ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 16, 2016 16:06:46 GMT -5
Both these pics were from 9/1/2016, nobody else in site, however there were several cars in the parking area. I would not take a 2 wheel drive car down there again as I din in 2015. In 2015 the rocks were piled up into 20 foot high "rock dunes" at the tree line, this year, dunes gone. Plenty of beach to explore, miles of public access to get away from other visitors. Yeah, we were in our 2 wheel drive Ford Fusion and it was a little tricky in some places. Did you find anything there that day? We were there on August 3rd 2016. The weather was warmer and it looked like the (local?) frat house was taking things over that day. The beach especially near the parking lot was a total mess with beer bottles and aluminum foil laying around.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 16, 2016 13:58:03 GMT -5
Gratiot River is correct. I have collected on the shore of Lake Superior from Grand Portage MN to Grand Marais MI, plan on going east of Grand Marais to Whitefish Point next summer. Gratiot River has so much variety and there is more than enough for everybody. Have been collecting rocks for over 30 years, just getting into lapidary. I was just there in august. Beach was jam packed with partiers. Sand was filthy with wood ash from beach bonfires. Road to get there a nightmare. Never found anything there (was looking specifically for agate and prehnite.) Gratiot River was my least favorite beach up there. I figured it was Gratiot River because of the mix of brown and grey rocks, and that puny river coming in from the right that just barely makes it to the lake. Try Muskalonge State park while you're going east of Grand Marais. Probably better than Whitefish. Been to both. If your vehicle can handle rough roads, try the Grand Marais Truck Trail west of the state park proper. Agates can still be found there on occasion. The variety of rocks there is astounding and it has some of the best unakite I've ever seen on any beach. At Whitefish Point, your best bet for something decent is to the west of the actual point and museum. The one time I visited there I was not on a collecting trip and only spent moments on the actual beach with rocks. But, there are rocks worth looking at there I'm sure from what I remember.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 16, 2016 13:42:58 GMT -5
Let me know if my test worked, 2 identical pictures were added above, it seems as though not using the add pic function and instead pasting the link directly into the dialog area worked. The pictures show now. When using photo bucket click on the photo you want to link to in Library. When it opens up full size, to the right of the pic are link boxes. Select the second box down. Next to it it says "direct". Left click that link and it will say "copied" in yellow. Now go and paste the address that was copied into the insert image box on the top line, making sure there is only one set of http:// Click the insert image button. Pic will show up in a second or two if not right away. The rock in your photo does not resemble any datolite I've ever seen. Datolite is found in crystalline forms as well as masses of porcelain looking material. The ones up here in Michigan typically have an irregularly shaped and white colored exterior. Some have darker rinds but I've never seen one like yours. Some of them have multi colors inside but most don't. Most have a single colored translucent interior. Did you find it in the U.P. of Michigan? I'm with jugglerguy on the maybe pink prehnite. Excellent find if that's what it turns out to be. Course of action would be get as many usable slabs as you can and cab them to highlight the prehnite features. excellent place for datolite photos and info
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 16, 2016 13:17:26 GMT -5
Somewhere on Lake Superior. I'm guessing near Copper Harbor. Maybe Hunters Point. Maybe Gratiot River instead.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 16, 2016 7:26:28 GMT -5
This is not about the rocks. RTH needs to do something about the photo problem. Everybody has trouble posting photos. RTH...fix it. The problem is not with RTH and not everybody has problems posting photos. If you pay attention when the insert image dialog box opens after you click on the insert image icon you will see that it comes up with http:// already there in the address box. If you copied your image address in it's entirety from where it is hosted and then enter it in without first removing the http:// from the dialog box, the actual address trying to be found is invalid. The web and browsers are not meant to resolve an address that is entered incorrectly. So when you post a picture addy without first removing the http:// that RTH put in there for you, it comes out looking like this address.com which is not a valid way of posting a web address. Also, you can easily put a picture from any site on here by simply right clicking the picture and copying the save image address by clicking on that link. Then once again, make sure that the extra set of http:// is removed before pasting the saved addy in. In my first example I will do it wrong Notice, no picture. Now, the same picture done right It appears as though jamest1961 is uploading his pictures to dropbox which is really a file sharing service to which one must belong. Also, I don't think that photos uploaded/available in dropbox are actually linkable.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 15, 2016 17:44:22 GMT -5
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 15, 2016 17:43:35 GMT -5
Is the best course of action progressive grinding/polishing on a flat lap? Pictures don't show.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 13, 2016 19:40:10 GMT -5
Yes. I will agree. Some people think Ohio has rocks, they need to show me where. From the Dayton area, Bellbrook known for its magnetic springs, Xenia 5 miles away is the home of Tuecomsha. Flint all over but only solid colors, nothing like flint ridge. Ohio is full of granite, geodes ( solid and no color, yet) and flint but only in some areas. Also, geodes don't tumble good, granite... Nothing special about that. Only flint ridge, flint is again something special. We have a top notch college football team(Buckeyes) good pro baseball team along with ...a good place to be. But...very few good rocks. forum.rocktumblinghobby.com/thread/41579Would have been nice to see them. The photos don't show. He might have stumbled onto the only glacial moraine in Ohio whose leading edge had a load of agate. I have never heard of what he finds being found there. Also, I still wouldn't make agate my first choice of mineral to search for in Ohio by any means.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 13, 2016 19:03:06 GMT -5
Hand polishing Petosky stones for 8 hours at a time! I think hubby needs a hobby. Rock tumbling perhaps? Darryl. That is his hobby silly. Poor guy used to work hard 10 and 12 hours a day before he retired. Now he's bored enough to polish rocks. Seriously though, he never does it for 8 hours straight though. He might sit and polish for a half hour here and an hour there. Some rocks only take a little work because they're small and others take longer because they need more work or whatever. Hand polishing a petoskey is surprisingly easy due to the relative softness of the rock. It really doesn't take too much to smooth down the rough edges left by the sander using the 180 grit by hand so most of the work isn't too bad. The tedious part is the finer grits and making sure the scratches are all gone. Living where we do here in Michigan we naturally have access to mostly Petoskey stones. It's 90 percent of what we find. They don't tumble very well because they're so soft so to do it right they all need hand polished at some point. The other 10 percent of what we find is 5 percent septarian nodules and 5 percent other stuff ranging from agate to native copper. Also, he typically doesn't waste much time on small petoskeys unless they are really outstanding looking in the polyps, preferring to polish larger "palm stones" and paperweights. Ironically, the 5 percent septarians we find are almost the exact same hardness as the petoskeys and the same hand polishing is required. Fortunately, we try and never keep too much unakite on our collecting trips, and we got over the "pretty colored rock syndrome" a long time ago, preferring to keep our eyes open for what we are there to collect be it agate, petoskey or whatever. Also, for the 5 percent of rocks that are of something harder in our stash, he has built an awesome 6 wheel 6 inch cabbing machine that we will be using for the harder stuff when we get around to it this winter. Besides, if he didn't take the time to hand polish these beautiful rocks, they would just sit there in a pile and keep building up, not doing anyone any good. Our choices are A. Keep the raw rough until we die, passing it on in our estate sale after we die. B. Sell the rough stones to another vendor who will double his money like we would have if we polished them ourselves instead. C. Polish them up, set them out by the road for sale, and use the proceeds to fund more hounding. Half the fun of this hobby is the hounding part and we have no plans on not looking for more. The choice is clear. Polish and sell them puppies.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 12, 2016 8:18:26 GMT -5
Nice petoskeys! I always wanted to hound some , is it true the best way to polish petoskeys is by hand? Hubby grinds them to the rough shape he wants on his belt sander using 80 grit. Then he switches to 180 wet dry used dry and by hand, then he switches to 220, then he goes to 600 all by hand. Then he'll shorten things up by going directly from 600 grit (after rinsing it off of course) to his buffing wheel and some white compound.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 11, 2016 14:17:56 GMT -5
Well, I ended up polishing it. Came out so so.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 10, 2016 21:09:22 GMT -5
The five pieces circled in red with no x mark on them are all cut from one awesome almost perfect 6 inch by 3 inch stone. I forgot to x mark the light colored stone sticking into the red at the top.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 10, 2016 20:57:37 GMT -5
Nice job and lots of work. He spends probably 2 to 8 hours to polish one Petoskey depending on size and shape. Hardly worth the $10.00 to $40.00 it might bring at retail if we're lucky. But at least we have the fun of traveling to find them and it recoups some of the gas spent on the rockhounding trips.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 10, 2016 20:54:23 GMT -5
We lucked into a really great spot just before it got too cold around there. Can't wait to return there in the spring after ice out. There is supposed to be Michigan Puddingstone there too but haven't found any yet.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 10, 2016 20:50:28 GMT -5
My dad was at Canton, Ohio at a gun show. Everyone knows I polish rocks. So one of his friends was cleaning out the barn and his daughter collected rocks, back in the 50's. So I got the rocks. What I paid for the rocks was crazy so I got them. That cost me nothing. Small rocks to larger ones but no names or state names. Just a bunch of rocks in cardboard boxes, falling apart. Spider webs, old dead bugs you name it. He said she traveled around the US. Attached are some pics and since I know my rocks(HA) I will post individual pics. Looks like you really SCORED!!!! Can't wait to see what you got individually.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 10, 2016 17:01:57 GMT -5
Some of our summers haul of Petoskey stones and septarian nodules that my hubby has been busy shining up. We've been thinking about opening a stand up out in front of our rural home and offering these as palm stones and paperweights along with some jewelry we made. He has a mess of rocks to get done before we can do it though. Seems like he's off to a good start and has the rest of the fall and winter to finish them up.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 10, 2016 16:35:44 GMT -5
But, all that in a nutshell still only gives you one good rock to tumble and a small area of the state. But....in the end I still love Ohio. All of what is left of my family still lives in the Toledo area. Ohio is a great place for a summer drive, a great place to fish, the people are fairly friendly and WAY better drivers than people up here in Michigan. I graduated from a high school in Sylvania Ohio, a suburb of Toledo. I graduated from a college in Ohio. I will always consider myself an Ohioan. The history of the area where I grew up is very interesting, what with the canal era, the war of 1812, the American Indian tribes that once lived there and the great lakes port that it is. I have many awesome memories about Ohio, but, I could never find anything there except flint, iron pyrite, and fossils.
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 10, 2016 13:49:49 GMT -5
Tommy and ziggy , Did you gather any Bryce agate? Agate is found on the Hurricane Cliffs from Cedar City all the way to Beaver. Car was already full of rough from other places on that trip
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 10, 2016 8:50:20 GMT -5
Pat mentioned hers was black so I thought I would show an example of a different color to show the variety they come in. I have even seen iron ones from hitting iron rich termite mounds in Australia. I can move the pic if you would like. No. Don't remove it. Maybe someone else has some more examples of other kinds. I'm thrilled you read my post and contributed to the thread so spectacularly
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ziggy
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 483
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Post by ziggy on Oct 9, 2016 23:52:59 GMT -5
This is my fulgurite. The lightening hit some jasper. 143 by James Sloane, on Flickr Wow, that is fantastic! Talk about a photo bomb in my thread. You are the master
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