See attached flyer for dates and times and $1.00 off coupon. Show-Me Rockhounds will have tables with Great finds from mineral specimens, geodes, flint knapped projectile points, pre-forms/blanks, agate slabs, cut and polished agates, tumbled rocks, jewelry and more. There will be a Tribute to a Former member, and the Mary Bergman Hamilton Book of Minerals will be offered for sale. Hope to see you there!
Agate slab clock, seen at the Fall Gem and Mineral Show 2016. Photo by Stephanie Reed
We hope you are having fun at the show. Don’t forget to set your clocks forward 1 hour for Daylight Savings Time.
Special guest article from Show-Me Rockhounds club members Dan and Connie Snow
Group picture of Fairburn agates – Dan Snow
Fairburn agates are a form of microcrystalline chalcedony, 100% silicon dioxide with a hardness of 6 ½ to 7 on the Mohs scale. They are also called fortification agates because of their banding. They were formed approximately 300 million years ago in an ancient limestone bed of an inland sea. To hunt Fairburn agates requires looking at every rock and turning many with a rock pick. It is strictly surface hunting no digging, mining, cracking or breaking rocks. The photos shown are exactly the way the agates were found, with no cutting, polishing or tumbling having been done.
Frog Rock – Dan Snow
Fairburn Agates found by Dan and Connie Snow. Collected from the Fairburn Agate beds of South Dakota and the Oglala National Grasslands in Nebraska.
Photo by Stephanie Reed
We interrupt the Spring Gem and Mineral Show to remind you to set your clock forward one hour tonight for Daylight Savings Time.
This clock is from the collection of David Reed. It contains agates, Apache tears (obsidian), a craft store clock kit, and lots of resin. It looks pretty good with his other rock clock.
Have you ever seen dyed agates and wondered how they get such brilliant colors? The process is more simple than you might think. A company buys banded agates in bulk and soaks the slabs in certain chemicals for a certain amount of time (in a fume hood of course). Heat treating may also be required.
But how do they preserve the white stripes that make the agates look like agates? This is simply because some bands are porous and will absorb the dye, but the denser layers and the quartz crystals will remain white because they are too dense to absorb the dye.
(Note: To discourage you from trying this at home, I’m not going to specify the concentrations.)
Red: Iron (II) nitrate for several weeks folllowed by heating to 300° C
Green: Potassium chromate followed by ammonium carbonate plus heating to 440° C
Blue: Potassium ferrocyanide followed by ferrous sulfate
Black: soak in sugar for 3 weeks followed by sulfuric acid for 3 weeks
We had fun selling and buying specimens at the gem show. If you missed it, here are some of the things you can expect to find at a show.
An overview of the whole show. Photo by Stephanie Reed
This year we sold books about rocks and where to find them, including the highly desired Gemstones of North America by John Sinkankas.
Mark selling minerals.
President Martin and Webmistress Stephanie looking at an aquamarine. Photo by David Reed
This jar of tumbled chips of Lake Superior agates was part of a kit for making a gem tree, sold by the Show-Me Rockhounds. Photo by Stephanie Reed
Polished spheres made of minerals from Dave’s Rocks and Carvings (Hamburg, MI). I see rose quartz, tiger’s eye, sodalite, and snowflake obsidian. Can you name all the minerals?
Mineral specimens for sale from Dave’s Rocks and Carvings (Hamburg, MI) Photo by David Reed
Gem shows always have lots of jewelry for sale, usually organized by mineral. This is an entire box full of rings made with blue larimar sold by Manichia LLC (Kansas City, MO). Blue larimar is a type of volcanic pectolite found in the Dominican Republic.
Glass beads for sale at Park Design (St. Joseph, MO). You can even watch the beads being made. They can also be found at the Three Trails Trading Post in Independence, MO.
Photo by Vítězslav Snášel, http://www.mindat.org/article.php/885/Agates+-+hidden+beauty
This pattern in this agate from the Czech Republic looks like pussy willows in the spring. What do you think it looks like?
Smiley face agate photo by Cobalt123 from https://flic.kr/p/dVdpEA
An agate dressed up for Halloween, hanging out at the Tucson Rock and Gem Show 2013. Thanks for following us all the way through Agate Month and learning all about these beautiful minerals!
If you’d like to see a list of even more types of agates, go here: http://stoneplus.cst.cmich.edu/agate.htm
Photo by Jerry Schaber at http://www.agateoftheworld.com/timan2.html
Shadow agates are hard to photograph, because it’s more of an effect. When you move shadow agates back and forth, you can see deep, dark areas that appear to move. They look like they are deep inside the stone.
These aren’t technically types of agate according to Mindat, but sometimes they will be described this way in rock shops or on rockhound websites. And these pictures are so great I couldn’t possibly pass them up. An agate with red, orange, or yellow plumes in just the right arangement can be called a flame agate, because it looks like fire.
Photo by Vítězslav Snášel from http://www.mindat.org/photo-114774.html
Frost agate describes the cracked finish on these beads (again, it’s not a mineralogical term). They can also be called cracked agate. The frost effect is heightened when they are blue. Whatever they are, I would totally wear earrings made with these beads.
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