rock

a blog about rock

[mineral-damage-captain]

Some more recent pics of the chunk of quartz. Its inner beauty is slowly starting to come out.

[mineral-damage-captain]

The original form of a big ol' chunk of smoky quartz that I've been working on for a little while. Wanted to rescue these from my phone before they got buried in the photos library.

[catchymemes]

[waterloggedgarden]

someone could probably say something pretty about fossils, constellations, and stars in the sky

[wandering-jana]

Onondaga Cave State Park, Missouri.

Explore:

The Ozarks: State Parks

Explorations of a whole bunch of parks found on the Ozark Plateau.

[mineral-damage-captain]

Finds from a grab bin: ocean jasper, carnelian agate, chevron amethyst, moss agate, mahogany obsidian, sodalite, moonstone, fossilized (???), and amazonite

[sarahwatchesthings]

Me when I see rocks.

[mineral-damage-captain]

Managed to buy only four pieces at this year's fairs: chocolate calcite, K2 granite, ruby in fuchsite, and lepidolite.

[follettina1111111111]

crystals with landscapes of nature

[theleoisallinthemind]

Petoskey stones ~ fossilized coral that lived 350 million years ago - the rocks rounded in the surf along the shore of Lake Michigan near Petosky, Michigan

[lionfloss]

Purple Yellow Fluorite from Elmwood Mine, Carthage, Smith County, Tennessee // Blue Fluorite From Inner Mongolia, China

[opal-porn]

Ethiopian opal geode

[catgirlwheels]

Very very hard boiled egg

[babyfoxcollectionthings]

[disturbedtomparis]

[prismatic-bell]

…..you know I would like to thank @voyoock for this reply because tbh I kind of wanted to break one of these open and taste it myself.

[lokiago]

Just think, these stones contain the water from ancient seas from millenia ago, and a well educated scholar STILL couldn’t resist their pull. Not one of us is immune to the siren call of ancient tide pods.

[deejay]

[jordisstigander]

cracking open an old one with the boys

[mineral-damage-captain]

Sooo, since I can't do much rockhounding or tumbling during the winter, I'm back to acquiring shiny rocks elsewhere. Here are my most recent additions, from various places:

1-5 (white & green + green & orange): Gifts from my sister from her trip out of state. She says they were unlabeled, but I think they are all or mostly varieties of tree agate.

6 (white, black, and teal): K2 jasper (azurite in granite)

7 (brown with orbicular pattern): turritella agate

8 (gray, white, and purple-red): ruby in feldspar

9 (iridescent orange-ish): peach moonstone

10-11 (light green-blue): amazonite

12 (light green and white): green larimar (almost certainly synthetic, but still pretty)

13 (white, black, and teal): K2 jasper again

14-15 (brown swirly): chocolate calcite

16 (brown bandy): aragonite

17 (green and purple): fluorite

18-19 (clear yellow-orange): honey calcite

20 (purple and white): lepidolite

21 (red-orange glittery): red goldstone

22 (gray with red orbicular pattern): ocean jasper

23 (grayish, clear with inclusions): a large piece of smoky rutile quartz

[a-list-of-moods]

despite what popular opinion may lead you to believe, some rocks actually do have scientifically-proven auras! Unfortunately, those rocks are uranium and the aura is cancer. 

[mineral-damage-captain]

Unfinished clear and smoky quartz and tiger's eye. All are from the tumblers except the clear quartz (top left), which I rescued from the local hocus-pocus shop in the mall. It was in pretty rough shape (I've done some cleanup on it already) and I figured it was up to me to give it a good home.

All of the tiger's eyes have also received some polishing but aren't quite finished. The bottom right piece is missing its chatoyance - not sure if it lost it in the tumbler or if it went in like that.

[mineral-damage-captain]

Handful of pieces that are going into an oxalic acid bath today to remove some of the iron staining. Mostly new finds and a few older ones that didn't clean up well before.

I've paused the tumblers for now. One of my geckos who live near the tumblers is pretty sick (she has lymphoma :/) and I've decided to keep things quiet around her so as to not add to her distress. Also, it turns out that cleaning out tumbler barrels is a huge pain in the ass during the winter when I can't use the outside faucet (since rock tumbler slurry can't go down the drain). The long and the short of it is that I may not start the tumblers up again until spring. Meanwhile I'm hand-polishing a few of the nicer quartz and tiger's eye pieces that came out of the barrels. Most need to be kicked around a bit more.

[mineral-damage-captain]

Quartz tumble update! Here's how the full batch is looking. I don't think they're quite ready for the next stage yet, so I'm throwing them back in the barrel with some fresh coarse grit, but wanted to get a shot of how they're coming along.