feb 1, 2022 16:59:14 GMT -5
Wow great finds! That dendritic agate really looks like what an old guy in Nampa, Idaho. Used to sell as Snake River Dendritic agate. MY favorite is the moss-plume in picture #6. Never seen material like before and it's very neat stuff.
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Jan 30, 2022 23:01:19 GMT -5
Yeah, after over 65 years as a rockhound, I finally had to pretty much give it up. It always seems to me that the older I get the faster the days pass and lapidary is one of those super time-consuming hobbies. My two favorite parts of the hobby were sawing open rocks to see the insides and hunting agate and jasper. Cabbing was always lowest on the list, as even with diamond wheels, cabbing friggin takes forever and old hands do not like all the motion cabbing requires. Rock saws are cranky as heck and I just got tired of fiddling with the dang things and having to baby sit the saw in our Texas heat as the drive tends to overheat. That plus the fact every friggin cut takes like 20 minutes. it takes all day to cut a small pile of slabs and it just became too time consuming. Sitting listening to a saw grind away on a hard agate is just friggin boring too.
Then there is the matter of conflicting hobbies. I'm an avid horse lover. I enjoy every minute I spend with horses but they do take a minimum of three hours per day for feeding grooming and cleanup, I swear for every fifty pounds of hay you feed them, they poop out a hundred pounds of horse apples that has to be hauled off. You can't leave them long which eliminates long rockhounding trips. Plus, we love to trail ride which takes hours every week. Just not enough time for rocks left over.
So I guess it's only partly a matter of burn out as I still love to look at other people's rocks and lapidary arts. Still love to hunt when I have time and still like to the squirt rocks in my much-reduced rockpiles but heck, just not enough time in the day anymore. And then being old, every time I ride or stack hay bales or do any other physical stuff I need a gulldarned nap. *L*
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Jan 30, 2022 6:44:21 GMT -5
Now that is a good way to cab and wrap crazy lace. Eye popping beauty!
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Jan 30, 2022 6:41:10 GMT -5
Another very pretty wrap. I'm a big fan of palm fiber myself, or of any fossil material that polishes for that matter. Kowing something was once alive adds interest and gives the stone a story.
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Jan 28, 2022 7:57:26 GMT -5
Wow, tough question. So many after fifty years of hounding. Top 5 sites for me: 1. Hunters Valley, CA for poppy jasper 2. North Cady Mtns in California for moss, plume and geodes. 3. Dryhead Agate in the Pryors, Montana 4. Baker Ranch T-eggs, New Mexico. 5. George West, Texas for agate and pet wood. Another really great site was Big Sandy Creek, Indian Valley, CA for Stone Canyon type jasper and poppy jasper.
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Jan 28, 2022 0:03:44 GMT -5
Tela, I've never heard that material called fern. When it first hit the market, it was called " Palm Agate" or "Palm Jasper". I guess the jasper designation was due to it being mainly opaque. However, once examined it was determined to be a cool form of sagenite. Comes in many colors too and it's a really nice pseudomorph too with lots of silica and generally less pitted than a lot of Mexican sagenite. If you want to see pics of rough you can google "Mexican Palm sagenite"
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Sabre52
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Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
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Post by Sabre52 on Jan 27, 2022 20:26:21 GMT -5
That does look like palm bog with small palm roots running through it. Gem Hill used to have very similar stuff and I've hunted Horse Canyon years ago and there is brown palm root and bog to be found there. Lots of palm in the closed park areas east of Horse canyon too.
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Jan 27, 2022 20:22:02 GMT -5
Yeah I was thinking travertine onyx too.
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
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Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Jan 27, 2022 20:20:00 GMT -5
There are slab braking pliers that go with that heavy duty rock cutter. They work well on homogenous material like picture jasper and obsidian, not so much on true jasper and things like hard agate. The plier jaws have a ridge down the middle that goes on the score line to apply pressure in the correct place.
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Jan 27, 2022 20:09:48 GMT -5
MY EYES! MY EYES! Talk about eye candy overload.
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Sabre52
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Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Jan 27, 2022 8:06:09 GMT -5
I love your wire wraps and the way you get maximum exposure on the cabs. Just an FYI, the "fern" is actually Palm Agate from Mexico which is not a fossil agate but rather a form of sagenite.
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Jan 26, 2022 8:07:38 GMT -5
Boy those are all nice but #3 wow!
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Jan 26, 2022 8:04:07 GMT -5
Wow, I love it when someone rediscovers old dig sites that can still yield beautiful specimens. Wonderful pics!
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Jan 26, 2022 8:00:10 GMT -5
I'm thinking those are Rio Grande agate. Especially of the rough was a cobble. If not a river cobble, then there are resemblances to Sonoran Plume. Years ago, the Study Butte rockshop had a huge pile of Rios to paw through. But then of course, the ancient Rio Grande drainage washed in agate from all over Mexico and the southwest.
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Jan 26, 2022 7:54:11 GMT -5
Wow, one of my favorite materials and what a great shine. Awesome batch of cabs!
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Jan 22, 2022 8:16:07 GMT -5
That Dryhead is very cool. That is the druzy stuff from nodules near the surface of the deposit. Incredible but when I went on a dig there, the waste piles were loaded with huge nodules of that material that was discarded as folks were hunting for the nice fortification agates in the layer about four to six feet down. I was always sorry I did not fill buckets full of those nodules.
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Jan 22, 2022 8:08:05 GMT -5
Wow that is some eye popping OJ!
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Jan 20, 2022 10:12:44 GMT -5
Nice recovery job! Really hard to find a nice piece of St, Johns as I was told they used explosives to mine it years ago. I dug through a big pile of rough many years ago and was only able to find a couple of really nice hunks. Tragic as it is really pretty material. Always kind of reminds me of some of the Canadian River Plume out of north Texas.
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