Tucson Gem and Mineral show of 2019 was supposed to be a clone of the 2018 show for Paul Harris and myself. But the weather was to take that plan and turn it upside down. We headed out on Thursday morning for the drive to Blythe, California where we would have a nice dinner and stay in a hotel. It
We are still in the aftermath of moving. My casita (workshop) is still full of unopened boxes. But my main saw for meteorite work is set up again and the diamond lap is set up. So I can get back to work soon. As it turned out the day after I wrote those first two sentences I had to cut
It is near the end of the year and that is a time of reflection. I cut a great many meteorites this year. I cut what I seriously thought would be the largest lunar I would ever handle or certainly cut. It was a 1.7 kg stone and I cut beautiful thin slices. Since then many much larger have been
Have not been doing much meteorite related work for the last two months. I did cut several stones for a friend and they were interesting and rare types which always is exciting. I have gotten a couple updates from the lab where I have an amazing stone being classified. I think that work will be completed soon and it submitted
I finally got the opportunity to do something I have wanted to do for decades. Hunting a fresh fall within days of the bolide event has been one of my dreams. All the time I was working it was impossible to just pick up and go. And since I have been retired I was either out of town or heard
It has been exciting several months. I have done a great amount of meteorite cutting for our business and a couple friends. I have been finding as I cut that what the friends thought they had was not always what I found at the saw. The most enjoyable of these fortunate mistakes was a batch of stones that were supposed
I do not always report on the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show but this year I am. The show began for Paul and me when I left my house in my Jeep to pick him up on Wednesday. We were driving this year as we did last year. I had five boxes of my new book Drilling for Meteorites to
I do not cut meteorites for anyone other than our business as a general rule. But, my friend Jason Phillips of Rocks From Heaven, contacted me about a newly recovered meteorite from Mexico that he wanted to get cut open to see its insides. So I said, “Sure send some pieces, and I will slice them.” We had a conversation
I finished a two-year long project a few days ago. It is a new book and it is about Meteor Crater again. Yes I know I am in a rut. But I am not going to talk much about the book itself. What I want to tell you this month is the story of the writing of the book. It
Years ago I collected many more things. As a child, I collected stamps and coins. As an adult, I have collected tektites, antique balance scales, civil war artifacts, fossils, meteorites and more. I have reduced my collecting in the last couple decades to very slowly adding some additional meteorites only. I have stopped buying anymore impact breccias or shattercones from
The middle of the summer issue of Meteorite Times is always the hardest for me to find something to write. The gem show is over, and it is too hot to go hunting for meteorites in the desert. The world of meteorites is several systems that interconnect and work together for the most part. They do not always work as
Over the course of my life, I have cut thousands of rocks on diamond saws. Most of the rocks the last twenty years have been meteorites. But until yesterday I had never cut a lunar meteorite. There has been a significant amount of meteorite from The Moon recovered recently, Paul and I decided that we would get a large piece
Most years I write something about the meteorite aspect of the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show. And it is that time again. Paul Harris and I went to the show with different goals and at a different time frame. We drove this year since we had the time and it is now more convenient to drive since Paul moved from
Harvey Harlow Nininger did about the best examination of the impact materials found at Meteor Crater in Arizona as anyone ever has. Some of the things that he reported on in depth had been seen and described poorly by others over several decades. The tiny bits of iron in the ground had been collected with magnets from the first investigation
As I cut meteorites to prepare them for sale I occasionally find one which is deserving of being classified. I would get them all classified if that was practical. But the realities of today are that ordinary chondrites are not being classified by many of the individuals who used to do them just 5 or especially 10 or more years
