Couple cool fire agate/chalcedony specimens fresh out of SIO...

[Steve1236]

A couple cool fire agate/chalcedony with druzy quartz crystal clusters in matrix mineral specimens I dug up out at my fire agate spot that just got done cleaning in super iron out, I thought I'd share.

 

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[Kray Gelder]

Nice looking material. Congrats!

 

[dsrtdwg1]

Nice! I went out to Palo Verde today to pick some tumbler material. No big pieces like that, just small stuff that I can load with no fuss. here is 1 piece that I pulled from the tumble pile.ONFIG]1716731[/ATTACH]

 

[Steve1236]

How do you polish your fire agates, I recently bought a tumbler but I haven't gotten around to trying it out yet, I'm thinking pre polish then polish only? I know you dont want to shape them with any course grit if they have fire.

 

[dsrtdwg1]

Steve, I am new to this so other than the little bit i have tumbling my answer is I Dunno! The piece I sorted out yesterday was the first try at hand cleaning. I put a 240 paper drum on my dremel and lightly went over it (wet of course).I may try a few more pieces since they were all destined to be tumbled anyway.

Are you going to try and cut your pieces or leave them as speci?

As I am sure you know , there is plenty of info on cutting them on Youtube.

 

[Steve1236]

Cutting I'm getting good at, I just can't grind for to long, it gives me headaches if I do. I was just curious about using a tumbler, I find pieces with fire close to the surface so I was thinking about tumbling them but I dont want to shape the stone, I want to keep it botryoidal ya know. Anyway I'm sure there is videos on how to polish fire agates specifically, most of those are just specimens, though that first one you could reveal fire around the edges of that rootbeer colored layer and still keep that cool quartz crystal cap on top, that would be a cool specimen, that second one I'm iffy on what to do, I love it as a specimen but you can see that layer from the side with that pink schiller.

 

[dsrtdwg1]

You have some really good looking pieces there. I guess no matter what you do with them you can't lose...they are free for the picking! I would like to see some images with the host rock trimmed away. Most everything I picked up yesterday will go into my Grandsons tumbler.

 

[Steve1236]

Pretty fire agate on matrix I just now saw going through the freshly cleaned bucket and again why I never just toss the rocks before checking all sides when I dig them up, this will make a nice little specimen, the fire can be eye popping but very thin layers which makes it very difficult to cut the material from my spot.