Jim’s Fragments

Over the years I have written about meteorites that I have sent off for classification. Repeatedly the question “How can I get a meteorite classified?” has been asked. At gem shows there are boxes of meteorites for sale and unfortunately rocks being called meteorites but which are not. Meteorites with no pedigree can also be bought online. They are often

It has been a while since I wrote an article focused on my favorite place; Meteor Crater. Over the last fifty years, I have added to my collection many specimens of meteorites, rocks, and ephemera from the crater. But, one of the items that I had just a single representative specimen of was the graphite nodules. Recently I was given

About 30 years ago I began trying to make thin sections. I remember I was fascinated by the interference colors. I have always been an experimenter. I made a means of viewing thin sections with polarizing filters from the camera store. I bought one thin section to use as a sample in my experimenting. I still have that thin section

I don’t add very many meteorites to my collection anymore. Maybe five or six meteorites a year. Of that number, a couple of meteorites are stones I partner with Jason Phillips to buy and get classified. Just as the virus was getting going in March 2020, we arranged to purchase a 15kg stone. It would be the largest piece in

Over the last twenty-five years, I have cut a great many Allende stones. In the last month, I have cut a 600+ gram stone and a nearly 300 gram stone of Allende into 60 or so slices. Allende is easily in my top ten favorite meteorites for visual interest as far as chondrules. The slices come off the saw not

The tumbler is tumbling tektites and I am cutting and preparing meteorites regularly during this time of being homebound. I have several hobbies and writing. But I have not been out meteorite hunting which I want to happen again soon. I keep really busy always, sometimes I wonder how I got things done when I was working considering how busy

The strangeness of 2020 continues and I am spending most of my time at home. About the only meteorite related stuff happening to me is whatever happens in the lab. I work nearly every day on meteorites or tektites. The next hunting trip to the desert is still a while away, so this article will be different from many. I

2020 will go down in history as a very strange year. The world entered into isolation practiced social distancing and generally tried to avoid the COVID 19 pandemic. As I wrote this in mid-May I reflected on Meteor Crater 100 years ago. The world then was just coming out of a pandemic. The Spanish Flu of 1918 through the spring

Wednesday, February 19, 2020, was a beautiful clear day when we headed toward the other side of California. Paul Harris and I had been looking forward to this meteorite hunting trip to Franconia and another Arizona strewnfield for a couple of months. But, the few days before we were to leave on the trip we had been back and forth

A couple of times a year Jason Phillips of Rocks From Heaven and I will go together on buying meteorites worthy of getting classified. I will cut them in half for our pieces and also remove a piece for the type specimen to send off for lab work. That piece will stay in a collection forever. Well, we are at

It has been a long time since I did an article on cutting meteorites but since that is mostly all I am doing right now it’s what I have on my mind. At certain times of the year as necessity demands, I spend weeks in the lab cutting stones to resupply our catalog. We get a few new stones every

On July 20th much of the world celebrated with the United States the 50th Anniversary of the first landing of men on The Moon. I went to Florida with my wife to Kennedy Space Center and was there on the actual anniversary day. It was a great experience. One thing that I noted, however, was the lack of moonrocks on

After a couple months of discussing and planning the day of the Northern Nevada Meteorite Trip of 2019 arrived. The safari for me began at 4:45 AM on Sunday, June 16 when I started the car for the 500 mile trip up to Winnemucca where I would stay the night. Richard Garcia and Dave Libuszowski were staying there too at

This story begins a few months over two years ago as a simple ceramics project to make use of the small amount of lunar cutting dust I had saved from cutting the NWA 11273 meteorite. The first moon landing date is very significant for my family and I was trying to think of what could be done to commemorate the

It had been a few years since the last time that Paul Harris and I went to Franconia to hunt meteorites. But we were going with some old friends and new friends in the middle of April which we hoped would still be a cooler time of the year. Well, it turned out to be hot and much hotter than