THE BACKBENDER’S GAZETTE

Beading – Second Saturday, 12:00 PM  

 Always bring beading mat, scissors, wire, wire cutter, round nose and needle nose pliers, thread, and beading needles if you have them.  

• For the October 12th meeting, we will be making a Beaded Pumpkin Bead (see photo below).  RSVP required by e-mailing Beading@HGMS.org.  Kit will be $5.00.  We usually meet in the small classroom.  Bring magnifiers and a travel light (if needed).  This project uses Peyote stitch to create a beaded bead in the shape of a pumpkin.  It can be used as a pendant, earrings, or ornament, etc.  Base beads and accent beads, findings, and thread provided in the kit.
• Many thanks to Gretchen, who taught us how to do quilling on September 14th.  She still has 3 or 4 fabulous kits with tools, glue, lots of paper quilling material, findings and instructions for making a least 5-pair of earrings for sale at $8.00 each, if anyone is interested.  Email:  Beading@HGMS.org if you want to purchase a kit.

NOTICE: Do you have a bracelet or necklace that needs restringing?  The Beading Section will carefully restring your piece at an hourly rate of $15.00 + materials.  Contact Beading @HGMS.org to make arrangements.  All funds will go to the Beading Section.

Gemstones and Faceting – Second Thursday, 6:30 PM

Our next meeting will be October 10th at 6:30 pm.

• Our October 10th meeting will be all about Voodoo, Witchcraft, Secret Handshakes and Polishing Gemstones!
• At our last meeting, we discussed using jewelers wax to dop stones.

Email faceting@hgms.org with any questions.

Lapidary and Silversmithing – Third Monday, 7:00 PM

• The next meeting will be on Monday, Oct 21st starting at 7:00 pm. This will be our final prep session for casting demonstrations at the Annual Show. Tony will demonstrate setting up the wax model in the casting flask and pouring the investment. Anyone who made molds but has not completed these two steps is encouraged to attend. If you did not make a mold, please join us and to watch and learn.
• November 18th will be our final meeting for the year. Stone of the month will be picture jasper. There will be different kinds to choose from. Please bring your Show purchases for Show & Tell and we’ll have some refreshments.

Email Lapidary@hgms.org if you have questions.

Mineral – Third Wednesday, 7:30 PM

Our next meeting will be October 16th at 7:30pm. We will have a presentation on Minerals and Halloween by Deidre Prince and Burton Dworski. They do a great job: Deidre comes up with jokes and snappy comebacks and Burton plays a great straight foil to her comedienne.

Come see Minerals! Bring yours to show. Refreshments will be served.

The link for the Zoom meeting is:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4517997588?pwd=SnZjckZBTnRMbHRxZitScE9WU3RWUT09

Please contact Mineral@hgms.org with any concerns or questions.

Water and canned soda has been $.50 for the last 20 years. Sadly, as prices have crept up, the Club has been paying more to provide beverages than we charge.

EFFECTIVE Wednesday, September 25th, bottled water and soda will now be $1.00 each. Please remember, beverages are purchased on the honor system (drop your money in the can inside the refrigerator) and members/guests are still requested to pay for beverages even at events that provide free food.

The life of the blade and the good operation of the saw are more important than speed! These are Club resources, so remember to mount your rocks correctly and ask for help if you need it. Safety is another focus. All the correct fasteners will be used and safety guards will be in place.

This is the philosophy behind the restoration of one of our 18-inch HP saws. Richard Good, LT Wilcox and David Pawek have been working to bring it back to like-new condition. You may have noticed it listing unevenly because the casters were blown – new ones are being put in place. The saw has been mucked out and cleaned by LT and David, and Richard has been painting the cleaned pieces.  This pre-1970 saw is starting to look much better. Blades of 85 thousandths thickness will be used which saves on cutting material. This saw delivers a very good cut and will handle 95% of our cutters’ needs.

The post-1970 HP saws – both 20-inch and 24-inch – are also scheduled to be rehabbed. Parts for these “modern” design saws are widely available. Unfortunately, good old Texas may be a goner; it was a one-off design, no parts are available and the aluminum carriage is broken.

• The Shop Supervisors have noticed that people are putting large rocks and slabs they don’t want in the red plastic trim saw scrap cans. Please stop doing this! The cans were meant for small trimmings. If you have rough or slabs you don’t want, please add them to the rocks on the Free Table in the main room. The rocks pictured below were pulled out of the trim saw scrap can today and they are WAY too big for the scrap can – they are now available on the Free Table.

Students will learn:

• Terminology and basics of how chainmaille weaves are constructed
• How to use pliers to weave a complex chain
• How to use AR (aspect ratio) to make thicker/ thinner examples of any weave

To see details of the classes or to register for classes, go to the HGMS website

E-mail:  Classes@HGMS.org with questions, to request classes, to suggest different days and times for future classes or with class preferences, or if you wish to teach a class.

Dig Maine Gems is a roadside location that brings in dirt from the Mt. Mica mine.  They offer self-dig buckets or prefilled (and salted) buckets containing stones either from around the world or just around New England mixed in with dirt from the Mt Mica Mine. Prices vary for each. Being the faceters that we are (meaning we cut rough rock into gemstones) we were interested in tourmaline direct from the mine. We chose fill our own 5 gallon bucket of dirt and try our luck.

Our “roving correspondent”, Heidi Shelly, recorded this on a Maine roadtrip.

The roadside location had tables set up with sifters and a bin of water in the center of the table to wash the stones. We filled the sifter up with dirt from our bucket, shook the sifter to get all the soft sand and dirt out before dipping and shaking the sifter in the bin of water to wash the rocks. Once that was done, we checked for prizes.  Small green flashes caught our attention right off. Tourmaline! We also saw flashed of clear rocks we assumed were quartz. Some were even facet-grade (meaning clean enough to cut into a gemstone). Once the visible stones were picked up we flipped the sifter upside down onto the white table top and started searching further through the pile. It was great fun.

Dig Maine Gems has multiple minerals that can be found aside from the tourmaline and garnet we were interested in. The Mt Mica mine yields up specimens such as quartz, red garnet, tourmaline, feldspar, mica schist, purple lepidolite and lots of loose mica flakes.  In fact, after an hour of sifting through our bucket of dirt, our arms and clothes sparkled like glitter from the mica dust contained therein. It was so fun to see what things we could find from the bucket we filled ourselves. The workers were encouraging and great at helping us to identify the rocks we found.

After digging through our successful bucket of self-filled dirt, we decided it could be fun to try out luck at the mine itself. On the morning of the field trip to the Mt. Mica mine, we met our guide at the Dig Maine Gems roadside location. There, our guide told us that we may even find a rare piece of morganite, aquamarine or other beryl at the mine. Fascinating! The Mt. Mica morganite comes out of the ground clear, but over the next couple days in the light it will turn pink. That really peaked our interest.

After paying for the trip and receiving instructions as to how best find the specimens, we caravanned the 8 minutes to the Mt. Mica mine. They provided buckets, shovels, rakes, and water and bin for sifting and let us loose. We spent a good four hours at the mine. In that time we found smoky quartz, garnet in matrix, lots of tourmaline (pink, green, black and yes, blue), citrine or yellow beryl and rose quartz or morganite (will have to run a Refractive Index test and specific gravity test on each to find out for sure), and lots of other minerals that you can find at the mine. Some of the finds are even good enough to try cutting into sunstones. It was hot and tiring with little shade in the dig area but oh so much fun!

For a family of three that enjoys rock hounding, we would visit the Mt. Mica mine again. It was a great family activity full of memories, and of course bragging rights for an 11-year-old and his blue tourmaline! So if ever you are up in New England and want to do some mining, the Dig Maine Gems is worth checking out.

Dig site and mine information: The Dig Maine Gems season of operation is April through November when the ground is not frozen. The roadside location welcomes visitors of all ages and is open daily but the mine location is restricted to visitors ages 8 and up and is only open to the public through Authorized Agents. Dig Maine Gems is an authorized agent. You may find more information about the roadside location and mine, or to see samples of the specimens by visiting their website at www.digmainegems.com.

Written by Heidi Shelley, a member of the Houston Gem and Mineral Society, on September 18, 2024

In the lab, geologists experimented with quartz slabs, shaking them in a gold-rich solution. They found that gold was deposited on the surface of the slabs. Because quartz is an insulator and gold is a conductor, once gold is deposited, it gains the voltage of the quartz and begins attracting more gold particles. After repeated earthquakes a gold nugget forms.

Really large gold nuggets – up to 130 pounds – can form in orogenic gold deposits in between tectonic plates where earthquakes are frequent. This could certainly explain why there was so much gold in California.

WINDING  JUMP  RINGS

If you need a few jump rings the same size, it’s easy to grab a round rod and wind as many as you need. But when you need a lot of them, some form of winder saves a lot of time.  A variable speed screw gun makes quick work of winding the coils. Screw guns are quite inexpensive at discount stores and are remarkably handy for odd jobs in the shop and around the house.

To wind a coil, just bend a right angle on the end of the wire about a half inch long and insert this into the screw gun chuck. Then wind slowly, keeping a tight coil. I like to rest the end of the mandrel on the edge of the table or bench pin. Finally, one note of caution. If you are winding an entire length of wire, be careful as you get near the end of the wire. If the end passes under your thumb, it can cause a nasty scratch or cut.

TOUCHING UP A BEZEL

Pumice wheels are good for touching up a bezel after you’ve set the stone. The hardness is about 6 on the Moh’s scale, less hard than quartz, so it shouldn’t scratch any of your agates or jaspers. However, I’d avoid or be real careful of using pumice near the softer stones like turquoise, amber, howelite, etc.

If you’re unsure about the hardness of your wheels, test them on a piece of glass. Glass is about 5 ½ on the Mohs scale, softer than quartz. So if the wheel doesn’t harm glass, it’s safe for use on the quartzes and harder stones.

My preference is the one inch diameter ones such as those shown at riogrande.com/Product/AdvantEdge-Pumice-Wheels-Medium/332722?pos=2

David Graves Gardner, a member of the Mineral Section passed away on July 3^rd, 2024, after a long struggle with Alzheimer’s Disease. He was born in North Carolina May 7^th, 1952 and completed his BS in Geology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. He began working for Texaco in Houston, where he met his wife, Holly. They lived in Denver for several years and moved back to Houston with Chevron, and he earned his Master’s degree as an Environmental Project Manager, finally retiring in 2015.

He will always be remembered in the Mineral Section for his particular fondness for thumbnails, small specimens in tiny Perky boxes. For years, he had a place in the Swap Area during HGMS’ Annual Show, and came to Section meetings and parties and went on field trips with the Club.

David is survived by his wife of 45 years, Holly, his daughters, Alison and husband Jonathan Luikens, and Catherine Gardner and her husband Chris Zdenek, four grandchildren and a brother.

David Gardner, in the middle, with Inda Immega and Paul Brandes at a Mineral Section party.  Burton Dworski and Deirdre Prince are visible in the back.