The post Product Review: Cut That Agate- Speedy Tumble Rapid Refil Kit – Tumble Stone Polish Kit appeared first on Where to Find Rocks.
]]>Speedy Tumble is a product released by Cut That Agate that provides the rough material and everything you need to tumble a wide variety of stones to a high, professional looking finish in under 1 month time. The only thing not provided are the tumbler itself, water, and optional Ivory soap. In essence, it is the fast food of tumbling- an inexpensive, highly consistent product that can be made in a comparatively short time. Unlike fast food, the quality of the product is great and I am very satisfied with the fact that there were probably over 50 different kinds of rough in my assortment. You get 4 pounds total. Speedy Tumble also includes a bag of one pound of premier material too. I think my bag had some almandine garnet. I think it’s amazing what they give you for only $30!!
To test Speedy Tumble, I decided to take the minimal amount of time it instructed to tumble for. So from start to finish, three weeks and one day total time. For my tumbler, I decided to use the most convenient option I could find. That meant I decided to take a trip down to my local Harbor Freight and purchase their Chicago Electric 3lb. rotary rock tumbler. It proved to be surprisingly well made, rigid, and perfect for getting the results I desired. Definitely a surprise.
I decided to leave some headspace in the tumbler barrel, and filled it about two thirds of the way with stones from the set that I lightly prewashed. It’s a bad idea to totally fill the barrel, so the stones can move freely and let the grit work them.
I added about 3.5 tablespoons of 400 grit, added some water, sealed the drum, released pressure after 3 hours, then tumbled for one week uninterrupted.
One week later I opened the barrel, placed the rough in a strainer and carefully rinsed off the grit. The material is looking nicer!
Getting more tumbled! I washed this material well and then added about half the envelope of cerium oxide powder and more water.
After a week with cerium oxide, I washed the material well and added a small chunk of Ivory soap and tumbled with a little water to get a higher gloss. There you have it! It’s finished! Let’s take a look:
Here is a handful of the beautifully glossy finished product. Ready to go for a craft project or just to enjoy!
Summary: Overall I really like Speedy Tumble and I think the value is amazing. Not only do they do the dirty work for you, but they include the grits you need to finish the job. You get a ton of material and the quality is great. I found many semiprecious stones in my assortment including amethyst, rutilated quartz, agate, sodalite, and turquoise. The only thing I can really criticize is I wish the premier material was something a little more colorful, but I can’t even really complain because of how well executed everything else was. Great job on making an interesting product for all ages, Speedy Tumble
PAID CONTENT – This Article is a paid review and contains links to Amazon to purchase the product.
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]]>The post The Collection of Southern Califonia Collector – Kay Robertson, and how to own a piece of hers for your very own appeared first on Where to Find Rocks.
]]>PRESS RELEASE –
We are very proud and HONORED to announce our largest Collection Acquisition to date, and maybe ever!
We have just reached a deal to share with you the personal collection of Kay Robertson – a literal “treasure trove” of specimens, many of which were not seen by but a few other collectors for 50 years!
We just listed the first group of auctions here: http://bit.ly/mineralman
Kay Robertson built an amazingly diverse collection over nearly 90 years of collecting, from a time when so much was available on the mineral market that is simply gone now. The breadth and depth of her collection is hard to equal, almost impossible going forward. She had long planned to donate her collection, but has now decided to sell it and share her life’s passion with the world of collectors in a special deal structured to let us offer most of the pieces for sale at auction, so different from how the important collections are normally dispersed quietly and under the table by the big dealers. Her attitude is that, if it must sell, to share it with the largest number of collectors possible, and to archive online all the information she has collected on mineral specimens since the 1930s.
The collection has old classics, old localities, and a stunning variety of species – over 12,000 pieces! It was simply too big for any one dealer to handle. We struck a deal to handle several thousand specimens from the collection over the next 3-5 years, and have now made our first selection of 500 rare and valuable old specimens that we will be listing throughout the upcoming weeks and months! These old classics will be exclusively available only through our auctions on eBay and through fellow dealer Rob Lavinsky of The Arkenstone, with whom we partnered with on this collection! We each picked specimens from the first few cabinets of the collection, and then put the rest in storage for now so that more fresh pieces can come out in parcels over the next few years for our customers to enjoy!
Click here to see the first group of specimens up for auction: http://bit.ly/mineralman
I HIGHLY recommend reading the Mineralogical Record feature about this amazing woman’s remarkable life and career in collecting here: http://www.mineralogicalrecord.com/pdfs/Kay%20Robertson%20Collection.pdf
You can read about the trip to pack the collection and the reasons for its sale, here: http://www.irocks.com/kay-robertson-a-treasure-in-the-mineral-collecting-world/
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]]>The post Franklin New Jersey, a Mineral Wonderland appeared first on Where to Find Rocks.
]]>Instead of us rehashing the subject, we want to showcase the four videos that have been produced to talk about the project and the subject. We are sure you’ll want to pick up the book when it is released – until then, enjoy these videos! If you enjoy them, please leave a comment on the videos and give them a thumbs up.
Franklin Video 1
Franklin Video 2
Franklin Video 3
Franklin Video 4
You will be sure to find out when the book is released as we will be certain to tell you here on WhereToFindRocks.com!
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]]>The post Glenn Rhein’s Amazing Mineral Discovery in Amity New York appeared first on Where to Find Rocks.
]]>While we were going over this subject, we got to talk about how excited we were for Glenn Rhein to show off his mineral finds from his property in Amity, New York. Huge Scapolite crystals, Spinel and all sorts of wild things are being found and will be on display at the NY/NJ show in April 2013.
This video documents the recent discovery of new minerals from Glenn Rhein in the classic locality of Amity, New York, near Warwick. Glenn discovers amazing crystals while excavating on his property, and reaches out to the mineral community for help in figuring out what they are. Glenn then becomes an expert in the deposit and starts finding amazing minerals. Produced and documented by Hershel Friedman of Minerals.net, and filmed by Mark Gilden of Rombus Digital.
Great Video showing the Amazing Finds by Glenn Rheim in Upstate New York!
We hope you enjoyed that video, be sure to share it with your friends. It would even make a great video to show your rock club next time a speaker is unavailable! Thanks to Minerals.net for making this video and promoting a great story! We are looking forward to more videos from minerals.net
Thanks for visiting Wheretofindrocks.com!
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]]>The post Rockhounding 101 – How to REALLY FIND minerals and rocks! appeared first on Where to Find Rocks.
]]>While many websites will tell you about what tools you need and speak of rock hammers, backpacks and boots, our #1 tool is knowledge. First hand, published and in modern mythic tales, obtaining information about locations is something that is the first step to find out as much as possible about a location before ever visiting it.
Field Guides are a great resource, as well as magazines focused on rockhounding, from now all the way back into the beginning of the 20th century! Old magazines like “Rockhounds” and “The Mineralogist” are great resources, as well as old and current issues of “Rocks and Minerals” and “Rock and Gem”. All of these can be found for sale on eBay and at various mineral shows around the united states. You never know when you are going to come across a great article about a location you had JUST heard about! One of the most amazing online databases is the complete run of “American Mineralogist” on http://www.minsocam.org/msa/ammin/toc/
The older issues have articles that have lead me to locations that might have been completely forgotten about.
Mindat.org is an amazing database that many of you are already familiar with, however, we often forget to think about just how amazing this database is, including lists of references for corresponding articles and books about the subject.
Geology Departments of the state you live in or adjacent to you, has produced several state reports on mines and minerals, which will often include information that can be very useful now. In the early 1900’s, feldspar was an important commodity, unlike now. Knowledge of mineral deposits will tell us commercial feldspar deposits also had garnets and schorl tourmaline, sometimes quartz or even topaz. Often an entire hardcover book has been produced, detailing the minerals and the locations they are found, across the state. California has at least THREE editions of this kind of text and I’m sure there are several people planning the next edition.
Road Atlas are great to have when you are planning and while you are en route. I personally love the DeLorme series, nice large print maps that have helped guide me to countless locations. The BLM has a program you can use, the LR2000, but my personal favorite database is the MRDS, Mineral Resource Data System, detailing the principal and secondary ore and location of all working, placed and closed mines and mineral locations. Just load the map and locate your location. I think you’ll be surprised what you might not know about the mines in your proximity. While traveling through Utah and Colorado, our Road Map was invaluable, showing BLM land that was open for public camping.
Clubs are a real mixed bag, but as such, you will inevitably come across information from all directions. Both of my favorite beach and fossil collecting spots were told to me by a lady at the Searcher’s Rock Club in Anaheim California. Right now in 2013, I’m cleaning minerals and going field collecting with a friend I made from attending the Culver City Club back in 2004. That is a collecting friend who has gone on dozens of collecting trips with me over 9 years. I’ve learned about so many parts of this hobby from mineral clubs and it has been an enlightening experience in many ways. You can get a complete list of mineral clubs here.
We loved this idea so much, we made it. The Mineral Search Page located Right Here on WheretoFindRocks.com, is something that we made from our LOVE of the general searches for states, countries and forms on eBay. The idea behind this is that if you check out the eBay results for your state, or general area, you’ll come across people who have gone out collecting at public locations and put something on eBay. This can easily lead you to general areas to collect minerals. It is a great first step in researching current producing locations.
Museums and local collections are great resources. You’ll find the museums thing to be easy, if not a long term task. Searching out collections, both old and current, are wonderful sources of information. For instance, if you wanted a good run down of California locations, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles has an entire wall devoted to very beautiful representations of our state, as well as the California Mining Museum in Mariposa. I LOVED the Wagner Free Institute which had this amazing OLD collection, untouched for a century. In the same vein, the Natural History museum of Prague featured minerals that had not been updated in decades, revealing a great deal of history that is so often removed from the more mainstream commercial museums. Local collections require a bit more finesse and luck. For example, getting to visit private collections can be mind expanding, as many long time private collectors have seen things that were so common for a small amount of time and now virtually unheard of. However, without some sort of recommendation from someone of some sort of personal relation ship with a private collector, most of them are not exactly looking for random visitors. However, if you had been a member of the Mineralogical Society of Southern California, you would have had the chance to visit with several outstanding collections belonging to members of that club. Which takes us back to Mineral Clubs, and why it is a wise idea to be involved with at least one of them.
Going to mineral shows is a great source of information, as the display cases often reveal locations that are open to collection. In fact, the name tags in the cases often match up to the club member’s name tags, the people running the mineral show, and often you can strike up a conversation about their display case.
Libraries all around have lead me to some wild collecting adventures. Your local library is going to have a couple things for sure, often books about the geology of the area, as well as a collection of the state’s publications on geological topics. A great for instance is back in the very beginning of my collecting days, some friends of mine discovered the 1962 edition of “Mineral Collecting in Pennsylvania”, which drove us in a search for the “Azurite” included quartz crystals of Kunkletown. The book was wrong, but there is nothing wrong with Anatase included Quartz, which we found. My most recent discovery of Lawsonite on the beaches of Southern California due to a geological sand sample report. You can read all about that in my upcoming blog entry.
Google Maps and Google Earth are to powerful tools that everyone has at their fingertips. You can do amazing amounts of research with both of these tools, locating mineral locations right down to their visible mine tailings! Understanding the various uplifts, errosion patterns, depressions and faint roads to nowhere are very useful for today’s mineral collector. A simple test, pick your favorite collecting area and look at it on google earth. You will see things you might have never noticed on foot.
Now, my secrets are revealed to you. I hope you use them wisely!
I want to leave you with this note, written by Rock Currier in the publication, “About Mineral Collecting” released by the Mineralogical Record.
Field collectors are a remarkable and accomplished breed. They are perhaps the rarest and purest kind of mineral collectors. They hearken back to the very beginnings of what we now call the earth sciences, and in many ways they embody the simple thrill and youthful joy of the treasure hunt. If you look you will find them “out there” trekking over just one more mountain, digging down just another foot, and hoping for just a little bit longer that they will find something. But remember, the first law of field collecting states: “The best to be found is still in the ground and the best that has been found has be ground!” (that is, ground up into powder in the mill and processed into metal)
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]]>The post 2012 Christmas Gifts: Ideas for the Rockhounds in your life! appeared first on Where to Find Rocks.
]]>The post Top 10 Mineral Dealers on eBay 2012 appeared first on Where to Find Rocks.
]]>#10 – Heliodor
Three generations of the mineral dealers, Star and Elena Van Scriver have a wide variety of minerals available. Specializing in Russian minerals and Moroccan minerals, this store has over 4,000 items to chose from, mostly as store items with buy it now pricing. You can view their store by clicking this link.
Missouri Calcite Cluster with Chalcopyrite from Heliodor
#9 – Benson’s Collectibles
Alan Benson has been selling minerals on eBay for several years, helping to finance his college studies. That’s right, this man helped pay for his textbooks with eBay! He has a fine selection of minerals from worldwide locations, with a focus on New Jersey minerals, as he is close to the locations. You can view his store by clicking this link.
Fine Tourmaline Crystal from California from Alan Benson Collectable Land
#8 – ScepterGuy
Joe George is an avid Quartz miner. The crystals he has dug out of the ground have made it into magazines, museums and fine collections around the world. Crazy scepters and amethyst from Hallelujah Junction, fascinating terminations and twinning in specimens from Washington state, this man does the hard work to rescue these crystals from the mountain! Not only does he have a fine mix of specimens, people love his acrylic bases and mineral tack, something somewhat hard to find. You can view his store by clicking this link.
Pink Fluorite on Matix from France from Scepter Guy
#7 – Meryln8804
Christopher Stefano is a recent graduate, another self supporting college student for a time. Now he does his ebay and website while working two jobs and raising a newborn! What a guy, because his store is constantly full of great mineral, with a focus in the unique and uncommon minerals of the world. As a specialist in Michigan minerals, if you are looking for an interesting mineral from that area, contact Chris! You can view his store by clicking this link.
Copper Crystals from Michigan from Merlyn8804
#6 – JMineral
A bad reputation is being cast on many Chinese dealers, as fake and treated minerals are common in many of their eBay stores. JM Mineral is an extreme exception to this, with amazing minerals, popping up on eBay often WELL before any American ever lays eyes on them! The new finds out of Mongolia has made this dealer shine! You can view the store by clicking this link.
Green Quartz Cluster from JMineral
#5 – Crystal Springs Minerals
Crystal Springs focus is South African and Namibian minerals. With so much to chose from in that area of the world, Crystal Springs Minerals is a great source from that area of the world. A richly stocked eBay store and constant restocking has made them a favorite dealer to buy from! People love their red quartz, green fluorite, gem crystals and interesting minerals from the Kalahari. You can view his store by clicking this link.
Ajoite inclusion in Quartz from South Africa sold by Crystal Springs Minerals
#4 – Open Adit
Open Adit is a fine dealer of LARGE minerals and FRESH imports. Evolving over time, the minerals have always been FINE and amazingly inexpensive! As importers of hundreds of thousands of minerals, Open Adit has found a great way to make large sized cabinet specimens available to the public by presenting them online. Weekly auctions and tons to chose from, if you need a colorful addition to your collection or a display piece, Open Adit is the place to go! You can view the store by clicking this link.
Green Fluorite Cluster from South Africa sold by Open Adit
#3 – Globe Minerals
Nik, the man behind the operations at Globe Mineral, has a FINE eye for natures beauty. One thing for sure, there is rarely a specimen that we would not like to have for our collection here at WheretoFindRocks.com! Colorful, bold and hand picked, Nik travels around the world hand picking selections to showcase on eBay. As eBay is Globe Minerals main distribution source, there is nothing held back, everything fine is presented on eBay and his customer service is top notch! You can view his store by clicking this link.
Vanadinite Cluster from Morocco sold by Globe Minerals
#2 – Jewel’s Fine Minerals
It has been a beautiful experience to watch this ebay dealer constantly improving the quality of the minerals, photos and service. It is almost impossible to imagine that Jewel’s Fine Minerals can get much better. A wide variety of minerals, this dealer is constantly traveling to mineral shows, buying collections and sniffing out all the great minerals to present to the public on eBay. The large amount of store items, weekly auctions and great attention to quality minerals makes Jewel’s Fine Minerals one of the accounts to constantly keep checking out! You can view his store by clicking this link.
Calcite and Fluorite from USA sold by Jewel’s Fine Minerals
AND, as a result of all the activity and customer feedback to The-Vug.com in 2012, the #1 Mineral Dealer on eBay…
#1 – Mineral Man 999
Mineralman999, Jasun and Mandy McAvoy, are legendary sellers of minerals on eBay. For good reason! They have had mineral auctions, ALL of them, starting at .99 cents, every week for over 7 years. Sometimes the sales prices of these minerals are in the THOUSANDS of dollars, but they ALWAYS start at .99 cents! Fantastic photos, minerals from all over the world, there is not a week that goes by that we do not find at LEAST one mineral that would be something worth fighting over! Classic minerals, new finds, gem crystals, gold, crazy locality specimens. MineralMan is THE place to visit each and every week. His #1 status is well deserved! You can view his store by clicking this link.
Gold Crystal from Venezuela sold by Mineralman999
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