Scott Sent In This Pic!
Scott ordered some “random rocks”from my dad's collecxtion and hit the jackpot with one. What do you think of this beauty?????
Believe it or not, this is petrified wood. A lot of wood is found in the form of a “cast”. That’s a chunk of agate that has the outer shape of wood – often including the “bark” – but not the wood grain on the inside. That happens because the wood rots away completely and the agate just replaces a hole in the ground. Thundereggs are formed in a similar way except that the hole in the ground was left there by a volcanic gas bubble.
Agate formed this way often has fantastic banding or other internal coloring. That’s Scott’s rock! I think I noticed a little grain in Scott’s rock. These are natural objects and the only rule that holds all of the time is that there are no rules.
For More Information ...
I browsed through the messages that Scott and I exchanged when he made the order and re-discovered a mother lode of polished rocks that a long-time friend posted there under the handle “hypodactylus” at the rocktumblinghobby.com site. Scott wrote that a plug for KinesavaROCKS that hypodactylus left turned him on to my site. (Thank you again, hypodactylus.) The rock pictures that hypodactylus left there are magnificent and worth a look. Hypodactylus also shared some great advice about rock tumbling at the blog I wrote last year about it. Check it out! It’s some of the best advice I’ve seen on the web. And the pictures are pretty great too.
If you want to know more about the rocks that hypodactylus posted, leave a message for me! For example, I know more about the "Golden Swirl" agate now.
I haven't been acquiring rocks as often these days since my 'collection' has become a hoard, but I am still tumbling, cutting, chiseling, etc.
I have been tumbling a lot of material that I found myself out in the west desert, largely as part of an experiment to compare the results of using a couple different grit amounts and tumbling time-frames.
However, I have continued tumbling other rocks (including some from you) in another tumbler. The pigeon blood agate remains one of my favorite types of rocks to see finished!