Rockhounding? Anyone here forage for shiny rocks?

I want to try rockhounding.

I did a bit of rockhounding as a kid and teen to gather rocks and fossils for museums and other educational facilities.   If a museum needed some xyz fossils, they would gather some volunteers and one paid person who knew his rocks.  Pay our transport (sometimes) and lunch (usually) and set us loose.  

It was a lot of fun and sometimes we got to keep the lesser specimens.   Possibly some of my favourite nature trips as it speaks to my magpie nature to pick up shiny things and pretty rocks on the beach.  Only we were guided to pick up specific rocks, usually on the beach.  The lecture at the start was usually long and about how NOT to destroy things by digging into cliff faces and the like.

Cleaning the basement, I found one of the old books on local minerals and semi-precious gems easily found in our area.  It's a bit old so I need to double check nothing has changed in our rights and responsibilities when gathering shiny rocks.  And also, I wonder if there are any deeper permaculture implications.

It also looks like a nice way to get mild exercise.  Slow walking, observing, bending down...

Anyway, it's an idea I'm playing with.  Anyone out there rockhound?

I make sure to look for and pick up pretty rocks wherever I go, but I don't know if it counts as rockhounding because I don't really know anything about them. I have a rock tumbler, but I haven't really mastered its use.

Christopher Weeks wrote:I make sure to look for and pick up pretty rocks wherever I go, but I don't know if it counts as rockhounding because I don't really know anything about them. I have a rock tumbler, but I haven't really mastered its use.

Same here. I don't own a rock tumbler but know plenty who get good results and enjoy it.

It can be difficult to go on a "hike" with someone when you're constantly stopping to pick up rocks or look at plants and mushrooms or whatever.

Even though I find all the science stuff fascinating when I learn it, I never cared much about what's called what or any of that. If it looked cool in any way shape or form to me then I tried to save it either by adding to my own squirrel hoard or hiding it nearby somewhere less likely to be destroyed.

I grew up where there are Lake Superior agates everywhere. Along with lots of other ancient glacial till stuff. Lots of cool rocks. As far as the ethics go, even as a kid I felt a bit not cool about removing rocks from the beaches on the north shore.

I don't think I'm really a 'rockhounder', but I do tend to keep my eyes peeled for a lot of forageable things (herbs, mostly), and shiny rocks will often catch my attention. Occasionally, I'll bring one in, often, I'll gift them to family or friends, if it's something I know they're interested in. There are a few that have made it to my own tiny collection - mostly sentimental stuff.

J Katrak wrote:I grew up where there are Lake Superior agates everywhere.

I'm sort of jealous and confounded by this situation. I live a 25 minute drive from Duluth. I've been vacationing up the north shore for 30 years. I've never found a single agate. I'm in an online group dedicated to Lake Superior agates and there are people who find them every week. Either my chain is being yanked or there's something broken in the part of my brain that would find them.

I wonder if I still have a rock tumbler in the basement. I remember being disappointed as the rocks I thought would be most pretty, vanished.  The book says I have to sort by hardness which I didn't know as a kid.

I have done a lot of rock hunting.

I have a box of genstones that I would love to do something with.

One is a star sapphire that can be cut un half to make two pieces of jewelry.

There are websites devoted to advising folks where to hunt.

Christopher Weeks wrote:

J Katrak wrote:I grew up where there are Lake Superior agates everywhere.

I'm sort of jealous and confounded by this situation. I live a 25 minute drive from Duluth. I've been vacationing up the north shore for 30 years. I've never found a single agate. I'm in an online group dedicated to Lake Superior agates and there are people who find them every week. Either my chain is being yanked or there's something broken in the part of my brain that would find them.

That does seem quite strange. Now I'm a bit jealous for how exciting it will be to find your first.

This one was a few years back while broadforking a new spot Polk County WI. The only one I've ever found with some amethyst in it.

The best ones seem to be when you're not looking for them.

r ranson wrote:I wonder if I still have a rock tumbler in the basement. I remember being disappointed as the rocks I thought would be most pretty, vanished.  The book says I have to sort by hardness which I didn't know as a kid.

It is a whole thing. Sort and then many different steps and grits. The people I know are retired. Never got around to it while working.

I sort of like most raw. Can wet them and get a totally different look. Can also mineral oil them for longer different look.

Another one my friend found right on the bank of the St. Croix two years ago. Bigger than anything I or anyone I know has found before. She just stumbled upon it.

She also found this rock that looks just like a bean.

Wow.  That agate looks amazing.  We get it here, but it's rare.  

The geologists that vacation here are very excited about our rocks as a good chunk of the area wasn't part of the last supercontinent.  There are some nifty places we can go to see where our old continent mashes in to parts of Pangaea.

That also means a lot of the common rocks arent here which makes me sad.

r ranson wrote:Wow.  That agate looks amazing.  We get it here, but it's rare.  

The geologists that vacation here are very excited about our rocks as a good chunk of the area wasn't part of the last supercontinent.  There are some nifty places we can go to see where our old continent mashes in to parts of Pangaea.

That also means a lot of the common rocks arent here which makes me sad.

I imagine it felt great to find it.

That's interesting. I saw things in the San Juan islands that I had not seen anything like before. I wonder if that was what was going on. I left it all alone. Seemed to be falling to pieces well enough without my help.

Rocks are pretty neat. Wouldn't be here without em!

I love looking for cool rocks, and have since I was little. I still have little treasures from years back. Some are just cool-looking rocks (lots of heart shaped rocks), some are actually gemstones.

In the picture is an agate I picked up at the beach as a child. There's also a yellow citrine that my Grammie chipped off a boulder at some park on the coast of Oregon. I'm pretty sure she wasn't supposed to do that, but I thought it was so cool to see a citrine growing out in nature.

The little grey rock with white at the tip is selenite. Such a tiny rock has quite the story. Right after I met my (now) husband, we both went to went to a church retreat at Fort Flagler (on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state, not far from the San Juan islands, but not technically on it). While everyone was making random small talk, we both started looking through the parking lot gravel for cool rocks. We found this.

I think that digging through the gravel looking for cool rocks was one of the reasons we realized that we were kindred spirits. We'll have been married 18 years come August! And, we (and our kids) still dig for rocks.

That's a wonderful story of bonding over rocks.

It amazes me how such a small object can gather important memories like that.

I love rocks! When it rains and they are wet and so colorful, it is very hard to resist. In the Cashmere/Wenatchee/Leavenworth, WA area, so much of the local rock has flecks of quartz, iron pyrite, and other shiny sparkles, I would find myself standing in rainshine staring at the driveway. Rock and crystal stores get me all the time, but it is sad that so many have "fake crystals".  I have a dream of going on a rock trip across country to forage for rocks and minerals.

We have lots of pretty rocks in our area along the Ohio River. Actually, we have lots in buckets behind the shed. We have a tumbler that we play with and a smaller bucket of special ones ready for the next step of cutting. In the proper setting along the river many are pre-polished by the sand and waves. I bought my sweetie a rock saw at Christmas that we haven't used yet and I am getting a torch to melt silver.

I've spent only about two weeks along the shores of Lake Superior but have several pretty rocks that I guess must be agates but I'm not up on actual identification of rocks. Last year, we went to a secret place to view the solar eclipse and right after I found a big chunk of what I think is citrine in the creek bed. It has a fracture; one side is cloudy but a piece about the size of a ping pong ball and roughly rectangular is very clear. I intend to practice a long time with the saw before cutting it. I've read that you can get an ultraviolet flashlight and hunt quartz at night because it fluoresces in UV. I want to try that too.

I've never given the tiniest thought about the issue of if it's OK or not to pick up rocks, with one exception. One time a friend and I found a small cave in the mountains and in it there were pure clean quartz crystals sticking out of the roof, the whole thing sparkled in the flashlights. He wanted to break them off and take them. I figured they had been there a very long time and were not ours to take, we almost came to blows over it, but he left them alone.

I have a tile saw, can that work for rocks?  It looks the same as what people are using on youtube, but maybe there is something specific that rocks need?

I cut rocks with a wet-saw intended for tile. I think it wears the blade quite a bit faster than porcelain, but it works fine.

Nice.

I was wondering if a specific blade was needed, but I think the one we have has diamonds on it or something.

My main fear is a hollow or inconsistency in a rock might try to pull it out of my hand...but maybe I am overthinking it.

It looks like the semi-precious gem dallasite is common on some of the beaches around here.  Looks pretty.

If memory serves, there are chemicals they can apply to garnets and things that will show them where to cut to find the star.

I was at the sapphire place in Philipsburg, Montana with the owner's friend, so got a small grand tour. Amazing, the things she had on display. She pointed out that many sapphires were faceted, which focuses on cut rather than the star, so star sapphires were in the minority.


I bought a bag of sand riddled with tiny sapphires from her, and I and my daughter mined sapphires at the kitchen table. We ended up with hundreds of the tiny things. I discovered LED light was the perfect light for finding them.

The whole thing was so much fun, I dived into a little research. I learned that the deep colors were complements of cooking the sapphires, to change their colors.

Anne Miller wrote:I have done a lot of rock hunting.

I have a box of genstones that I would love to do something with.

One is a star sapphire that can be cut un half to make two pieces of jewelry.

There are websites devoted to advising folks where to hunt.

ON A SIDE NOTE:

You don't have to drop hundreds upon hundreds in rock equipment.  A common tile saw with an inexpensive diamond blade bought off the Net will cut rocks just fine.

To extend the life of the blade, set up a hose with adapters so you can trickle water on the cut using that clear vinyl hose, to keep the blade cool.

Too, you can use a regular angle grinder and diamond pads they sell for granite work to polish rocks.  There are even large, but inexpensive grind stones for granite work that can be used to rough shapes in on larger stones.

I've shaped stones using my grinder and concrete flattening heads, then polished them with the pads.

You can buy pads for dry polishing, the cooled pads last FAR longer.

I spent the extra money and bought a variable speed grinder (Makita is a good choice). Having one opens doors to being able to do many things you couldn't do with a 10.000 RPM grinder.

I use diamond router bits to round over scrap granite from granite fabricators. First, I rough it into a bullnose, for example, using the course grind stone, then finish up with the cooled router bit (e.g., a 3/4" roundover bit).

All my wood fence posts have nice looking granite caps that will outlast me and my family.  My deck has outriggers to stabilized the railing runs and I put 6" wide x 20" long caps on them using my pads and grinder.

Larger pieces of granite scraps can be cut all day long using a simple circular saw and cooling the cut. The bearings on a Makita are good enough the water doesn't seem to bother them, but I'm not wild with the water either.

I rescued a planter with an ugly OSB top by cutting a piece of scrap granite into a circle, then polished the edges, all using my angle grinder.

As usual, use all the common sense safety precautions:  Eye protection, mist and dust protection, a GFI for the electric. . . .

If you get a tumbler, don't forget you can make your own genuine fake ocean tumbled glass.

If you have a hammer drill, you can drill many rocks. Some will shatter in the process, but that is less a problem the larger the rocks get.

Cool stuff Kelly!

On a side note, I got sick of forgetting the names of my fruit tree varieties and this spring I found my answer!

Lots of rocks around. Put one by each tree. This one used a Dremel grout removal bit and was some sort of not super hard rock. The diamond bits are likely more useful.

Christopher Weeks wrote:I cut rocks with a wet-saw intended for tile. I think it wears the blade quite a bit faster than porcelain, but it works fine.

r ranson wrote:My main fear is a hollow or inconsistency in a rock might try to pull it out of my hand...but maybe I am overthinking it.

Kelly Craig wrote: You don't have to drop hundreds upon hundreds in rock equipment.  A common tile saw with an inexpensive diamond blade bought off the Net will cut rocks just fine.

My question is what is the best way to secure these rocks while cutting on a wet saw without using hands? Special clamps or?

I don't think I can ever overthink working with power saws. Grinding is fun though. I've done some of that on just a wheel grinder.

To make a straight cut, I rest the rock on the saw's slide, just like I would a tile, then shim it with bits of tile from other jobs as needed. If I'm doing something fancy, I just hold it. The tile saw doesn't really have teeth, it's essentially a grinder anyway. I've never had it catch or pull or anything that felt even slightly risky.

I recommend mindat.org for aspiring rockhounds

They collect information about old mines and places people have listed finding cool minerals at, and publish them for the public. There's a map view that can be very useful.

Mindat can be a great source for finding minerals of interest, although be warned, much of what they list is on private property and might not be accessible. There are sometimes even notes from the people who submitted the mineral reports about access, as well.

Also useful in Ontario is the Crown Land use atlas which can help find publically owned land. Most jurisdictions now have something similar

EDIT: click the big blue button on the following page.

https://www.ontario.ca/page/crown-land-use-policy-atlas

I've never used this website so can't verify the accuracy,  but it seems this map shows crown land in BC.

https://www.crownlandmap.ca/#bc

Christopher Weeks wrote:To make a straight cut, I rest the rock on the saw's slide, just like I would a tile, than then shim it with bits of tile from other jobs as needed. If I'm doing something fancy, I just hold it. The tile saw doesn't really have teeth, it's essentially a grinder anyway. I've never had it catch or pull or anything that felt even slightly risky.

Good to know. Tile saws, especially wet saws, are saws I'm least experienced with. Like most things, once you've done it, you know!

Here's a not very well produced demonstration I just whipped together:



I just barely stopped recording before my wife started asking what I was cutting. :-)

Catie George wrote:I recommend mindat.org for aspiring rockhounds

They collect information about old mines and places people have listed finding cool minerals at, and publish them for the public. There's a map view that can be very useful.

Mindat can be a great source for finding minerals of interest, although be warned, much of what they list is on private property and might not be accessible. There are sometimes even notes from the people who submitted the mineral reports about access, as well.

Also useful in Ontario is the Crown Land use atlas which can help find publically owned land. Most jurisdictions now have something similar

https://www.lioapplications.lrc.gov.on.ca/CLUPA/index.html

I've never used this websit so can't verify the accuracy,  but it seems this map shows crown land in BC.

https://www.crownlandmap.ca/#bc

I got an error from the first link.

The second map with crown land shown looks useful though!

Christopher Weeks wrote:Here's a not very well produced demonstration I just whipped together:

I just barely stopped recording before my wife started asking what I was cutting. :-)

Nice, Thanks!

Much faster and easier cutting than I expected.

Diamond saw blades aren't like blades you'd use to cut metal or wood. They don't have hooked teeth and are, comparatively speaking, smooth. Touching one while running is, at most, likely to burn you. That isn't even likely if there is coolant (i.e., water) running on the blade and cut kerf.

That said, many cuts are made freehand. Many other cuts don't need to be clamped because the thing being cut is so heavy, For example, when I cut granite on my tile saw, it just lies on the tile saw table, and I am the clamp holding it in place. This even when doing MUCH thinner tile.

If you watch enough YouTube type videos, you can see people holding small stones up against the blade to shape it.

If I'm, for example, cutting a circle out of a piece of granite, straightening the edge and so on, I might clamp the workpiece to what I'm cutting it on to keep it from tipping. Of course, that is a matter of running the "saw" (angle grinder) around and around the workpiece, instead of the workpiece through the saw.

If I were cutting small pieces and wanted to hold them in something, I might use one of the clamps I make from scrap wood and flat-stock (plywood). I posted detailed directions on how to make such clamps using a saber saw or a bandsaw on the INSTRUCTABLES web site at:

                 https://www.instructables.com/SMALL-PARTS-HOLDING-CLAMP/

These clamps really are simple to make, and you don't feel too bad if you nick one with a sander, saw or drill bit.

I don't think you have to worry about catches, because the diamond blades are smooth. Even with geodes/thunder eggs. Though, twisting the piece being cut may create enough friction to grab it [and scare the hell out of you, but since the world hell derives from the word Sheol, which is the common grave, that might be a good thing (insert goofy grin here)].

J Katrak wrote:

Christopher Weeks wrote:I cut rocks with a wet-saw intended for tile. I think it wears the blade quite a bit faster than porcelain, but it works fine.

r ranson wrote:My main fear is a hollow or inconsistency in a rock might try to pull it out of my hand...but maybe I am overthinking it.

Kelly Craig wrote: You don't have to drop hundreds upon hundreds in rock equipment.  A common tile saw with an inexpensive diamond blade bought off the Net will cut rocks just fine.

My question is what is the best way to secure these rocks while cutting on a wet saw without using hands? Special clamps or?

I don't think I can ever overthink working with power saws. Grinding is fun though. I've done some of that on just a wheel grinder.

I have always been a Rock Hounder.
There is a mine near my cabin off of Landers Fork., near Lincoln Mt. I’m not sure what kind of mine it was. But, very interested to find out.

Went to the beach with a gemstone in the name, looking for dallacite.  It grows between balsalt (sp?) and together with quartz.  So that's whst to look for,  We managed to find a couple of stones that are a good match, even some with rectangular conglomerate but none with the bright green dallasite rectangles.

And one poor agate.

Clockwise from the agate on the left
Left - agate ish stone
Top - It looks like what I call normal stone with quartz filler and weird rectangles made of more normal stone.  
Right - this is the closest we got but the rectangles are red for some reason and the black line around the rectangles are missing
Bottom - volcanic balsalt and quartz.  That's what we watch for to find the money stone.

Raessayla Vittanna wrote: In the Cashmere/Wenatchee/Leavenworth, WA area, so much of the local rock has flecks of quartz, iron pyrite, and other shiny sparkles...

I was just over here last weekend! Explored some of the "hot spots" off of highway 97. Found some agates, jaspers, and druzy quartz-looking things, but nothing sensational or significantly large.

I've been considering joining a rock and mineral club, if they go on field trips. My girlfriend and I have been hounding for years and gained some experience like that, but it would be great to join a group seasoned veteran hounds and learn some tips.

My home turf.

My in-laws lived at the bridge on Sleepy Hollow. Did a bit of panning there.

That aside, I have a bit of the hound in me. My parents owned the Fort Okanogan Rock and Curio Shop in Brewster, Washington, in partnership with the Shulls, of Brewster, Washington fame fifty plus years back.

We, all, did a bit of wandering in search of agates, geodes and so on.

One time, I wandered up Ice Cycle Canyon, to the south of and heading west out of Leavensworth, Washington. There, it seemed EVERY rock you picked up was riddled with garnets. Tiny ones, but garnets nonetheless.

In the end, Washington is a rock hunter's paradise. We have agates, geodes, Ellensburg blue (including in clam fossils), obsidian, Thurolite, crap jade, a lot of petrified wood, purple crystals. . . .

Raessayla Vittanna wrote:I love rocks! When it rains and they are wet and so colorful, it is very hard to resist. In the Cashmere/Wenatchee/Leavenworth, WA area, so much of the local rock has flecks of quartz, iron pyrite, and other shiny sparkles, I would find myself standing in rainshine staring at the driveway. Rock and crystal stores get me all the time, but it is sad that so many have "fake crystals".  I have a dream of going on a rock trip across country to forage for rocks and minerals.

One of my early memories is on the way to a holiday and looking for special stones in the bed of a river. Lots of quartz 'diamonds' gathered on a treasure island! I still have a random collection of pretty or interesting stones gathered through the years.
I don't much care whether they are of value, but it would be interesting to know more about the minerals they may be and how they have formed. Here the rock is volcanic basalt, with nodes of quartz and zeolites forming interesting pockets where the gas bubbles of the volcano left voids since filled with white crystals. Bubbles of iron rich magma solidfied as 'dragon eggs' with flaky skins looking like iron scale.
Further South  on Skye the island is more pink granite. These are the last rocks collected when my friend was visiting and we spent some time on a beach at the South end. Some lovely pink rocks, one with black needle crystals, and a couple of just tactile pebbles.

The saw in this YouTube video is like the one we got and haven't used yet. Starting four minutes in he is cutting what he said are Lake Superior agate stones. They look just like some of the rocks we find by the Ohio river and the ones he is cutting is the size I mostly hunt for.

We also find lots more crystal-like rocks that I think are quartz, some are very transparent. There are lots of brown, tan, and white ones in all shades. Nice translucent yellow is a bit less common, pink even more so. Darker red is even more rare and green of any intensity is the holy grail.

If this little saw will cut our rocks as easily as in that video and I get a torch to melt silver, I can make all kinds of cool stuff.

Is quartz and agate basically the same thing?

Mark Reed wrote:The saw in this YouTube video is like the one we got and haven't used yet. Starting four minutes in he is cutting what he said are Lake Superior agate stones. They look just like some of the rocks we find by the Ohio river and the ones he is cutting is the size I mostly hunt for.

We also find lots more crystal-like rocks that I think are quartz, some are very transparent. There are lots of brown, tan, and white ones in all shades. Nice translucent yellow is a bit less common, pink even more so. Darker red is even more rare and green of any intensity is the holy grail.

If this little saw will cut our rocks as easily as in that video and I get a torch to melt silver, I can make all kinds of cool stuff.

Is quartz and agate basically the same thing?

Green does seem to be a rarer color for sure. I like that dallasite that r ranson showed us.

I believe that agates are mostly colored versions of quartz. I've heard it described as contaminated quartz as to what causes the different colors. The thing I know for sure is that I'm no expert.

edit* we have something called carnelian which I would have called a orangish quartz but is actually chalcedony.  Could be some of that in some agates too. Amethyst is just purple quartz with a cool name.

Our tsunami advisory just lifted.  Looks like we had some unusual current and swells, nothing wavy.   Low tide is this afternoon.  Might be worth heading to the beach to look for rocks.  Sadly, it's not much lower than high tide right now, but still...worth a gander?