elementary
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Post by elementary on Jul 7, 2011 11:37:48 GMT -5
Hey all,
The box came in while I was out of town for the holiday. I opened it last night and have gone partially through it. I will have it out Saturday or Monday.
Thanks!
Lowell
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elementary
fully equipped rock polisher
Member since February 2006
Posts: 1,077
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Post by elementary on Jul 2, 2011 12:30:15 GMT -5
Oh, Mel, and what the heck is a 'mice' slab - as you call the Mariposite? It sounds so interesting!
....I'll be disappointed if it's only your giant mitts hitting the wrong keys. ;D
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elementary
fully equipped rock polisher
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Post by elementary on Jul 2, 2011 12:25:33 GMT -5
Hey Mel,
Glad the stuff came through okay. I forgot to add a tracking number.
Okay, you verified the Brazilian carnelien (yeah! I picked up a bunch at that Harris house estate sale two years ago)
The purple comes from a single hole at Kramer's Junction aka Beacher's Corner, aka Four Corners, CA (looks like one slab broke in transit). I showed it to a dealer who says the coloring evidently comes from Lithium - which was interesting. Haven't checked beyond that. Only two people know where this pit is - and after our Shady Mesa conversation you can understand why I'm not jumping up and down to share the site.
The t-egg is Dugway. I've busted a couple open and all have been incredible with that pale blue agate and druzy interior. This also came from the Harris house. He had a big bin filled with material that looked like it had come from the surface - completely weathered. It had to be collected a long time ago. Have fun cutting it.
The nodule like things you like also came from the Harris house, and consensus is they are 'coprolites' from Utah. They came from a huge bin of material from that area. Whether they are true coprolite are have christened that from rockhounds, I cannot say. Some have incredible colors and patterns (not the banded type) inside. If you want a couple more, Mel, I've got a 5 gallon 2/3s full of them (and the brazilian I have full bucket of them).
The sagenite material came from Joel Hauser's house (finder of the Hauser Geode Beds back in the late 1930's.) It was unlabeled, but I compared it to a picture from (if I remember right) Agateswithinclusions.com and it looked a lot like the McDermitt stuff. I got it when I set up a club field trip to visit Mr. Hauser's widow who lives in my hometown. My club had several hours to roam the backyard and collect from the piles of material back there. I know the family as my father had worked for Mr. Hauser and my brother's godmother married one of his sons, so I've had several chances to dig into the family's rockpile and see their personal museum. They are a great and generous family.
Mel, the banded material in the bag I have a hunch is mid to low grade Mozambique agates. It came from another collector who has a large amount of african material in his backyard he got from a dealer. I'm hoping your AGATES by Zenz book can provide a sample to compare it to. The only other reference source is Dwarves' Earth Treasures. It is said the Mozambique stuff can look like Bots on the outside but has waterline agate much more often, and the reds/pinks lend it to the nickname 'Rose Agate'. I also believe the dealer (Wolfe who contributes to teh agate index) also said Mozambique, but it was a busy time and I could have got my names crossed.
I have to apologize. I left out something I've seen as 'Cloud Plume' from the North Cady's. We found the dig site a couple years ago, and I was so taken I grabbed a couple shoe-boxes of the stuff. Next package to you will have it.
Thanks again for supporting my class so much. It tickles me that I can add new things to your horde.
Watch out for those hornets!
Lowell
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elementary
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Post by elementary on Jun 29, 2011 23:59:26 GMT -5
"Get stung, stuck or bitten by something almost on a daily basis"
Sounds like my classroom...
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elementary
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Post by elementary on Jun 26, 2011 14:47:59 GMT -5
Hey all, My family is going to June Lake the first week of August. Now I love camping and hiking, but add rockhunting to that list and I'm in heaven. I've never been to this area of Ca/Nv and I looked it up and it's about 100 miles from Coaldale NV, a center of huntin' for a long time. I have several books for that area, but some date back to the 1950's and I know the road conditions have changed. Anyone have any easy huntin' sites in the Coaldale region I might be able to roam and enjoy? I am planning on hitting the Sump to take some photos as well. You can see this location on the Dzrtgrls website: dzrtgrls.com/queen_obsidian_sump/queen_obsidian_sump.htmlIf you haven't been to this website, it's a killer place to browse to see what southern california has to offer in the desert for hiking, old mining camps, indian pictographs, and rockhounding. Anyways, any advice would be appreciated. Lowell
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elementary
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Post by elementary on Jun 24, 2011 21:12:22 GMT -5
Okay - I like the shrinkwood, but these are my favorite slabs you've cut so far.
I really like the agate (as you mentioned) that's come in between the sections.
Lowell
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elementary
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Post by elementary on Jun 24, 2011 10:08:32 GMT -5
Either you are real good at understanding me or I give really good directions. Thanks! Those are the ones I'm curious about. Lowell
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elementary
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Post by elementary on Jun 23, 2011 20:27:45 GMT -5
Oh, that looks like a lot of fun to go through.
Hey - a favor if you're up to it.
Looks like you have all sorts of goodies there. I saw your other post. Is there any way you can do a couple more closeups? I'd love to get a better look at a couple of your treasures.
Specifically,
The dark black agate in the back right The large bluish agate front left with the light chocolate milk colored exterior. The black and white layered agate in in the back near the tray. and Right behind that black and white layered agate is an interesting in color and pattern.
I'd love to get a closer look at those!!!!
Puhlease! You got a wonderful assortment there!
Lowell
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elementary
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Member since February 2006
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Post by elementary on Jun 18, 2011 20:29:39 GMT -5
Ventura Gem and Mineral had its 3rd annual summer get together. We are fortunate to have Diamond Pacific come in with a ton of sample machinery for us to test: Genies, Pixies, saws, flat laps, etc. A couple members had displays out, and for the first time, we had people come in from other places to swap rock. One of these newcomers is from the Searchers Rock Club, and he brought material that I hadn't seen before. It's an interesting color and comes from Buffington Pocket which evidently is 30 miles north of Las Vegas. Some of it was like Burro Creek purple, and other pieces looked like pastelite. The banded material also reminds me of Mel's texas flint, in a way, or Luna without the orbs. The material is granular and apparently takes a good polish. Some had great color; some was less impressive. Apparently the road there is tough, and then you had to walk a ways in to get the better material. Here are pictures of the pieces I got. My friend got the purplest one in the bucket. Thanks for looking. I can tell it's summer now. I have time to enjoy my rocks again... Lowell
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elementary
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Post by elementary on Jun 17, 2011 20:09:21 GMT -5
The pink stuff - I'm guessin' - is formed by a thin layer of agate covering a small thin cluster of needle-like crystals.
I would imagine if the rest of the cavity ever filled with agate, these things would have looked a lot like sagenite - or pseudomorphs...
But this is a formation I haven't really studied, so I'm hoping someone else can enlighten me (and us.)
What's cool about this is the color - pink isn't exactly the most common color in the Hauser Beds. It's there, but not as common as blue, white, or black.
Lowell
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elementary
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Post by elementary on Jun 17, 2011 19:37:37 GMT -5
At the end of each school year, I bring a load of material to school for the students to have a chance to get. They sift through sand to find numbered rocks and the numbers correspond to different prizes: fossils, geodes, crystals, fossil casts, petrified wood, etc. I also bring a bucket of Hauser Bed geodes. I was given a pile of these eggs from Mel when he moved, so I cut some, but a lot I just bring to school to smash open for the students. Most of these t-eggs are specimen quality, but every once in a while there's one that forces me to lay claim and take it back home. A couple days ago, I smashed one that produced what is, in my experience, an incredibly rare geode from the Hauser beds. And if I had cut it, it would have been ruined... Take a look: And, yeah, I claimed it... Thanks for looking, Lowell
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elementary
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Post by elementary on Jun 12, 2011 8:56:12 GMT -5
I always get a little down when I get to the end of a pile of material - especially when it comes to nodules or t-eggs - and especially when the material is something you won't get again for a while. It's like getting to the end of your Christmas/Birthday presents. You love everything you already received, but the thrill and suspense of seeing what's next is now over. Sure, it's going to be great polishing them up and making them displayable, but it's that solving that mystery of seeing what's in those nodules is what drives me to open them. I guess that's why I have more cut nodules than polished nodule halves.
Lovely stuff, Mel.
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elementary
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Post by elementary on Jun 11, 2011 13:20:46 GMT -5
Mary Ann,
He is extremely knowledgeable and he knows those mountains better than most - also the Calicos (he hunts sagenite) and the north cady's. If I had a chance to go out in the field with him on a field trip, I would be a fool to pass it up.
I enjoyed talking to him. It was fun going through the buckets at our silent auction and discussing material, prices and field trips.
Take the opportunity, if you are going on a field trip. It would probably be a great experience.
I don't want to, in any way, shape or form, say that he wouldn't be an excellent guide and companion.
Lowell
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elementary
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Post by elementary on Jun 11, 2011 12:13:09 GMT -5
My lil 5 year old daughter wanted to add this to the conversation :blush: blush and happy sad bug eyes bleh ;D smile :nono: no no :help: help round up :drool: bleh cry kiss
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elementary
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Post by elementary on Jun 11, 2011 11:58:59 GMT -5
Sorry about not responding last night. Forgive my verbosity. It's story time! Adam Deane, the the Agate Guy, co-runs the CFMS south field trips and he is incredibly knowledgeable about the Cadys.
As Mel can tell you, the southern front of the Cady mountains runs for 10+ miles. Much of the eastern side of this front has been hunted since the 1930's. To make matters worse, in the 1960's, an outcrop of rock boasting some really good agate seams got bulldozed and used as filler rock for the I-15 which runs right along the mountains here. Good collecting near the roads is now pretty scarce. About 4 years ago a group of people I know and Adam Deane started hunting farther to the west in Sand Canyon. This place was well-known in the 1950's and many said played out. Funny thing, it wasn't. People started hiking beyond the normal hills and valleys and started finding hillsides either overlooked or forgotten. Adam Deane and John Pickett and Bill Dapue (owner of Diamond Pacific) all came across pockets of material. Adam Deane was the only one who put out claims. The others brought in friends first and then field trips. They wanted to slowly spread the joy of new finds. Adam took the monetary route. Another funny thing. The BLM shut the Sand Canyon Road soon after the claims were filed. It is now a hike to get to them. I believe Deane's Sandy Mesa Agate comes from this area, but I may be wrong.
Now let's move farther West. The access to the farthest eastern part of the Cady's can be done through Pisgah Crater Road, which runs like an arrow from the Freeway to the hills. Pickett and Bryan began hunting in these hills and found some interesting flame and moss. This was last November, less than a year ago. They returned home, pulled out a topo map, and drew a line between the Sand Canyon area and this new area. Then they decided to hike it - 2 + miles of desert. Jackpot! They came across one hill with incredible flame eroding out of an outcrop. Farther on, they came to a long - 100- 150 yards long hillside covered with red moss agate (I've posted pictures of this material. I took Woody there and he took Mossrockhound. Mel has also received some of this stuff to cut and posted photos.) Anyway, the material was PLENTIFUL. The chunks were up to 100 + pounds. Since the road was a mile + away, they hauled their finds back and got ready to come back. I was lucky enough to get invited to the second run. This was 2 weeks later. We hiked the mile to the site. Flame, moss, seam, etc was littered everywhere. At the base of the hill, another flame outcrop dropped finger sized pieces across the sand. We filled up over the hours and hoofed it out. I thought the one saving grace for this spot is it's remote location. You had to lug anything out. When I took Woody there a few weeks later, we hiked in and saw that someone/s had made a road. Two thoughts went through my mind - #1 - Damn! I cudda drove. #2 - It was only a matter of time before this place was stripped.
I made the trip there one more time. Another hill had been found with some red jasper bearing yellow orbs, more flame agate, some incredible tube agate, and more. I watched people load hundreds of pounds of material into the back of their pickups. For some, it was their third trip in the month. I went back over to the hill with the red moss and was aghast. There was precious little left. I found a couple chunks after poking around and when I took it back to the parking spot, one of the guys said: "You got that over there? I thought we cleared that spot." And that p*ssed me off. Throughout the early trips, the guys were saying they didn't want the dealers to get their hands on the place and strip it. Well, they did just as good a job. I mean, they were rolling chunks of material down hillsides and loading them, barely checking them. I wonder what their back yards are full of. As for Adam Deane, I know he has taken a group back there. My club has done a field trip. I know at least three others have. And I know this material is showing up on the internet for sale - and up until a couple months ago - there was no claim on the Pisgah material - and there better not be. But right now, the established rules are being broken, both by selling and by roadmaking.
I think claims are great for saving areas from closure or protecting places you find and want first shot at for development, and the CFMS have been teaching people to post them, but when they are used to close old-school locations (Paul Bunyan in CA, 4th of July and Mulligan Peak in AZ, etc.) then that's misused.
I love being a rockhound, but we are collectors and there is a tinge of obsessiveness in what we do.
Desert Magazine wrote about Sperry Wash (Mel just posted some photos recently) back in the 1960s. It talked about how three guys came across the site, promised each other not to share the site. They would come back later to start seriously collecting. When one guy came back a short time later, the stripping had already begun. My friend saw pictures of Last Chance Canyon's petrified forest from the 1920' - 1930's. A guy brought in a flatbed and loaded it with material. In the 1960's again, Lapidary Magazine published an article about a new field of fire agate in AZ. The weekend after the issue came out, three dozen cars came, as well as two trucks with hired hands. The hired hands evidently picked up anything white on the ground and filled sacks (they had been hired by a CA dealer) and the rockhounds in the cars did what they normally do. Turned out the land wasn't public - according to the letter the AZ Dept of Interior (or whatever they called themselves) mailed to the magazine. What got me was they they said the magazine had the responsibility of knowing what would happen to a site if it was made public. I may hate how the government handles the land, but we can be our own worse enemies. I've seen this in the Cady's.
Adam Deane has several claims. I've not seen his table, so I cannot vouch for what else he may have been selling. I did, though, have an interesting run in with him when he came to visit my clubs show a year ago. It soured me a little. He was knowledgeable, nice, easy enough to talk to. But the end result, I came away with the idea that he cared a little bit more about rocks and their worth than maybe the people he interacted with. I could be wrong, but that was my impression.
I hope this wasn't boring.
Lowell
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elementary
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Post by elementary on Jun 10, 2011 23:18:55 GMT -5
I have stuff to add to this conversation - about the miner, his claims (there are said to be claims in the Cady's - most specifically Sand Canyon), and about the new finds being made in the south Cady's, but I need to run out of the house for a moment to pick up my daughter from a friend's. I'll try to add my comments tonight.
Lowell
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elementary
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Post by elementary on Jun 5, 2011 17:34:15 GMT -5
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elementary
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Post by elementary on May 29, 2011 15:57:01 GMT -5
Rich,
Thanks much for the gorgeous material. I admired the Lagunas when you posted them. Well, I don't know if 'admired' covers my feelings properly. Maybe coveted is a better word!
The nodular jaspers will be addressed later this year. Presently I'm trying to limit this international section to agates and thunderegg type material.
(Oh, love the quebec material. Hadn't seen that material too much before and it's a fascinating rock.)
Thanks again
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elementary
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Post by elementary on May 29, 2011 15:45:35 GMT -5
Green petrified wood & Oregon Try looking up Hampton Butte petrified wood. Tis green, tis petrified wood, tis from Oregon.
I don't know a good website that shows the material, but check it out. Might be what you have.
Lowell
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elementary
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Post by elementary on May 29, 2011 15:42:25 GMT -5
Hey Colt - sounds like you had a great time up there. I've had the privilege of hitting several piles like that over the last few years, and if I was closer, i would have loved to hunt that pile too.
But I have a request. Post photos, especially of the material the guy said was rare. I don't care if I find it, or others, but I love looking at material gathered up at sales like this.
So PHOTOS!!!!
You gotta understand that, for me, knowing the source of the rock is almost as important as the appearance of the rock itself. I have a shelf full of wonderful material that I can't identify, and so I tend to value it less than the material I can put a locality to.
So, please - I'd love to see pictures of what you picked up. Let me drool a little - Oh and advice for the next time you see a sale like this: take a small notebook so when the guy next to you ID's a rock you pick up, you can write it down and keep the record of it for later, after the sale. That rare rock you mention, without the name, won't get the interest or money (usually) unless the location is mentioned. So that $45 rock might not get $45 without it.
And, if I haven't requested this yet: Post picts.
Lowell
(Damn, I'm so jealous right now....)
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