Tucson continues...

Quartzcite was fun, with additions to the rock stash and some interesting silver pendants made by a Siberian artist.. Afterwards it was on to Phoenix for a couple of nights and a trip up to Flagstaff with Jim Horste (the brother). While Jim was negotiating with a fluorescent rock collector, we went off to the wonderful National Monument of Wupatki (Indian Ruins) and Sunset Crater Volcano , both of which are highly recommendable.
Then off to Tucson on Wednesday where we arrived to find that our rental house had been burgled BEFORE we arrived! I didn't mind too much that they took the microwave, tv, dvd, and coffee table but they took the WIFI and the MODEM!!!! We couldn't even get on line in a bookstore or the hotels! Luckily we're back on line at the rental house (and the locks were changed right after we got here!).

Yesterday we dropped by the Tucson Electric Park show as they were setting up and Jan scored some incredible beads out of some very gemmy stuff including some amazing Ethiopian opal beads!

I spent a good part of today doing some fluorescent mineral database work for my brother Jim (and waiting on the internet tech guy to get us all back online!). Then Jan and I headed out for the Pueblo Inn Gem Show where we caught our favorite dealers while they were still setting up! I CORNERED the market on iolite sunstone from Tanzania! WOOT! Also got green moonstone, golden feldspar, some glittery sunstones, kyanites, ONE piece of tanzanite, a chunck of rose quartz and a few other bits all from the same dealer! Then Jan scored a few polished pieces of agatized bamboo before she hit the spectrolite dealer and got some splendoriffic material from Finland from the former Mayor of Ylamma, the center of Finnish spectrolite production. For those who don't know, spectrolite is the trade name for the FINEST labradorite in the world which only comes from Finland!

Tomorrow we'll get our camera situation figured out and I'll finally start posting some pics to our blog of Jan and David's continuing adventures!

From Cruise to QUARTZITE!

Howdy Folks! I just did my first trunk show on a cruise ship and met lots of new friends and sold some great gemstone beads. My chum Jan from Scotland sold some of her fabulous necklaces! Right now we're in Quartzite, Arizona and just finished a day of shopping. I got some great fire agate which will make magnificent beads. I also bought some cherry creek jasper from China, got some Sonora Sunrise, California Jade, mookite from Australia, beautiful grreek jasper from China, got some Sonora Sunrise, California Jade, beautiful green Utah variscite, BLACK moonstone from Madagascar, and MORE!

Pictures coming soon and I'll be in Tucson in a couple of days!

Pink Drusy Heart Beads, Cobalto Calcite from the Congo

Hey folks, it's almost Valentine's day and so I've taken a dip into pink and into hearts!

Wonderful clean surfaces with HOT pink crystals all across the front. COMPLETELY NATURAL AND UNTREATED! Very rare and beautiful. The grey host rock is sanded and polished clean. Compare with other cobalto calcite for sale on the internet! You won't find beads like this! I only had enough rough to make a total of 10 beads out of this material this year and most of them pretty small and this is one of only TWO hearts that I was able to make. Valentines Day is coming up! No idea if I'll get more of this rough material in Tucson this year....

Here's a more raspberry pink color

This is the famous pink drusy Cobalto Calcite from the Congo, formerly known as Zaire, where most of it is mined from the Kakanda Mine, Shaba Province. I try to find a few nice specimens when I am in Tucson each year although it is quite rare to find decent pieces. There is a lot of conflict and social strife in Central Africa and the export of pink crystals isn't given priority compared with the mining of tantalum and other rare metals for your cell phone and high tech devices! It is usually sold by the malachite dealers as this hot pink mineral is found in the malachite mines! There is little to no visible bruising to any of the crystals and they all REALLY sparkle! According to some metaphysical info I pulled from the internet, this stone is "calming, centering and grounding, it is used for love rituals...it's an energy amplifier said to help the body and mind remember astral travel, channeling, and the state of pure perfection. Helps clear and activate all your chakras..."

Here's the last of the larger sized ones I was able to make. A freeform...

This mineral is always a lovely light pink to dark magenta and in addition to being popularly known as Cobalto Calcite is is also known as Cobalticalcite, Sphaerocobaltite, and Cobaltian Calcite. The crystals are not hard like quartz, so don't bang these around!

I'll get the last 4 smaller ones finished in the next day or so and share pics of those here as well.

Thanks for letting me share!

Crosses in silver plumes, fine silver in quartz, and serpentine copper ore, OH MY!

Hey Folks! Hope all have had a happy new year and survived the holiday season. I'm excited about the new year and getting ready for my first show of the year, which is on a cruise ship in the Western Caribbean in 10 days! My first big batch of new stuff has been working with rare metal minerals.

My oldest brother is good about getting me cutting rough as a present and for Christmas I got some rare silver ore with plumes in it from the famous silver mines in Cobalt, Ontario. The silver mines in this area have mostly long closed, and rough lapidary material is only available from old collections or from folks who have been able to rockhound and collect on the mine dumps. If you do a google or eBay search for this kind of material you're unlikely to find any, and certainly not made into beads! The patterns in the plumes are just spectacular, but this is the one that really blew my mind...

There is a row of natural silver crystal dendrites in this beautiful gem that formed a row of CROSSES! I've never seen any formation like it before and I doubt I ever will again! A wonderful gift for the Christian who loves his or her geology as well! A testament of faith and miracles in a rare mineral specimen. Here is what the bead looks like on the other side, and right side up...

and here is another piece I did using this rare rough that has crystallized silver plumes. The white base material is most likely dolomite.. I got several small pieces of this stuff that had the white matrix. I got one chunk of the silver plume ore that has a black matrix and there are wires and blobs of native silver (pure metal) in this bead and the others that will come from this small chunk of rough. I really like the contrast of the silver plumes against the black...

Those specimens are all completely natural formations of silver ore and native silver in matrix. I hand cut this fabulous shield shaped bead which measures 29x16mm with a 3mm drill hole. Weight is 47 carats. Beautiful solid natural bull quartz from Alaska that is infused with PURE, 99.9% fine SILVER through a new hydrothermal heat pressure process and then stabilized! So this is MANUFACTURED fine silver in natural quartz. The images don't fully capture the shininess of the dense spiderweb of solid, pure, Fine Silver that runs throughout the natural white and brownish quartz. Every dark line you see in the image is really super shiny, Fine Silver. I got three small chunks of this exotic (and pricey) material when I was in Tucson in 2009, back when silver was WAY cheaper, and this is one of the LAST THREE of them that I made with the LAST of my rough! Eureka Gems, who process and market this rough and THIN cabs that they cut from it, explained to me that because of the demand for gold in quartz cabs and jewelry, they had, "through the merging of chemistry, physics, and the art of metallurgy" developed a process in 2004 which allowed them to mimic nature and infuse precious metal into natural stone. Each 2 kilo block of natural quartz is treated and produced in a lab and takes 7 to 8 weeks from start to finish as the block undergoes the hydrothermal heat pressure process. The quartz is heated to fracture, the fine silver (or other metal) is pressure driven into the cracks, it's cooled slowly and the whole thing is pressure stabilized with resin so that every bit is tight and clean! It smells like cutting stabilized turquoise when it's cut, but it's harder (because of the quartz) and the metal veins can catch on your sanding belts if one is not careful. Here's a cab I made out of the same material...

Finally, I just finished this cab and bead made out of a dark green serpentine from a location on the Northern California border with Oregon. There are flecks of native copper (pure metal) within the stone, as well as clouds of another silvery gray metal mineral, most likely hematite.

and here's a cab in the same material....

I also finished some nice drusy psilomelanes, which is a manganese based material in chalcedony, but I'll post those in another thread.