Friday, April 21, 2017

Yachats rocks

In the Cape Perpetua visitor center I learned that the volcanic rock on the Oregon coast is full of agates. As streams and waves wear down the rock the agates break free and wash up on the beach. You can find them among the rocks as the tide goes out. So while Nick perused the tidepools I scoured the gravel for anything vaguely translucent. 

By the end of our time in Yachats I had a pretty good handful of potential agates. Nick got me a rock tumbler for an early birthday present so I could polish them up. It seems that people generally polish rocks in four stages: gross shaping, minor shaping, pre-polish, and polish. I decided to skip the gross shaping step to keep my rocks in more irregular beachy shapes. The trade-off is that some of them would retain pits and depressions that won't polish up that well. I took photos before and after, because science. I think they came out pretty well. Each square in the pictures below is 1" x 1". Number 63 is my favorite.

Tiny rocks pre-polishing.

Tiny rocks after polishing.

Biggish rocks pre-polishing.

Biggish rocks after polishing.


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