Rockhounding, cutting, tumbling, and polishing. Welcome to my world of rocks.
I gathered some rocks I've recently rockhounded from Oregon and Washington rivers and creeks: the Willamette, the Clackamas, the Washougal, and creeks in the Oregon Coast Range. Are these petrified wood lookalikes or petrified wood? I cut 11 rocks with my 10 inch Highland Park trim saw and show their interiors.
Tyndall blue agates from the Oregon Coast Range. The Tyndall effect is what makes the sky appear blue, and these are some of the most beautiful agates I've ever found, cut or seen.
Three of these rocks are from the Willamette and three are from the Washougal River, where it feeds into the Columbia River: rhyolite, hematite ore, petrified wood, unakite, chalcedony and iron stained quartz. I cut and polished these self collected rocks to share with you!
In this video I cut 8 rocks from local Oregon rivers: 2 from the Wilson River, 3 from the Willamette River, and 3 from the Columbia River. They probably aren't rocks that most lapidary folks would pick up and bring home, but I still cut rocks just to try and find out what they've got going on!
A rockhounding adventure where the Washougal meets the Columbia River, near Camas, Washington. I found an 11 pound agate right at the very end, a personal best and my largest Pacific Northwest agate find thus far!
The search for augite crystals at Cedar Butte, an augite crystal locality inside the Tillamook State Forest in Oregon. This was my first solo true mineral hunt or “crystal hounding” trip.
Do you want to polish big rocks? This is a walkthrough of how I process both flat slabs and irregularly shaped rocks on my 16" Vibra Lap from Covington Engineering, from gluing on the weights through the final polish. This is my current method, and I hope it helps others on their vibra lap polishing journey!
We aren't talking about real larimar, a beautiful stone found only in the Dominican Republic. We're talking about the popular epoxy resin art technique that replicates larimar! My friend Lianne came up with an easy formula for how much of your resin to tint white, and I test it using a frog mold.
Along with rocks, I like all sorts of arts and crafts, and I love to work with epoxy resin. I attempted a resin "bloom" on an art tray to take part in a collaboration with some resin artist friends. My anxiety climbed with the temperature of the resin, but I want to try this again!
