At least a couple times a year I receive specimens from someone who thinks they have found tektites at a new location. Often it is somewhere in Arizona or Utah. So this month we are reviewing the differences between tektites and other natural glasses. Sometimes the finders have some knowledge of locations where non tektites glasses have been found in
I have for many years had an up-to-date database of my officially recognized meteorites. And I maintain that very carefully adding each new acquisition as soon as possible after it arrives. However, I have not done so with my unclassified meteorites. I have painted identification information on many of them. It is a code that tells me when they were
This month I undertake a long postponed task of getting my lapidary workshop organized. I had to move the large saw from my father’s garage to my garage. It seemed like a great time to begin getting the other equipment set up and placed permanently. The last time the vibrating lap was up and running was about five years ago.
In general, I am about as far from being a reality TV fan as a person can get. I watch mostly the channels on history and science and my sci-fi movies of course and that is it. Ask me about the news and I can barely tell you a thing about what is going on in the world. But, this
Even with the diminishing supply of nice unclassified NWA material showing up at Tucson year by year I was able to find some pretty nice stones at the last show. I thought that this month you might be interested in seeing what these mystery stones turned out to look like when I got them home and lapped a window on
I have done book reviews before. Usually the only characters in the books are meteorites or tektites. In this case Meteorite Hunting How To Find Treasure From Space I know almost every character mentioned in the book. That made it very special for me, but by the end of the reading it was clear that this book was far more
Well another Tucson Gem and Mineral Show has come and gone. I went this year with a lot of other concerns on my personal plate. But, it turned out to be a great time for me and I was for the most part able to forget the other stuff for a few days. Paul and I hit town on Wednesday
Question: Is a meteorite like the one pictured here considered fully crusted if it has a late flight breakup and the broken surface is covered only around its perimeter with crust and roll over material? This melted material resulted from a too brief stable ablating flight after the in flight disruption of the mass. But, as you can see it
It isn’t every day that a new crater is discovered on the Earth but we have been very fortunate that several have been found in the couple years that had meteorites associated with them. The similarities of the meteorites found at Gebel Kamil and Whitecourt is going to be my topic this month. The physical properties of iron meteorites definitely
Iron shale was once the most common meteoritic material to be seen around the area of Meteor Crater. But, after way more than a century of collecting not very much is left of the interesting by-product of the ancient meteorites. Typically, pieces of iron shale are flat plates of hard black magnetic rock. The metallic iron and nickel is nearly
I decided this year that I would not work right up to the day before we left for vacation. So Saturday was my last day of work and I got to do some resting up and leisurely packing before we headed to the desert on Wednesday morning. Paul arrived just about exactly when we had planned and we started toward
On Vacation Soon we’ll be off on vacation. We thought hard about where to go and what we wanted to do this year. And the end of all that thought was summed up in the word “veg” we are just going to go out and sit all day if we want and do nothing. With all the changing rules about
As we near the end of summer it is always time for Paul and I to plan the first trip to the cooler autumn desert. And we have begun that process. We do not know where we are going but we have picked the date and put in for the time off from work. We have spent big portions of
The Tektite Lamp My article this month is maybe the one of the best examples of the convergence of hobbies that I have ever shared. It was actually well over a year ago that this all happened but I have just not be sure that I wanted to say anything about it. As I plan on doing more of
I mentioned recently that my collecting habits have changed toward falls. Well, I was adding a couple of new specimens to my database and decided to see how many falls I actually had. Boy was I surprised when I found that I had jumped all the way to nearly 30% falls in my collection. It has not been that long
