Yeah, I know lots of it comes from out your way. Funny, out here most our rocks are hazardous to your health! Cinnebar is just plain nasty stuff! Asbestos, alkali, gypsum too. All of it can be found out here this side of the rockies. You know, I am still kicking myself fo not bringing home a bunch of obsidian from Nevada, we were surrounded by it! The ground just shimmered from flakes and chunks everywhere. Not just out croppings, but litterally every 6 inches there was a piece of obsidian on the ground. I did pick lots of it up and checked its coloring, but nothing really fancy was seen, everything was pretty opaque. Still would have liked to try a few knapped knives!
Did you ever take a closer look at the hard stone I sent you? The soapy one that is hard as hell. Still kind of curious about it, may just be chert, but who knows! I have some cool slabs of rock sitting around.
BLK, happy birthday to your boy! How old is he?
-X
Cool, I have a book on CA collecting... tons of good sites! Once you get really into rock collecting you can find cool stuff everywhere, or will at least know if there is nothing.
I should do some tests on the rock you speak of, I think it is a metamorphosized serpentine. I have some from a mine on Maine that looks a lot like it but bright green, so rare they found less than 20#! I have 1/3 of it... test cut some stones for display and the owner hooked me up.
Yeah lots of nasty rocks, cinnabar is common here too. Crush up it with some metal ore, heat and you will have liquid metal and slag... cook out the mercury and you will have a metal "sponge" DON'T REALLY DO THAT! toxic as it gets...
I wear a half face respirator sometimes when going through old slag/clinker piles and stuff, the dust will make you sick....
I bought a bag of landscaping obsidian, it was full of good material! dirt cheap too! the cool stuff to knap inmy opinion is rainbow obsidian, it looks completely fake when polished!
Thanks for the advice. Daniel please don't tell me you did all that damage to your hand on the grinder!
I meant to type tweeked but twerked works
Now all of ya , go back to sleep you are makin' too much noise!
Oh no I broke my bones over the years... falling out of trees, stuff like that! college rugby didn't help but I never broke a bone, just dislocated lots! lol
I had the one grinder incident the first day I used it but have been safe since! I don't use a bandsaw so my chop saw and buffer are the most dangerous tools...
The buffer got me badly once... still have a massive scar where a tanto tip sunk 1" deep in my palm. I'm OK with it now but they take a long time to get used to. The chop saw is one of those things that seems 100% safe until a blade explodes at high RPM... I try to only chop things in the vise with it. Some profile with one and I do sometimes but it isn't a good idea over time... the Balisong slabs were downright scary to hand feed into the blade!
Daniel, you're up early.
When we go to Bend, the obsidian flats.. well, it's everywhere.. I picked up 2 basketball sized pieces to bring home in my pack once.. we have some really cool pieces.. Pure glass like, to comglomerate-like...
