THE BACKBENDER’S GAZETTE

Lapidary and Silversmithing – Third Monday, 7:00 PM

The next meeting will be on August 19th starting at 7:00 pm. We will be working on silver earrings, and Tony will have kits available.

Email Lapidary@hgms.org if you have questions.

July 20th Auction

Our latest auction was held at the clubhouse on July 20th, and there were some great items to be bid on! We were hoping for more attendees, but with the date falling so soon after Hurricane Beryl, some people could not attend. New fences and landscaping work to pay for, most likely. Those who did attend were treated to some excellent deals on cabochons, necklaces and earrings, rough lapidary rock, equipment, and mineral specimens, like the Rhodonite Display Slab at right.

But if you couldn’t be there, don’t worry. We will have another great auction in October.

Every rockhound dreams of discovering something wonderful, even something important. That’s why we pick up and turn over rocks and dig up buried rocks that show an interesting corner on the surface. Sometimes we pick up a rock for a souvenir of a particular place or event.

That’s what happened when Dr. Erica Barlow, then a student at the University of New South Wales (Sydney) in Australia, picked up a piece of black chert on a field trip to study stromatolites in the Pilbara, a region in the Western Australia outback. The shiny black piece of chert stood out against the layered red rocks.

For a long time, it sat on her desk while she worked on her thesis about stromatolites, and then one day, her advisor, UNSW Adjunct Professor Martin Van Kranendonk, suggested, “Black chert is known to hold microfossils. You really should investigate that”.

She agreed, but it took a while to get to the point of actually making and examining a thin section, which is a very thin slice polished even thinner to near-transparency so that it can be examined under a microscope. When she finally did, she didn’t really expect to find anything. The formation from which her chunk of black chert came is very old, over 2 billion years old, thought for a long time to be older than life on earth.

When she began looking at her sample, she was shocked to find what looked like a multicellular life form shaped like a soccer ball, unlike any she had ever seen. Unlike anything her advisor or numerous other geologists had ever seen.

It was a new life form! She finished her Honours project and began working on a PhD to study her discovery.

Soon she was back in the field to collect more samples from extensive kilometer-long limestone formations containing the black chert – and found more of the fossils. The rock layers were dated to 2.4 billion years, putting them at the beginning of the Great Oxidation Event, when oxygen levels first began to increase. At that time, the oceans were probably green due to unoxidized iron content, and the sky, lacking oxygen, was probably not yet blue, but perhaps orange. There was no plant or animal life on land, not for another 1.5 billion years.

Tom is a first year  Ph.D student at Rice University, having recently completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Tom’s research is on the petrogenesis of A-type granites, as well as a study of the Mountain Pass, California REE deposit. He is also a dedicated mineral collector and photographer, having won the Lidstrom Trophy at the 2023 Tucson Gem and Mineral show and also has a curated display of Chinese mineral specimens at the Alfie Norville Gem & Mineral Museum at U of A in Tucson. He has several publications to his name, hobbyist as well as academic. Tom has generously offered to present a talk to the club about his research  sometime in the next few months, which is something to look forward to. “I am so happy and pleased that I get this award, it is a great honor! It’s great news!”  We are honored to assist you as well!

Daniel is a 3^rd year undergraduate in Geosystems and Hydrogeology in Austin, having graduated from Magnolia High School in 2021. He has flourished at the University of Texas and earned high praise for his performance in field and stratigraphic methods class. He has an internship this summer with a geotechnical consulting engineering firm, and while he is not sure where his career will end up (and who can fault him for that) he sees hydrogeology as a lead-in to industry, with CO2 sequestration, Enhanced Oil Recovery, or exploration all possibilities.

“Thank you so much, I’m grateful to have been chosen!” And, we are very happy to be able help!

Nicole is working toward her bachelor’s in geology at Sam Houston State, after earning a B.A. in Communication at the University of Texas (San Antonio)! Her passion is understanding and addressing the coming environmental challenges of our time. She was recommended as “an active learner and regularly goes above and beyond in researching a problem –which will serve her well at the graduate level.”

After she graduates at the end of this year, her plan is to enroll in graduate school with the goal of obtaining a Ph.D and eventually to work for NOAA or USGS. “Thank you so much for reaching out. I’m humbled and ecstatic to accept this award!” We hope we can help you continue on to great things, Nicole.

Cecilia is one of the supplemental scholarship awardees we were able to assist this year. She is originally from Houston and is now a 4^th year undergrad and will graduate from Austin next year. While all of her exposure to geoscience has piqued her curiosity, the one  that enthralled her most was Gems and Gem Minerals, where students learned the basics of optics and manipulation of light in gemstones and also how to facet and make cabochons! As a result, she hopes to get a GIA GG certification and work in the jewelry trade, eventually opening up her own business. The Scholarship committee was unanimously happy to be able to give her the good news that we had supplemental award: “That is indeed positive news. Thank you so much!!” You’re very welcome, and we hope to see your jewelry in the future, too!

If Virginia seems to be a familiar face, it’s because she was one of our main scholarship awardees from 2023! We were able to present her a supplemental award for her last semester of school at Sam Houston State, and are pleased to do so after her continued successes both academically and also leading the undergraduate student organization as President for the past year. After graduation, she will be applying for graduate school in Hydrogeology and Water Security  at the University of Oklahoma and hopes to apply her education to a career in flood management and water sustainability. She is also open to the idea of teaching geology in middle or high school: “I loved teaching the Physical Geology Lab and educating people how geology is more than just rocks and oil and gas. Thank you so much for the supplemental scholarship! If possible, please tell the member that I am very thankful for their donation and that it will help me so much for this semester.”

As you can see in the picture of this Agua Nueva agate cabochon, the S-shaped pendant truly complements the natural curves of the agate banding, and it allows for both pockets of druzy quartz to really shine and sparkle, as well. Any other shape, especially a traditional oval, square, or circle, would not have allowed for all the features that are present in this cab to remain present, but the S-shape here frames each of the distinctive features quite nicely, in this case.

This Montana agate was done in a teardrop shape. Often ,with agates that have orbicular features (such as tubes or eyes), a teardrop shape can allow those spheres and orbs to really come to life, as the teardrop shape allows for a 3-D effect to occur with the refraction and diffusion of the light travelling through the circular banding, which becomes layered due to the dome shape of the teardrop form, emphasizing that dynamic even more.

This beautiful red dendritic Mookaite Jasper in the next picture is from Queensland, Australia. While jasper is not affected like agate is by light diffusion, refraction, or penetration due to its opaqueness, the shape of a circle was chosen for this particular cabochon due to the color grading difference that encircles the main feature of the cab. When I had cut the blank for this cabochon, the darker red that rings the dendritic feature was not as prevalent as before I began shaping it, and I had to use a little imagination to envision what would appear as I began to grind away portions of the lighter colored exterior of this rock down to the darker reds while shaping it. Fortunately, what I hoped would be the result actually was, and that really neat round red frame now sits snugly around the unique plant-like pattern of the dendrites.

The last picture contains two cabochons I have made, the one on the left from the Yellowstone River in Montana, and the one on the right a Brazilian agate. Both of these pieces display copious amounts of dramatic and dynamic banding, and one could argue (probably successfully) that any shape chosen would have worked with either of these two beautiful rocks. But to my eye, the Montana held more of an organized triangular aspect, going from a broader geometric opening and tapering down as it progressed to a more condensed point … and the teardrop seemed to be the perfect frame for this piece. But as for the Brazilian on the right, only a basic oval shape would contain the fortification banding in its entirety, allowing for the full play of parallax effect in the tight bending. So, in my mind for this case, the most commonly used shape, the oval, is indeed the best shape for this particular cab.

Randy Harmon and I gave our annual talk to about 35 kids at the Lindale library on July 3, 2024. I spoke on the reason I enjoy displaying and making “critters”—I might get the kids interested in the different earth sciences like geology, minerals, and chemistry.

I explained the basic formation of a thunder egg and showed one from my collection. The center roughly resembles the outline of Texas, or it could be a bird!

Then I showed a small geode that I had made into a “critter”.

A critter, to me, is a rock that puts me in mind of a creature or person, perhaps embellished with other rocks or shells.

They seem to capture the imagination of children, and then I can tell them about the rocks and shells.

There is also a geode that is an example of ones I will make for the annual show. It has a deep chamber that has a miner climbing out on a ladder. I explained why I use shells as well as rocks— because calcium is one of the elements on the periodic table they will learn about later.

Randy spoke next and described the types of fossils they would find in the earth he had brought from the “honey-hole” he goes to. He had brought bags of dirt that hadn’t been searched through yet. It was mostly sharks’ teeth that they would find, and they found a lot.  When the search was over, each child selected a prize that Randy put together.

Just when I thought the session was over, the kids returned to me to show what they had found and to see all that I had put out for the day. Some wanted to know if they could have a particular rock from my materials for making the critters or if they could have the critters I had taken for examples. One was “kidnapped”. I hope he is happy in his new home. I put out extras because I knew that I would need to resupply the ones I made. I did not come home with many!