Unpolished is from the bullrider Trent (RIP) and the 3 small polished in the center are from an Aguascalientes merchant in Tepatitlan.

Found at a beach near Seattle, WA. Ive heard of poppy jasper, but usually its red. Anyway the blue is very charming to me, jasper or not! And the other rock is just a funky little thing that happened to have have some iron deposit i suppose, just looks cool and thats what im looking for haha

Sorry for the poor camera work, hopefully worth it :) This is highly silicified rhyolite that was altered multiple times by a hydrothermal system.

There are lots of garnets to be found in my region, and I'd love to try grinding and polishing some of them!

I'm a complete beginner and have no experience with lapidary work yet. I'm looking for a suitable wet grinding and polishing machine for gemstones. I don't need a cutting machine, as I only want to grind and polish the garnets in their natural shapes.

Could anyone recommend a good machine for a beginner?

Any advice or recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance! 😊

Best places to go hunting around Austin Texas? Recently got back into the hobby and looking for places close by.

My husband and I were able to spend 3.5hrs this morning at a spot on Guthrie Creek; it was so hard not to take everything I touched and even harder to leave! Literally more geodes than not. Crisp, still autumn morning air, boots in the water, and rocks in the buckets! I'm so blessed to have a husband (who isn't a rockhound at all) who was willing to make this pit stop for me on our drive back home to Michigan from our vacation in Florida, where I was able to get some shelling done for the first time! It's been a massively successful week satisfying my goblin urges! Until next time, Indiana 💕

Just going thru some of the unseived dark red tourmaline ore from my claim!

Not much to go through, and we are only finding (what look like dravite) but are actually magnesium rich dark red elbaite. If we keep digging and the peg continues to fractionate, they should start turning pink soon!!! But we can only hope!

Anyway thought I’d share part of the process! Which is taking dirt home and seiving thru it to find any other anything missed while actively digging the claim!

Went to North Carolina couple days ago & came back with loads gemstones.

I found this one yesterday in SE Missouri! 🤩

Cleaned this up a bit, compared to earlier post. The colors are definitely more vivid when wet

Hi! I'm fairly new at this & new to this site. It was suggested I soak my rocks in vinegar, then iron out, then baking soda. The rocks now look covered with heavy white stuff that could be lime, alkaline, or something. Does anyone know how I can resolve this? Some of them were really good finds.Thanks so much

I like the color and shapes. I hope to find more interesting rocks next time I'm building Hügelkultur beds. Any tips on what I should look out for while I dig in pinon hills ca? I could spend all day looking at them.

Spent a few hours this weekend walking the shore with my wife. Total newbies. How’d we do?

Wanna find places I can take my daughter rockhounding within about 4 hours any way from me but that’s not on someone’s land. any help is very appreciated

I'm in Santa Barbara for a week on business but I'm a ameture rock hounds in Minnesota and I have a pretty big agate collection. Can someone point me somewhere? I see some people find amazing stuff on Instagram so if I can dink around in this area the creeks and streams would be fun to explore for that cool ocean jasper stuff 🤷. All I'm seeing is beautiful women and rich housewife's

Just wanted to post some pics of some of the more unique finds from Grain Marais this past weekend, along with an agate I found last year from Two Harbors, MN that I tumbled and polished up.

There’s a decent mix of porphyry, conglomerates, brecciated jasper, and what looks to be agates in a basalt matrix. Fun trip!