In 2008 or 2009 my then-girlfriend and I purchased the only old collection that
K&K Earthwerks ever purchased. It was small by old collection standards and was all that remained of the collection of an old rockhound and lapidary couple whose daughter then-living in
Atascadero, CA, sold to us. During their lives the old couple had been members of the now-defunct(and still-defunct)
Estero Bay Gem & Mineral Club. This collection contained a lot of leverite (leave-'er-right there) but there were some nice finds contained therein as well. One of them was a half-cut
biconoid from
Templeton, CA, from right in the middle of the now-legendary
Twin Cities Hospital collecting zone now mostly covered by development. I held onto this piece keeping it as a yard rock but recently asked a fellow member of the
Santa Lucia Rockhounds, to wit,
Galen Moyer, to polish it for me which he did a fabulous job of and what this revealed within the stone blew me away: silica tubes!
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| All photos by Kim Patrick Noyes (all rights reserved). |
Can't stop looking at this. It's not just rocks-it's art. WOW! *blink blink*
ReplyDeletePS Downloaded them... going to put my spin on them... lol
ReplyDeleteLin, I'm glad you like it and I can't wait to see your spin of the biconoid and of this stone as well.
DeleteAmazing. I have never seen anything like it. Were the tubes visible before you polished it?
ReplyDeleteThe tubes were somewhat visible when the cut face was wetted but not nearly as well as after the polishing was completed.
Deletethey are absolutely beautiful... Patrick I know it's not any of our business, but, I really wonder how much something like this would cost? the tubes are remnants of tube worms...? so they are from some ancient sea bed?
ReplyDeletewhen You find something this great does it make you want to cut and polish every multilayer stone or rock?? I would... so great to be able to share something so marvelous with us thank you...
Scotty, I have no idea how much I paid for this as it was but one stone out of a whole collection or what was left of one that cost me and my then-girlfriend several hundred dollars as I recall. This material was formed when the area this stone formed was underwater and in a subduction zone and the tubes are simply silica formations and have nothing to do with any worms.... this would have formed underground and underwater in at first a volcanic setting when cristobolite formed in a rhyolite instead of obsidian and later the cristobolite was pseudomorphed by SiO2.
DeleteI would not want to cut a specimen like this to be quite honest... these biconoids, especially of this quality, are rather rare and there is talk about this going on display at the Pioneer Museum in Paso Robles, CA.
)h I totally understand not wanting to cut, didn't mean that. If I found something like what you have shared I would be living out of my pick-up digging and scratching for dust and stones, they do look like some you might use in jewelery... My step dad and I made several conference tables in the early sixties with lots of beautiful polished stones laid in resin... One table was over 40 feet load in some law firm in San Francisco... we worked none stop on it for 72 hrs + ... was Beautiful, 6-8 inches thick and we polished and milled the total surface on site... The thing I loved was the color of those rocks and stones.... I have wished I had about 6' of the table...
ReplyDelete