Our special British Columbian rocks have been travelling all over the United States lately, and between that and my own tumbling, I felt justified doing a quick rockhound on the weekend.
My girlfriend doesn’t think the bucket adds to the picture. I love it. Kirkland Laundry Detergent!
I went to a new section of beach while the sun was going down. I didn’t find a whole lot this time but did snag a couple of nice Dallasite pieces. More and more, I’m focused on the stones that show intense design and less dead weight in quartz and basalt.
A big piece of Dallasite, showing the nice designs on the end. Much of this piece is basalt.
The picture above shows a common Dallasite rock: nice designs in one section, and mostly just a quartz-basalt brecciated look elsewhere. This is not what I would call a High Grade rock, even though the designed section is very nice. Too much of the weight is made up elsewhere.
Below is what I would define as High Grade, as it is completely made up of Dallasite’s signature designs:
Probably the nicest piece I found today, a little tumble-sized piece of what I would call “high grade” Dallasite.
The bigger the rock, the more chance quartz and basalt take up much of the mass. Then again, you never know for sure what’s on the inside of a rock.
Nice tumble-sized Dallasite piece. Like the blue. High Grade.
Decent Dallasite piece, funny stuff flowing through it, not sure how it will tumble. Not High Grade, but might turn out very well.
This is amygdaloidal basalt. The picture didn’t capture it well but some of the vesicles are filled pretty quite blue/purple stuff along with the usual white. Some of these pieces can look really good and colourful, many just have white in them.
Thought this rock was pretty but didn’t take it home. Looking at the pic now, it kind of looks like wood. What do you think?
And here are the tumbled rocks I took out of coarse grind last week:
Tumbled Dallasite, amygdaloidal basalt, porphyry, river quartz.