Wonderful wonderstone

I just started slabbing some of the Nevada wonderstone I got for my upcoming gem and mineral shows. I had some doubts about it when I first saw it, but the first end cut is absolutely gorgeous.

It just goes to prove that old adage: never judge a rock by the rind.

We have liftoff........

This excursion into African lapidary materials has been an exercise in utter frustration. The containers were scheduled to ship late August, and they were actually on board the ship, the Maersk Jambi.

Then South African Customs got a bee in their bonnet about something--no one knows what--and out of all the orders on the Jambi pulled my little shipment of rocks off. They took two samples, kept the shipment a week, and then released it with an apology but no explanation.

Of course, by then the Jambi had sailed. So the exporter went in search of another vessel. They booked the shipment on the SAF Marine Oranje, due to leave Cape Town September 11.

Only......it didn't. Bad weather kept it in port until September 17, when it finally left Cape Town, headed for New York.

Geemineez. New York. That means it still has to come overland from New York to Tampa.

Finally yesterday I got a copy of the waybill, with the container number and the actual shipment number and now I can track the shipment.

Only.......it's not that easy. It may be on an SAF Marine vessel, but it's a Mediterranean Shipping Company shipment. And since it's a LCL--Less than Container Load--I can't track it on their website. No, I have to call the company's Atlanta office and find out where the ship actually is.

As of today, my little load of rocks is scheduled to arrive in New York on October 3. Vanguard will pick it up on Monday the 5th and load it on an 18-wheeler that should leave New York on the 8th.

That will put it in Tampa between the 15th and the 17th. Barely time to get it sorted and into crates before I have to set up for the Tampa Gem & Mineral Show on the 23rd. Certainly not enough time to get many slabs cut.

Fortunately I found some great western material for terrific price that I'm cutting right now. Lizardstone, amethyst lace agate, wonderstone, Bagdad agate, and Disaster Peak picture jasper. That, along with what I already had, will make nice tables.

Now if we just don't have any more delays.........

African time

I should have remembered about African time. I ran into when I used to travel over there. Actually, "ran into it" isn't the proper term. More like had to live on it.

When I placed my order for the rock, the mine told me it would be shipped in late July. Obviously that hasn't happened!

Now they are telling me August 27. Aaaaaarrrrrghhhhhh!!!!! That puts it here in late September, which gives me just time to get some slabs cut in time for our club show. That is, if the weather cooperates. I can't cut anything when it's raining because the saw is too exposed on the front porch.

So my current emphasis is to try to cut slabs from some of an old collection I bought back in March. I have a good pile of rock sitting there to cut but it's raining every day.

Hopefully once the remnants of Ana get past I'll have some dry days...........

Almost there........

I'm going to backtrack a little here. I've been talking about the shipment of rock I'm getting from Africa, but not how that whole thing got started. Someone asked me today how on earth I got into this, so I may as well go back to the beginning.

Back in the early 1990s, I traveled to South Africa four consecutive years to hunt and fish and gather information for stories. (As a writer, I’m always looking for something new to write about.)

Looking back over a distance of 15 or so years, I can’t remember why we ended up where we were, but we stopped by a wholesale gemstone dealer one afternoon. On the grass behind the building were piles of malachite and sodalite about 6 feet across and 3 feet high, pieces from fist-sized to the size of a flagstone, all just in big heaps.

I’ve loved both stones ever since, and in fact that afternoon bought gemstone strands of both. Little did I know at the time how much those piles were worth, or how impossible it would be to get malachite out of Africa today!

Several months ago, I made a connection through my fiance to the wife of one of his colleagues. She's from Kenya, and worked there as a prospector for many years. Somehow the three of us hatched the idea of importing a shipment of lapidary rock from northern Africa for sale here in the states.

We weren't able to get anything set up from northern Africa, so I started digging around and looking for my own sources.After many hours of research, and many e-mails, I narrowed my potential suppliers down to three, and then to two, and finally to one. I still may order from the second one, but one metric ton of rock at a time is enough!

I formally placed my order today--August 6--and it should be here around the middle of September. The rock will arrive in four 55-gallon drums, which will take up residence in my driveway until I can get them sorted out! Meanwhile I’ve been scrounging milk crates and every other hard plastic basket I can find so I can stack the rock on shelves in my shade house.

I've already written about the chrysocolla. I’ll also be getting blue lace agate (some with druzy), red aventurine, Orange River Voorsite chalcedony, 17 different jaspers, sodalite (couldn’t pass that one up), banded jasper matrix with tiger eye, and unakite. Malachite is unavailable due to the political situation in southern Africa at this time. :-(

But, the order is placed, the wire transfer goes out tomorrow, and the rock should be on the way in the next few days. I'll start putting it on line sometime around the end of September, both as rough and as slabs.

Africa rocks!

My shipment from Africa is almost on the way. There was one material I wasn't sure about ordering, and the mine owner, Paul Lee, gracious sent me a generous sample of it. It's sold as African Turquoise, but without actually having my hands on it and having it tested, I couldn't be sure what it was.

When it arrived, I sent one piece to a gemologist I know in South Carolina--John Rasmussen of Rasmussen Gems & Jewelry--and kept the other piece to play with myself.

The guys around the club thought it was true turquoise, mid grade, that should be a good seller. I tried polishing an end of the piece I have, and it does take a nice polish.

John did some chemical testing on it, and found that although it has a strong resemblance to turquoise, it's actually chrysocolla, and a high grade chrysocolla at that.

I changed my order--I'm getting three times what I originally planned to order. I've already had several people say they want to buy some of it. Now I'm worrying about whether I've ordered enough!

I'll be sending the payment this week, and it will ship in just a few more days. The waiting is almost over.........

Off to school!

William Holland, here I come!

I found out a couple days ago I received a club scholarship to a week at William Holland School of Lapidary Arts. I had to be sure I could schedule it, and have my dogs and my son covered, before I could commit, but everything is lined up and I'm going to the cabochons class the week of September 6.

Whoo-hoo!

In return, I will come back and teach a minimum of 30 classes at the club.

I've already kind of started getting into what must be done. The president and one of the board members had a piece of equipment torn down, and on Saturday morning I jumped into helping with it. I've already figured out that lapidary equipment isn't rocket science; it's more just common sense. And the more I can learn, the more I can fix--plus the more of my own I can fix.

Now I need to find somewhere close to William Holland where I can go dig rocks. We get out at noon on Wednesday and have the afternoon off, so I want to go somewhere I can do some rockhounding.

All sorted out.......

After weeks of having boxes of rocks just sitting around in my office I finally have them all sorted and catalogued and put away. Well, more or less. The ones I'm still cutting are in a flat box until I have time to get a full day to sit on the porch and cut slabs on the small saw.

Now if it would just stop raining I could uncover the slab saw and cut some of this picture jasper I unearthed in one of the boxes! Four rocks, all different, each one a different color, and I have no idea which picture jasper any one of them is.

I'm in a holding pattern waiting for my supplier in Africa to have my order ready. He's sending me a sample of African turquoise to have analyzed so we both know exactly what it is. The gemologist I've talked to is guessing either real, honest-to-goodness turquoise or azurite; it will be a couple weeks before I know. Just in time to finalize the order, I think.

I do know it will have two kinds of picture jasper in it. Fun stuff. The picture in this entry is Kalahari picture jasper. I haven't had time to cut any of it yet, but I'd like to find the time.

Thar's coins in them thar rocks......

Yesterday was my first experience with selling rocks and slabs, and I thought it turned out rather well. It was Tampa Bay Mineral & Science Club's monthly rock exchange day, and I took a box of slabs along.

I couldn't believe it.......I made $41.50! Sold some cheap stuff for 50 cents, and one really nice piece of what one of the instructors thought was Coyamito agate for $15.

I think I need to be a little less cavalier about all the rocks I scraped up off the guy's garage floor at Easter, because that slab came out of that mess. There's turning out to be some really, really nice stuff in all of it, like the piece of agate in the picture. I don't know what to call it but "ribbon agate," because it looks like it has an orange ribbon running through it. There's a lot of that kind of thing.

I can't wait to get some of it on line and see how it sells.

I have my order for the African material ready. I'm just waiting for details on one thing he sells--I want to be sure what it is. Then we're ready to roll.

African rocks

Well, it looks like the African shipment I've been working on is really going to come together. I have the wholesaler lined up, I have the Customs broker, and I'm waiting for shipping information.

I know I'm going to order some nice picture jasper, and some Orange River chalcedony. I'm not sure what else yet.

I expect it to arrive in four 55 gallon drums that will sit in my driveway until I have time to sort them out. But that's a couple months away yet.

But I'm eagerly waiting.........

Masquerade

Boy, rocks will fool you. I've slabbed some really nasty looking rocks and had them be gorgeous inside, and just this week slabbed a big rock I thought was going to be great but it's not what I thought it was.


The Tampa Bay Mineral & Science Club has this rock pile. People toss stuff out there and others of us dig through it.


Two Saturdays ago I was digging in it and came up with about a 15-pound black rock. One of the instructors said he thought it might be black jade, so I carried it and several smaller rocks home and slabbed them to see what was inside.

I could just barely vise the big black rock, and it took me three days to break it down completely into slabs. The more I cut, the more I felt that it's not jade but flint. And when I took some of the slabs in to the club last night, the instructor looked at it and agreed with me.

So now that begs the question, how will it polish? It's a deep enough black that it still might make some nice cabs. But goodness, I have a lot of it!

Then there was this other rock. Heavy for its size but not heavy enough for hematite. Yet the rust lines in it indicate that it probably contains some hematite.

This one generated some head scratching. Finally Greg and Charlie, after studying the slabs and conferring over them, came up with the idea that it's probably a meteorite that someone tossed into the pile without knowing what it is.

They want me to polish a piece of it so they can put a drop of nitric acid on it and see what happens. I don't know the "whys" yet, but I'm going to try to get one small surface polished tonight and then see what happens. This could be cool.

For want of a nail......

Sometimes it's the little things that get you. Like a set screw.

Sometime during the night it dawned on me that if the drive motor had quit the whole slab saw would shut down. So it had to be something else.

It also occurred to me that the drive motor is attached to the driveshaft with a single set screw.

So a while ago I pulled the housing for the drive motor off.

Bingo.

I was correct--it was the set screw.

I took the housing off and the bushing just fell off the end of the driveshaft and into the housing. I cleaned it up with Shooter's Choice degreaser, put it back together, and it's out there chewing on a really neat piece of agate that is dendritic on one side like Montana, and grades into a golden amber on the other side.

The one problem with all of this it that the thing is so old that a little oil seeps through on the driveshaft and lubricates everything, including the set screw. So it's not a question of "if" it happens again, it's a question of "when."

The distance between the motor and the cabinet of the saw is also so tight that you can't get a regular Allen wrench in there--it really needs one about 6 inches long.

I didn't have any Loc-tite, so next time I go to Home Depot I'll get some, and also look for a long Allen wrench in the right size so I can get some torque on it.

While I was at it, I took the tumbler apart. That one's easy. The motor is shot. No biggie--$14 at Graves. Cheaper than buying it from Lortone.

But that said, I surely do like my Lortone equipment.

In the beginning.........

OK, let's start with: I love rocks. I remember being about six or seven years old and reading a magazine article about mining opal in Australia. The idea of digging something so beautiful out of the ground, one small rock at a time, fascinated me. I wanted to go to Australia and own an opal mine!

When I went to college--Florida State University, class of 1975--I majored in biology but I had to take a few other courses in other sciences. I chose a geology course, thinking I would learn something about rocks.

NOT!

It was about planetary formation and plate tectonics and stuff like that, and after the first two weeks I was bored to tears.

Then real life intervened and I was busy making a living, and fast forward to four years ago. I happened to be in Michael's and saw a tumbler kit for sale and bought it on a whim to tumble some rocks. It was a miserable failure, but it whetted my appetite for rocks again.

So I got on eBay and bought a Lortone tumbler and some tumbling rough and got started. Now I have five Lortone double tumblers and ten tumbler loads going at any given time.

Then I found the local gem and mineral club--Tampa Bay Mineral and Science Club--and started learning wire wrapping. It wasn't long before I was cutting cabochons and learning silversmithing.

Then some equipment became available and I bought a very old Lortone 12-inch slab saw and a used Lortone combination saw/cabbing unit.

See how this thing kind of snowballed?