I have another lecture on Meteorites to give at the beginning of next month. The presentation was supposed to happen in April, but it was snowed out. I was sitting in my office one day recently making a post for social media. I saw nothing but meteorites around me. Every shelf and display case and my actual desk had meteorites across the top of the secretariate. Now I have not bought a meteorite in well over a year and the only new ones I ever get now are the ones I send off for fun with Jason Phillips to be classified. But there was a time when I was buying meteorites like crazy. The meteorite buying phase of my life only lasted about 40 years. I attended 35 consecutive Tucson Gem and Mineral Shows. Covid broke that long string of trips and somehow also changed my focus on hobbies.
I have done everything almost that one can do with meteorites. I have cleaned and restored them. I have cut and prepared them. I have made thin sections of them and photographed them under polarizing microscope and ultra close up camera rigs. I have made cabochons, beads, hearts, and custom gemstones out of them. And I still do all those things. I have compartment boxes filled with the meteorites I have done nothing with except to weigh and catalog. They are my reserve supply for chilly days in the lab when I have nothing else to do. Frankly, it does not get that cold often. With antique clocks to restore and repair, and my ceramics. I have a more pots to throw, I hope.
I teach silversmithing two days a week and manage to do a few pieces myself. My list of hobbies is long. I take pictures of the stars when the weather is clear, and the Moon is thin. I would like to get back to oil painting. I have some spots on the walls where good paintings can go. Not all my paintings turn out well. Since Covid and changing my traveling and socializing habits I have turned to some of my older interests. I have recently begun faceting gemstones again after a few decades of giving that hobby a good rest. I worked very hard when I was full time employed. There was never time for my hobby interests. Now there is and I am taking advantage of the time. I heard it somewhere that part of the trick to living a long time in retirement was to stay very busy with almost anything. Just do not let yourself sit down in front of the TV.
Sitting on the spare office chair is a display case full of meteorites. It is what I will take for show and tell at my upcoming lecture. The Gem and Mineral Society in town is also looking for a display case to enter in the competition at the upcoming regional gem show. I offered to make one devoted to meteorites. But I don’t know if that will happen. Even though my focus has changed a bit in the last few years, meteorites still manage to get into most of my other hobbies. I suspect that will not change. Every time I draw a new design for a piece of jewelry my mind includes using meteorite gemstones in the thought process. I do not always use meteorites anymore. I love other stones too. Turquoise, Lapis lazuli, Ruby and many other colored stones make appearances in my work. Meteorites are in about forty percent I would guess. So far this staying busy and living long has worked quite well. I retired at 58 and am 74 now. I have to do something about all the meteorites though. Get more of them out where I can enjoy seeing them. So many are in plastic draw units and never get seen at all. Sometimes I feel like Smaug the dragon brooding over the collection. I know every one of my meteorites. Even though I never see or display all of them. If one is not where it is supposed to be then I go on a rampage to find it. Right now I am about to devote all the time necessary to finding my 105 gram beautiful etched slice of Henbury. It was used in a public display case for two events a few months ago. When I took the display apart, I put the meteorites aside and stored the wooden case. Tomorrow seems like a good day to find those meteorites.
Collecting meteorites started out innocently enough. I hunted for meteorites as a kid in the desert. Then once I could drive, I bought one or two each year at some event like RTMC or other astronomy gathering. This went on just buying a handful at most for many years. Then I started going to Tucson and began coming home with several dozen specimens each year. I built a diamond saw devoted solely to meteorite cutting. I had been doing lapidary work for myself for my jewelry. Now I was cutting meteorites I needed a saw with a super thin blade. I also needed a flat lap. The two grinding stones, sanding and polishing drums on my 10 inch Highland Park combination lapidary unit were not made to create perfect flat slices.
About this same time in the 1980s I tried making my first thin sections. They were really rough and ugly, but I was till young, and I was learning. They turn out very nice today and one was even used in the classification of a meteorite I sent to a lab. A nice LL5.
The first real fork in the road was when I started cutting meteorites for other collectors and a couple of dealers. I thought, “It’s OK I can do the cutting and polishing and take my payment in a piece of the meteorites.” That went well, I built the collection yearlong not just at Tucson time. During my years in the meteorite business with Paul Harris there have been many opportunities to acquire meteorites from ones we bought to sell. As I cut a stone I might see a slice I needed to buy from the business. More meteorites were flowing into my collection. I put the brakes on acquiring more about three years ago and actually went to Tucson and brought back just two specimens one year and bought no meteorites the following year.
Since the age of twelve I have been fascinated with meteorites. That is when I read every book the local library had on space rocks. Mixed into that group were several by H. H. Nininger. I ate the material up. Whether or not it is a natural extension to begin reading Science Fiction I don’t know. But I could not get enough of science fiction books either. I was about thirteen and there was “Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet” a book about going into space and harvesting asteroids. It is not the finest piece of literature ever written but I loved it. I found a nice copy for sell online to read again and treasure years later. Exploring the asteroid belt for resources is something being planned now by several startup companies. The list of Science Fiction books that have asteroids or meteorites as main characters is long. But not as long as the list of movies about meteorites that could fire a young boy’s imagination in the 1960’s. Movies like “The Invisible Ray” or “Riders to the Stars” or the not to be forgotten, “Monolith Monsters.” They are not great movies to the adult me though I re-watch them about once a year, but when I was a kid, fantastic. Being out in the desert most weekends did not direct my life away from space rocks. I was hiking and hunting for them any time there was a moment without chores. I was almost destined to be surrounded by space rocks, and to incorporate them into all my art and work.
There is one area of meteorites that I never got into. I only cut two iron meteorites in my whole life. Trying to cut those two Odessas with regular shop equipment like hacksaws was enough to let me know that it was too much different from stone meteorites. I was not going to buy all the equipment needed to cut irons. I was not going to try that again. Each Odessa iron wiped out several blades and made my arm ache. For the rest of my career I’ve left irons and pallasites to the other guys, The experts at iron meteorites.
I have finished a great many iron, however. For decades when I lived near a chemical supply company, I had nitric acid on hand and etched irons regularly. After moving to the small town I am in now I only use ferric chloride which also works well. If you have a collection of meteorites that is big you will get a few stinkers that just do not want to be stable. You clean, resand, polish, soak them in alcohol to neutralize them and maybe try and retch them only to have them bad again in a few months even when displayed in a vacuum container. Some I have successfully returned to stable by not etching. But irons that have a pattern when etched I think should be etched.
I cut a meteorite into a gemstone about every two weeks now and have a nice big backlog of cabochons and beads. I am constantly thinking of designs for rings using meteorite material. I like rings but make other things too. The occasional bracelet or pendant, even pairs of earrings. I made two necklaces several months ago, one using meteorites and fossil mammoth ivory, with turquoise, the other with coral colored beads, lapis beads, meteorite and fossil mammoth ivory. I am not ever going into another business, but I thought these necklaces might be valuable. I was in a Native American Trading Store in Arizona last month where they had beautiful handmade jewelry. I found a sample similar to each of my necklaces. Of course they had no meteorite or fossil ivory, each was for sale for $700. I was surprised by the price but happy.
I am not a great beader. I hate the knot tying part, but I love making the beads and the carving of the ivory when I do that. These necklaces were really made as projects to perfect making large silver beads. The halves of the beads are easy. Punch out some sterling silver disks and shape them with pins and a dapping block. It is the soldering the halves together. Getting the solder to run around the whole perimeter seam and not melt the silver with the torch at the same time. After fifty years I very rarely melt my projects, but the big beads of thin silver was a new thing. The silver beads and meteorite beads contrasted well with the other stones. I volunteer at the workshop of the local gem and mineral society. I have several people that are learning silversmithing and have projects ongoing. They may in the future want to use meteorite in their work. I just love seeing them learn and overcome their initial fear of the torch and create beautiful cabochons with just a bit of my help after their first ones.
This is a tiny selection of the rings that I have made. Some were cast other were made with the torch and solder. Most were sold or given as gifts over the years.
I may have slowed down my purchasing of meteorites. But I have not reduced my enthusiasm for the space rocks that have been my lifetime passion. I am hoping for a few trips out to hunt them still. My life has been permeated by everything meteorite. I would not have it any other way. This is a short article because today is a Gem and Mineral Club workshop day, and I think two of my apprentices are going to attend. And I have a piece of Libyan Desert Glass, some peridot, tourmaline, and aquamarine to starting faceting beginning this afternoon and on for weeks to come. I don’t have any problem staying busy with fun hobbies. Though it has interfered with my writing. My next book of short stories will not be coming out as soon as I thought, oh well.
