What's in the shop

How to cleave a boulder evenly? Use a rock cutter. This is heavy duty, it can cut just about anything. Cutting stone is not easy even for a great engine, it heaves with a roomful of noise and smell. It's like having a rushing train in a box.

This is a smaller saw for fine gemstones and fist sized stones.

Then when the stone is the right size and shape which is often a hazy, uneven sided hexagon, it's time to grind and grind on a series of wheels that removes a tiny bit of stone with each rotation.

This is the last set of wheels and they do the polishing. No stone is taken away at this point. The wheels buff the stones from dull to a shine. Then it is on to the metalworking studio.

Back in the shop

Yesterday I am back in the lapidary workshop working on the azurite-malachite piece. What a buzz, there are a ton of people there, more than I've seen there for ages. But then there is less space at the wheels. I've got pics of our shop, will load it up soon.

Princess brooch

Today I just completed a piece. Pink rose quartz with a very lovely unusual bezel and a tiny green peridot drop. I am so happy to see it in reality from tumbled pebbles and slices of stone.

Monday

It is Monday and I am happy. Not just from my weekend haul. You will hear why soon.

What lies within

Today I find myself back at the show rustling around more rocks. This is the last one I got. Looks like a piece of turd doesn't it?

Here is another view. You can see some bits of crystal along the top right edge.

When I cleave open the rock, here is a garnet in it's heart.

This stone is from Garnet Hill, California. Where I hear near by there is the most beautiful campground. An oldtimer tells me his wife would mix up a pack of jello with water in a container, submerge it in the nearby river and it would be ready by dinner after a day of rockhounding, this he tells me from his wheelchair.

Finds

So I leave happy:
Purple – real purple, not hazy brownish but real purple Burro Creek Agate from Arizona. Red jasper from Mt Diablo, CA! I've been there, I've climbed above the clouds there! A stone that is a microcosmic view of the earth, all bits of intense green and intense blue: Azurite, malachite in matrix. I almost can't brethe!
Grape agate, finally I have this, on jasper? cuprolite? both amazing stones in it's own way. Fossilized wood in regular brown and then in green! I have never seen this: agatized fossiled wood in green. Carnelian, not the best, but lets see when we cut it. And perhaps turquoise. And from a vendor a pure pink rhodonite.

Last & First

This morning bright and early which means arriving a bit after 10am, I go to Sequoia Gem and Mineral Society show. Rumour has it that it is the last show, not of the year, but ever. (So sad. But thats another story.)

I zoom past the showcases, zoom past the vendors to the back of the hall, out the door. If you're uninitiated, you'd have thought I completely missed the show before I even got there. But out the door is where the action is.

Used to be every year members of the Rock club would donate their collection for the silent auction. This year being the last, there is a sale.

But at first sight there is just piles of rock on folding tables. Grey, brown, tan, rough boulders. And thats what they are called: rough. But blink and try and see the boulders as field-collected gems to be.

At strategic intervals on the six foot table are spray bottles of plain water. I find a stone I like, turn it, spray it, guess what, for a brief moment, it turns from dull to a gem-my green.

Then it's off to an emotional rollercoaster as I try and identify what it is I am holding. I ask the guy next to me what he thinks it is. Umm some sort of copper mineral. I seek and locate a mineral expert. Chert. I ask the head honcho at the workshop who's seen it all. Californian jade. We're getting some where now. Finally I find the guy who collected the stone. Idocrase he says. Before I drive off I get one last opinion: the annual vendor of specimen stones. He cracks open a book and say Vesuvianite. I thought it's idocrase, I say. Yes, it was idocrase before it was vesuvianite. Bingo concordance! I am at peace and can die happy.