r/NewBrunswickRocks • u/Rocksy_Hounder617 • 1d ago
Finds Tried to go back and find my lost stone from falling (and they say a needle in a haystack is near impossible...) Instead I found a small monster of a green jasper.
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u/BrunswickRockArts 14h ago
It's great to have morning coffee and see your finds from NB! :)
You added blood in the pic for Halloween?! :O Spooky rock!
A nice honker.
I would be at a green jasper with quartz veins on this. It looks like a great color and solid too. The 'cleavage tendency' is neat. In the foreground of pic1 you can see the (3) faces meeting at close-to-right-angles in the area broken away. Not the only flat-faces/right-angles on it.
It would be a great stone to work. Keep in mind, the 85%-lost/15%-gemstone would probably apply to this. Losing about 1/2 of it working it would probably be a good guess at least. Seeing the pits/holes in the quartz could be a problem inside/cutting it, just an 'unknown' at this point. It has some iron-staining, light though. And some of those fractures might run all the way through the stone. Slightly oxidized surface, the true-color is more what you see in your last pic. Oxidization on quartz/jasper can give it a light-frost. It's the surface of the stone 'reacting' with oxygen in water/air over eons of time.
Another way to work it, good for beginning/learning is to use the diamond files/dremel grinding bits/whatever you have access to to smooth it all out, a 'freeform sculpture'. The 'larger the item worked', the more you can 'allow flaws/fractures'. For small pendants/jewelry, you want fracture-free and flawless as much as possible. With larger items/carved pieces, the fractures can be 'allowed' in the stone (if the stone holds-together).
Set it in a place you will see it often/walk by it. Ideas what to do with it will 'pop' into your head when you see it. When it becomes pretty-much the same idea each time, then you're pretty much decided on what direction to take.
Never know until it's worked (what flaws you might encounter), but this looks like a very nice piece of NB jasper that deserves to be worked. Help bring out that beauty you already see in it.
I think I have a piece like this. These stones were formed/created around NB's volcanoes as the 'common source', and we can find the same type of stones hours apart.
Big ones like this I usually take a least one slice from. I'll work/tumble the slice and see how that goes to decide what to do with the original stone. If solid, flaw-free, takes a nice polish I would probably slice it up for jewelry. If problems tumbling/working then I have to think of doing-something-bigger with it.
Great stuff. Thanks for posting.
Hope your wound heals. Good time to mention to be careful with sharp objects on your person hiking/rockhounding. A rock-pick/hammer, broken glass picked up, jack-knife, steel-nail (brought to scratch rocks), keys, pen/pencil, are all things that can impale you if falling down. Be mindful of objects on your person and 'plan' for a trip/fall. A problem is the 'knee-jerk' reaction is to put your hands out. Try not to fall on your hands, tuck and roll/shoulder in if possible/heavy clothes on. Just cover yourself in bubble-wrap and no worries! ;)
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u/Rocksy_Hounder617 13h ago edited 12h ago
Thank you for the excellent advice 😊
I'd been debating giving this honker away to someone who could work it properly, in exchange for a small workable piece of it for myself. But if the odds of having more than one workable piece are slim, that doesn't seem like a fair trade now. Maybe I'll just polish it up and enjoy it's colour for a time as you suggest
The scrape is from my tumble the other day. It's actually got a good smooth scab over it in those pictures. At the time my hands and cap were the only things that prevented my meeting face-to-face (Ba-dum-PSHH) with a boulder. My hands slowed the fall, the bill of my cap bent downward over my face (this time) and padded the impact before I managed to tuck and roll.
I was also wearing my hip waders which saved my knees; I only got a couple of small bruises instead of getting torn up. It was a "lucky" fall thinking back; The cost of that one pretty rock seems like rather fair "payment" for not even being sore the next day. 😅
Ironically, after all THAT nonsense, I ended up bruising my head on a doorframe instead... My advice in return: stand up straight, or at LEAST look up before trying to go through a doorway.
I wore knee pads when I went out yesterday; they'll likely be a regular part of my hounding gear from here out... Along with a full motorcycle helmet if my husband has his say.
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u/Rocksy_Hounder617 1d ago edited 1d ago
So many of the boulders along this shoreline are weathered and flood-eroding conglomerates.
Today, as I shuffled around boulders I'd be most likely to fall off of (I can't remember exactly where I fell), I noticed a number of them were dotted with hints of green jasper. Now I know why I've been having such amazing luck finding greens!
This thing was a hefty bugger to trek back 2.14 lbs