I received an early Christmas present from Tommy Lay, this fantastic lapidarist I connected with on a rock tumbling website. He was ridiculously generous. I opened the box with my mom and grandma and we were all oohing over every piece. I had inquired about getting some of my Dallasite and Flowerstone cabbed and slabbed…
I’ve just been tumbling away over here. I took my 24 lbs of Dallasite out of my rotary tumblers after about 10 days in coarse grind and put a different batch of Dallasite in my vibratory tumbler on final polish.
We’re breaking new ground at BC Rockhound. I sent some Dallasite and Flowerstone to Tommy Lay, the best cabochon maker I’ve seen on the internet.
I was a bad boy recently. I stopped in my local rock and gem shop not planning to buy much, and I walked out with a Lortone QT12 rotary rock tumbler, my fourth rock tumbler.
Opening the rock tumblers is always like Christmas. I waited almost a full two weeks to pop these three barrels and let my old rocks see the light of day. The two Dallasite loads in my Lortone QT66 went amazingly! I was super impressed with how smooth and fracture-free these rocks came out. More time,…
I went on a quick trip to my favourite Vancouver Island beach as the sun came up one recent morning. This is the beach I found my first piece of Dallasite on. It still yields more than enough beautiful rocks for me and anyone else who would be interested.
The difference between agate, jasper, chalcedony and chert is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for people getting into the hobby of rockhounding or mineral collecting. I know because I was tripping over it for months, and I’ve seen other people struggle with it as well. The truth is, even the best rock identifiers can’t…
I’m badly in need of more rock tumblers. I set both of my rotary tumblers last night and had my vibe going the whole weekend. But it’s not enough. My rockhounding hobby is dwarfing my production capacity. I am looking for a warehouse of some sort and operations headquarters.
Here’s a collection of all the rocks that have survived coarse grit in my rotary rock tumblers and are now ready to go in the vibe. They’re split up into groups of Dallasite, quartz, speckled opal, greenstone (some of it jasper), a few porphyries and Flowerstone, and a pile of river rock/gneiss/quartz/petrified wood.
Just a few pictures today of the Flowerstone I found while hounding this week inland on Vancouver Island.