MORGAN HILL POPPY JASPER MAKES ITS RETURN AFTER 35 YEARS!
One of the most prized sphere materials--Morgan Hill Poppy Jasper--is returning to the market-place after a 35-year absence.
This unique and varied mineral is only found in one location, near California's Silicon Valley. Orbicular Morgan Hill Poppy Jasper (MHPJ) has a vast array of colors and patterns. An igneous stone with many elements, it is dominated by iron and quartz. The rock's striking palette features up to 30 different colors, most of them brilliant. Its foremost colors include China red, golden yellow, black, gray, hunter green, oranges, browns, translucent quartz, bur-gundies, purple and mustard yellow. A one-pound piece can contain up to 10 separate colors!
Six different species are being mined currently. Opaque MGPJ features any or all of the 30 colors. An offshoot of this is the remarkable "Pimento" which is in limited supply and can be seen on our website. It's most significant feature is the sparse patterning of cells, each one a little gem. Spiderweb MHPJ is interesting because it's unfinished…the circles are not fully developed. They are red, yellow and brick-colored with hematite around each cell. The Gemmy version is dominated by quartz, with the "orbs" floating gracefully in the quartz. Electric MHPJ contains mass concentric rings and is very rare. Brecciated MHPJ has striations of color with sporadic inclusions of cells.
The Morgan Hill Poppy Jasper mine, completely on private land, has only recently been re-opened by a young and enthusiastic mine owner. The deposit evolved 500 to 700 million years ago in the Paleozoic Era, in a region showing intense volcanic activity.
Spheres To You is able to take custom orders for spheres in many of these varieties. Contact us if you are interested!
GUEST COLUMNIST:
Ron Kadrmas
Ron is a sphere enthusiast from Colorado Springs whose secret of success is picking great rough material for sphere making. He shares his knowledge with us.
Selecting Rough
Let me start out by saying that one never knows precisely how a piece of material will ultimately look when it becomes a sphere. Anyone can be fooled no matter how experienced you are. Minerals are highly unpredictable. Something that looks great from the outside, may have fractures inside. Another piece might look mundane on the outside and be a gem when it's cut and polished. Be that as it may, I'd like to offer some basic suggestions for sphere makers that may help produce the best results.
Finding Rough
Research is the key to finding good rough. You have to do your homework. Some of the easiest ways to find good rough include going to mineral swap clubs and to the large mineral shows in the region. You can join your local mineral club, where members often have a longtime store of knowledge about regional resources. Rockhounds' backyards and old collections that are being liquidated are also another good source. The Internet is increasingly becoming a useful tool. Joining the Rocks & Fossils or Rockhounds Mailing Lists online may lead to valuable information. However, my best source is a book called "The Coast to Coast Gem Atlas" published by Cy Johnson & Son of Susanville, CA, a listing of rock shops across the country. If you are looking for a specific material, the local rock shop will almost inevitably know where to find it.
Being Choosy
As a beginner, there is almost no way to intuitively know which is the best material. You must get to know it over time with practice. I suggest starting out with something that is in the softer range--calcites, aragonite, onyx. Avoid petrified wood unless you can determine it is a very solid piece. Obsidian requires a special polish.
When you meet with the seller of the material, make sure you do it before sundown, so you can view it in sunlight, not in someone's dark garage. Take along a spray bottle of water to wet it. This will bring out some of the material's features. Look for pieces that have no fractures of veins. You're looking for consistency of material, not a lot of matrix or alternating substances. Ask the owner to show you polished pieces from the same batch. Learn the specific locality of origin, because you or someone buying it from you will want to know and you may want to get additional material from another source. Purchase several pieces so that you can experiment with it, but save your most expensive piece for last, when you've gotten a sense of how this particular rough cuts.
Start by cutting the ends off a few pieces of material and polishing it, just to get a feel for it. When you begin preparing it for cutting, you must figure that the cube should be 1/2 inch larger than your intended sphere size. Ultimately, to get a sphere of high quality, all six sides of the cube should clean up to show only the material itself, no matrix or muddy matter. Some matrices polish well and others don't, and only a very experienced sphere maker can judge that in advance.
A good all around polishing and pre-polishing product is the grades of alumina (sapphire) made by Reynolds, which can be located through the Lapidary Journal Buyer's Guide. This polishes a wide range of materials.
Work with your material. Over time it tell you about itself. It is unlikely you can get the most superior sphere from a material until you know it well. Remem-ber, this is like opal--save the best for last. Even then you might be surprised. Your "worst" rough, may be your best sphere. That's the mystery of sphere making. - RK
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The Sphere That Could Have Been
10 Million Integrated Circuit Chips!
Recently at a rock show I spotted
a beautiful 6-inch hematite sphere. At closer examination I discovered
the sphere was not hematite at all but rather a piece of pure silicon.
After question-ing the owner I learned that the sphere had been cut from
a single silicon crystal. The Silicon crystal was grown in a furnace at
2,732 degrees Fahrenheit. One crystal is about 6 to 8 inches in diameter
and four feet long. It takes more than fifty complex steps to convert a
micro-thin wafer of this pure silicon into integrated circuits. It stag-ers
the mind to think of the total technology and man hours it took to make
this single silicon sphere. If anyone suggests this is a waste of a natural
resource, remind them that Silicone (non-matallic element #14) makes up
more than 25% of the earth's crust.
--Paul Elsmore
Oceanside, CA
Read our monthly column on spheres in the Eclectic Lapidary online magazine!
Today'sTip
Want to know how to get scratches
out of amber spheres? Reader Barbara Allen of Schaumberg IL, suggests polishing
them with styrofoam covered in auto wax. She also proposes keeping jet
spheres shiny by using a skin moisturizer! She uses a product called Shea
Butter, made from African Shea Tree nuts. Used in Africa for various health
remedies for thousands of years, this product can now be obtained from
Omololu International, PO Box 267, Memphis TN 38101.
DENVER REPORT
Something old, something new, something
borrowed and something blue…well, we're missing the borrowed part, but
everything else was evident in spheres at September's Denver show.
Here's the old:
A couple of old favorites made their appearances in new forms: