There is nothing very meteorite related in these article. As we collect meteorite many of us also get pieces of the ephemera, the things that go with meteorites but really aren’t meteorites themselves. Well I have an area of my collection that is sort of in between. So I am just going to feature an area a bit strange and how I finally have got it under control a little.
I was not very far into cutting meteorites more than thirty years ago when I found myself thinking it was a terrible shame to throw away the saw powder from the space rocks. So I took a gallon Ziploc bag and gradually put the dried meteorite powder into it. When that one was filled, I got another and another. A large amount of dust was also being produced during the grinding and smoothing process and I collected that dust from the lapping machine. A few years later the first Lunar meteorites and Martian meteorites appeared on the market, and I was cutting them also. Mixing the powders seemed wrong so I would wash the saw and lap and keep the pure planetary meteorite dust separate in a vial, or baggie with its name on the outside. I have done lapidary work for over fifty years and meteorites almost exclusively for thirty years. At one time I was cutting meteorites for numerous other meteorite collectors and dealers. The dust from the cutting for the business I kept separate from what came from my cutting for others. Those were the old days when no one else wanted their dust. Just so you understand I no longer cut meteorites for anyone but myself and our business now. I am working hard to be retired and just have fun.
Several months ago I was making up some tabletop display cases for public events. I was taking specimens from the display cases in my office and having to move around bottles of meteorite dust. Dozens of them. For example, I had multiple small bottles of NWA 11474 Lunar. I had cut it several times for several collectors and dealers who did not want the dust. One of the stones was over two pounds and I produced about fifty slices from it if I remember correctly. A lot of moon dust was made. The same went for several other meteorites. I had multiple bottles from the same meteorites. It seemed silly at this point to not consolidate the different bottles of dust down to one or two bottles for each meteorite. In the end I went from over sixty bottles down to twenty-eight. Some of the bottles are big four ounce ones and others are 5, 10, and 20 dram size. A few bottles are even smaller. So that they would not be a nuisance still in my display cases I decided to make some wooden stands for the different bottle sizes and leave some room for later expansion.
The stands did not have to be finely carved or really decorative, they are just a practical way of organizing the bottles and being able to present them beyond the shelves of my display cases. So I just began with some scrap 1×4 pine left over from a worktable project. I laid out the spacing of the bottles and decided which of the diameters to feature on which stand. The first stand was going to have a row of recesses drilled into it in front to hold the short 1-1/8 inch diameter bottles with a row behind of recesses to hold the tall one inch diameter bottles. All the bottles have handwritten labels. To make it easier to read the names I staggered the recesses in the two rows. Below is a picture of the simple stand sanded and drilled. This stand did not hold all the bottles of those two sizes, so more stands were needed. I also needed stands for the large four ounce bottles that are more likely to fall, roll, and break.
The four ounce bottles are 48 mm in diameter and that was too big for any Forstner bit that I had. So I placed an order for a set of bigger diameter bits. The 50 mm bit would be perfect for the job. Also the curve at the foot of the bottle was going to make it a wobbly fit if I used the same depth recess that I use with the small vials which have flat bottoms. I was going to need to either use thicker wood for the four ounce bottle stands or make an upper support. The four ounce bottles are the ones that I use for some of the small rocks I find with the Gem and Mineral society on field trips. Beach tumbled jade and moonstones for instance fit better in one of the four ounce bottles. I often come home with a few hundred small and tiny pieces of such rocks as a memento of the trip.
I had some strips of red oak left over from when I made my grandfather clock and decided to glue the ¼ inch thick strips of oak to short stand offs above the 1×4 pine base to provide more stability to the bottles. And it would add a little color and decoration to the stand. I have not stained and varnished the stands, yet I probably will someday. I have eight or ten of the four once bottles currently filled and labelled. Since only about half have anything to do with meteorites I decided to make two stands, one for the meteorite dust and another for the gemstone stuff leaving blank positions in each for the future. I can always make more if I need to.
I drilled rather shallow recesses since I do not want actual holes in the wood. Still I need the recess deep enough that the bottles are secure and stand up straight and won’t fall out easy. With Forstner bits it is easy to cut a hole if you get too deep. On my first stand I was a little too shallow and had to redrill just a little deeper to be happy. Fortunately I did not cut through the bottom of the wood. Once the depth was set on the drill press, I was good through the whole project.
It was a long time before the business saw any fruit from my saving of the meteorite cutting powder. I was also getting some big jars of powder from the other sideline cutting too. I started using it for whatever I could think of, such as pigment in oil paint, colorant in ceramic glazes. The lunar and Martian meteorite dust of the business was an easier thing to figure out how to market. Years ago we began selling 250mg amounts of moon and mars dust in great looking little plastic displays. We still offer those they are a great item. We were basically alone in doing this when we started. Now there are many meteorite dealers who have seen the value of saving and selling the cutting dust.
After holding onto about twenty pounds of chondrite dust for 20 years, someone wanted to buy all we had about a year ago. We gave the individual some safety warnings about it not being suitable for anything involving food and that it was toxic for anything of a cosmetics nature. It was all sold to the individual. The chondrite powder was gone. We got a nice price too which made handling it for 20 years worth it.
In the beginning I just thought, “It is still meteorite, and it still came from outer space, it should not just go in a planter in the yard or the trash.” It was not too long after selling the chondrite dust that we got an order for lunar and Martian dust. We sold the dust supply of several different classified moon and mars meteorites I had saved over the years. We still have plenty to do our displays, but it was great to sell the material from the other meteorites.
It was just my feeling years ago that here must be some value in the dust. Maybe it was my remembering how the dust from the Apollo astronaut’s spacesuits had been collected on clear tape. Now moon meteorite dust is for sale everywhere online. I cannot believe how many ads I see for samples of moon dust in tiny vials used in jewelry.
Allende was one of the other meteorites I kept the dust from over the years. I have cut hundreds of Allende stones often in batches. I clean the saw up really well and then cut all the Allende stones we have at the time. I take the tub holding the coolant water and saw mud out and carefully empty it into an old photographic lab tray; that of course is not used any longer for its intended purpose. The dust will settle, and I can suck off the water with a large syringe and let the powder dry out complete over a couple of days. The business dust belongs to the business, but I cut Allende for many people over the years and for myself. I have a bottle now with 136 grams of dust. If there are 60 quadrillion nanodiamonds in just a five or six gram sample of the meteorite how many are in my bottle of 136 grams of dust? Too big a number for me to comprehend, that’s for sure.
There were times when I would cut nothing but Al Haggounia 001 for days and I have kept a couple bottles of that orange dust just to play with since it is enstatite and has almost no metal. I am hoping it will fire with a different color than the ordinary chondrite dust when I put it in a clear glaze base. I have left all the tiny bits of nickel-iron in the chondrite dust since it makes attractive black spots that I like on the surface of my ceramic work. In the last few years I have been keeping the Eucrite and Howardite dust too with the same hope that it will give me a different color of brown when fired. I don’t expect to get red or green or yellow colors when meteorite dust is fired in a glaze. And I never have, it is always a terracotta sort of color. Those bright colors are made by precisely mixing many different metal oxides and additives to the glaze; things that are not found in meteorites. But I would be happy to get a few shades of different browns and tans from the other meteorite dusts.
It is just saw dust but after carefully curating it for nearly thirty years it has great meaning to me as part of my overall meteorite collection. It will be nice to have it out on display. It will be good to have the meteorite dust organized instead of as a jumble of dozens of partially filled bottles lost in the back of a shelf where they cannot be seen.
