Strata Gem

July 2002

 

President’s Message

 

We had a really nice turn out at the rock bag fill, and we were able to fill a lot of bags. It really helped that some of the members cleaned the rocks the weekend before. I would like to thank everyone who helped Erla prepare the food and everyone who brought some. It's a lot of fun when we can all get together and work as a team.

We need to get prizes made for the wheel, we are really low. I would like to ask all the members to put their thinking caps on and come up with some new prizes.

Don’t forget the Steak Fry and Craft Day. If you have some craft ideas we can work on them at the steak fry.

Always walk the path of Friendship.

 

Donna M. Chavez

President

 

Tooele Gem And Mineral

Jay Woods Home

June 8, 002 9:00 AM.

 

The meeting/rock bag fill was called to order by president Donna Chavez, every one was welcomed. The treasurer’s report and  the minutes will be given at our next meeting.  

Donna reported that the hot melt glue that we made our prizes with, has melted and we will have to use some other glue. Jay reported that he checked the van’s and we are very short on wheel prizes.

We will have to make some wheel prizes at home because we will not have enough time to make them at the steak fry. It was suggested that we need a storage shed to hold all our rocks in because the weather destroys the bags and buckets that we have them in, this causes a lot of extra work picking them up and putting them back in new containers. If we had a shed for them it would alleviate this problem. It was voted on and approved to construct a shed at Jay Woods home for this purpose. Janet reported she is having trouble getting our door prize tickets, Donna will go by the printer and see if he has them printed yet.  

Don’t forget we need door prizes made, our next meeting will be the stake fry in August.      

 

Minutes submitted by

Larry Wilson

Secretary

 

Members News

 

Welcome New Member:

 

New Webpage:

I have been emailing a person in Southern Utah & he wrote us a very interesting article on Moque Pipes & Marbles in the Escalante National Monument. Due to the fact the pictures would be very hard to reproduce in the club paper I have put it in the Kids Corner of the club website. You can find it at:

www.utahrockhounds.com\tooelegem\kids_corner

I have thought Moque Marbles kind of boring until I read this & learned how they were formed. I will try and have a printout at one of the meetings soon.

 

Club Calendar

 

·         No Meeting In July 

·         Aug 16 Put on a program for the Tooele Girl Scouts. (pending)

·         Aug. 17 Monthly Meeting Held In Conjunction With Annual Crafts Day & Steak Fry. Location: Pavilion in Settlement Canyon.

·         Sep. 10 Monthly Meeting 7:30 PM. 

·         Sep. 27-29 Our Annual Gem & Mineral Show

·         Oct. 8 Monthly Meeting 7:30 PM. 

·         Nov. 12 Monthly Meeting 7:30 PM. 

·         Dec. Christmas Party, (date pending).

 

The Orlov Diamond

by David Dick, Member of the

Chicago Rocks and Minerals Society

from Pick and Dop Stick 4/99

via The Backbender’s Gazette, 1/02

 

In 1759, Grigori Grigohevich Orlov came to the attention of the heir to the Throne of Russia, Grand Duke Peter, and his German-born wife, Catherine. Leading a riotous life in Petersburg, Orlov soon became Catherine's lover. Peter couldn't have cared less as he had a regiment of soldiers and a lover to play with to keep him out of trouble. When Peter ascended the throne as Peter III, Orlov continued in his favored position as lover to the Empress. In 1762, Orlov helped organize the coup d'etat that dethroned Peter in favor of Catherine (known in history as Catherine the Great). Peter was imprisoned and subsequently murdered (rumors said it was ordered by Orlov). As a reward for his loyalty, Catherine made him a count, adjutant general, director- general of engineers, and general-in-chief. His entire family was showered with titles and gifts. Catherine's intention of marrying Orlov was stopped by political considerations. The German-born Catherine enjoyed remaining as Empress of all the Russias.

Meanwhile Catherine's roving eye focused on a string of new lovers. Orlov was most enraged and resentful of the intruders in Catherine's bedroom and the Imperial "Pork Barrel." With G.A Potemkin, Orlov felt his power slipping away. Potemkin dazzled Catherine on her trip to the newly acquired Crimea. He had built phony villages along her route filled with cheering peasants. When she complained that a forest ruined the view from her bedroom on the visit, Potemkin had it removed before she woke up the next morning. Orlov's complaints annoyed Catherine. She felt she had paid him enough for his role that put her on the throne. Orlov, although highly favored by Catherine, was losing ground to Potemkin, who staged great festivals and shows. Orlov's new trump card was a plan to give her a diamond worthy of her on the Empress' Saints Day. It was embedded in a bouquet. The diamond came to be known as the Orlov diamond.

The history of the Orlov diamond says it was stolen from the eye of a Hindu idol in Mysore, a native state of Southern India. A French grenadier learned of an idol whose eyes were two great diamonds. He planned the theft over a long period of time. First, he deserted the army. He became a Hindu and obtained employment within the temple, and in time he was admitted as a devout worshipper to the inner shrine. A night of a great storm gave him the chance he had been looking for. He pried one diamond loose and started to remove the other. Bolts of lightning startled him. He heard noises and feared detection and death. He fled, scaled the walls, swam the river, and escaped to Madras. He said nothing about the diamond. Penniless, he got passage on an English ship, and confided his secret to the captain who purchased the stone. The Frenchman went back to France to live the life of a gentleman- the captain sold the stone for six times the price he paid for it.

Passing from one hand to another, the as yet unnamed diamond eventually reached Amsterdam. The diamond's weight was 199.6 carats. It measured 7/8 of an inch high, 1 ¼ inches wide, and 13/8 inches long. It was in the shape of half an egg. Catherine heard about the stone and offered to buy it offering 104,166 pounds and an annuity of over 100 pounds. She was refused. What she didn't know was that Orlov had purchased the stone for 500 times what the Frenchman had received for it.

On Catherine's Saints Day, Orlov presented his bouquet. The Empress was enchanted. She named the stone after Orlov and had it mounted on the top of the imperial scepter's double eagle. There it remains to this day in the Kremlin's Diamond Treasury. Orlov? The gift did not work. Potemkin remained Catherine's lover until a younger man displaced him too. Orlov, enraged, left Russia in 1775. He went to Switzerland, married his cousin, and upon her death in 1782, returned to Russia. His mind deranged, completely insane, he died a year later.

Is there a lesson to be learned from the tale of the Orlov diamond? Perhaps! One diamond, no matter how large or unique, doesn't buy an Empress or her bed.

 

Via The RockCollector 3/02

 

Stuffed Dinosaur for Dinner

by Judy Washburn in Loess Bulletin

via Tumbler 11/12/1991

AFMS Poetry Contest First Place Winner 1993

 

I’ve often read about them

in books and magazines,

I’ve seen their bones and teeth displayed

On wide-angle movie screens.

 

The dinosaurs I came to know

Were lizards huge and mean;

With pea-sized brains and loping gait,

They weren’t very keen.

 

These notions seem no more to be

The latest things to know;

Bob Bakker told it like it is,

On the late night Leno show.

 

I popped out of my bed to hear,

It’s very rare, at best

To see a noted scientist

As a TV talk-show guest.

 

Old pictures melted in my mind

With every word he’d utter,

I didn’t know just what to think,

My brain was all a flutter.

 

“Think of the dinosaurs,” he said,

“More like the bird” - do tell!

“Like two-ton lively roadrunners,

Directly out of hell.”

 

This on the night I’d polished off

Thanksgiving treats galore,

Never knowing the turkey on my plate

Was cousin to the dinosaur!”

Enjoy!

 

Breccia 11/99            PICK & PACK 12/00

Via Beehive Buzzer 11/01

 

Storage Box For Rock Slabs

by Chris Fite, TRMS

 

Over the last couple of years, I have bought about twenty slices or slabs of rocks, some from commercial companies, some from rock club sales, and some from club shows. I plan on buying more, and I wanted a better way to store and display them than just stacking them up on top of one another. So after much thought, I discovered three ways to store and display them, only one of which I have implemented so far. Below is a description of the box that 1 designed for my own use for storing rock slabs, which you might want to make for yourself I have already built and am now using this storage idea for my rock slabs.

 

For storing rock slabs, I wanted the following qualities:

·    Be able to view many slabs at once, not just one at a time.

·    Low cost per slab stored.

·    Easy to make (little time and little skill needed).

·    Dustproof.

·    Protect the slabs from banging against one another.]

·    Provide a place for a label for each slab for listing much information.

·    Ease of rearranging the slabs within each box or between boxes.

·    The boxes themselves needed to be easy to store on shelves, size-wise.

After several failed attempts (and wasted money), I found the following that works. The design I finally used stores seven slabs per box, each slab can be up to 5.5 inches wide by 4 inches high by ‘/2 inch thick, cost of materials is about $0.25 per rock slab, and each box takes maybe 1/2 hour to make. A tall skinny bookshelf, two feet wide and six feet tall will hold 36 of these boxes, or a total of 252 rock slabs. If you lay out many of these boxes on a bed or kitchen table then you can view more than 100 rock slabs at once.

 

FIRST, shop around for plastic boxes that have the right height and width to hold the slabs (in the near vertical position, not lying down flat).

SECOND, buy some 1/4 inch thick plywood precut to a width that fits inside the bottom of the plastic box.

THIRD, buy, cut, and fold poster board into a zig-zag shape to hold the slabs in a vertical position. The zig-zag shape is stapled to the 1/4 inch thick plywood.

 

Following are the details of what I used, but the same idea could be used for other sizes of boxes.

 

The tools needed are modest:

hand saw staple gun

staples, 1/4 inch high scissors

measuring stick or tape measure pencil

small nail (used like an awl)

Step 1): 1 bought a lifetime supply of plastic “shoe boxes” at ACE Hardware for about $1.50 each, with lids. They are made by Rubbermaid, “1.5 US Gallon,” and are about the size and shape of a cardboard shoe box, roughly 1 foot long, half a foot wide, and 1/3 foot high. They nest inside one another for compact storage when not filled with anything. I found these by trial and error, just looking and shopping around. These boxes are clear on the sides so you can see what is inside without taking off the cover.

Step 2): 1 bought many pieces of poster board (22” X 28”). Each box will consume about 1/2 sheet of poster board. With pencil, divide the 22” into five of 4.4” wide strips. With pencil, draw lines cross­wise to the 28” length of poster board at the following spacings starting at one end: 1/₂”, 3.5”, 3.5”, 1/2’’, 3.5”, 3 5” 1/2”, 3 5”, 3 5” 1/2”, & 3 5”that adds up to 26.5 inches, leaving 1.5”” of scrap at the end of the poster board. Cut the scrap 1.5’” off (you can use it to make a measuring jig), then cut the five long strips apart from one another. The cross-wise pencil lines on these strips are the fold-lines for making the zig-zag shape for holding the rock slabs. It takes exactly two of these strips to make up one box.

Step 3): Punch a small hole with the tip of a nail (1/32’”) in the center of each cross wise 1/₂” area on the strips of poster board (four holes/strip). Fold along the pencil marks (10 folds), the 1/2” areas will be stapled to the plywood. If you fold it right, the pencil marks will be on the bottom and so will not be visible. Folding adjacent 3.5” areas must be exact, I found out the hard way. So I made a jig with two small rectangular 1/2” thick pieces of plywood to make sure each 3.5”’ area was exactly the same as the adjacent 3.5”” area. These 3.5” areas make the “peak” of the zig-zag. If unequal by even 1/32”’ then the peak will be lopsided.

Step 4): The 1/4” thick plywood that I bought was cut into 5.5” wide strips by the sales person free of charge (I was lucky). Caution: they are sloppy, so you might tell them 5” wide pieces so that any cutting errors will still fit OK. All I had to do was saw the strips of plywood cross wise into 10.5” long pieces to fit into the bottom of the plastic shoe box. Draw a pencil line long wise through the center of the board. Then, using the tip of a nail, make a 1/3 2’” dent along the pencil line at the following spacings, starting at one end: 1/4”, 5/3”, 5/3”, 5/3”, 5/3”, 5/3”, 5/3”. The last dent should be 1/4”’ from the other end of the plywood. That is a total of 7 dents that will be used to align and space with the holes in the zig-zag pieces of poster board.

Step 5): This is the fun step. It goes fast and completes the box. By now, you will have the three components that make the box:

a)    the plastic box itself

b)    the plywood bottom piece

c)    two zig-zag folded strips of poster board.

You place the first piece of poster board onto the plywood, insert the mail through the hole in the poster and into the dent in the plywood, line up the length of the poster board straight with the plywood, then staple the poster board in two places. Repeat this alignment and stapling for all seven “slots” of the zig-zag poster. And now you are finished.

The first box you make will be difficult. Consider it to be “boot camp” or a “learning experience.” After the first box, you can make two or three jigs that will greatly ease and speed up the making of many more boxes.

 

After making these boxes I discovered three additional bonuses:

1)   Many boxes can be made, up to but not including the final stapling of the zig-zag pieces. This allows the “almost finished” boxes to be stacked inside one another (nested), and the plywood and poster board pieces are flat, taking up very little space. This allows dozens of “almost finished” boxes to be stored in a small space. Later, when you need to use a box, just pull out an “almost finished” box, spend about S minutes stapling it, and it is finished!

2)   The boxes hold only 7 rock slabs each (at about .3 pounds each), so the weight of the boxes filled with slabs is small. Even cheap, flimsy bookcases can be filled up without fear of overloading the bookcases.

3)   Later, should you ever decide to use the shoeboxes for other purposes than storing rock slabs, you can. Just throw away the zig-zag part. The shoebox will work fine as a general purpose storage box (70% of the cost is the shoebox, so throwing away the zig-zag part doesn’t waste much).

 

From T-Town Rockhounds 2/02

 

Mineral Odors

by Harry Lovell

 

Have you ever noticed how some min­erals give off odors when worked for in­stance quartz, when grinding agate gives off an odor of ozone.

Minerals such as asphalt or those contain­ing betumen smell oily when struck with a hammer.

A few minerals have a fetid odor of hydro­gen sulphide. Pyrite emits a sulfurous scent when ground. One property of sulfur is the odor of sulfur dioxide when heated.

Arsenical minerals have an odor of garlic when heated. Selenium compounds give an odor of decaying horseradish under the same conditions.

And of course there is the pungent odor you get when grinding fossilized bone.

Clay has a very distinctive odor when wet or damp. You have probably noticed other mineral odors.

 

The Sooner Rockologist 12/90

Via Beehive Buzzer 2&3/02

 

Gem Show Calendar

 

If you know of any events coming up, PLEASE let me know as soon as possible. If anything is wrong PLEASE let me know as soon as possible.

 

June 8, 9 Natrona County Rockhounds Club Show, Parkway Plaza Hotel & Convention Center, Casper, WY.

 

June 15-16 North Idaho Mineral Club, Kootenai Co. Fairgrounds Government Way & Kathleen Coeur d'Alene, ID

 

June 20-23 Mile High Rock & Mineral Society Show, Sears Court, Westminster Mall, 88th & Sheridan, Westminster, CO

 

June 22-23 The Natrona County Rockhounds Club Show, Parkway Plaza Hotel and Convention Center, Casper, WY

 

July 12-14 Four Corners Gem & Mineral Show, La Plata Co. Fairgrounds Durango, CO.

 

Aug 9-11 Contin-Tail Show, Buena Vista Fairgrounds, Buena Vista, CO.

 

Aug 31- Sept. 2 The Grant County Gem & Mineral Society Show, Silver City Recreation Center, 1016 North Silver St., Silver City, NM.

 

Sept. 13-15 Denver Gem & Mineral Show, sponsored by the Greater Denver Area Gem & Mineral Council, Denver Merchandise Mart Expo Hall, 451 East 58th Ave., Denver, CO.

 

Sept. 27-29 Tooele Gem & Mineral Show, Tooele City Recreation Complex, 400 W. 400 N., Tooele, UT.

 

Oct. 11-13 The Huachuca Mineral and Gem Club Show, Oscar Yrun Community Center, Sierra Vista, AZ

 

Oct. 18-20 Wasatch Gem, Utah State Fairpark, Promontory Hall, North Temple & 10^th West, Salt Lake City UT.

 

Oct. 19-20 Hells Canyon Gem Club Inc. Show, Nez Perce County Fairgrounds 1229 Burrell Lewiston. ID

 

Oct. 19-20 Chaparral Rockhounds Show, 500 South Richardson Roswell, NM

 

Nov. 9-10 Lake Havasu Gem and Mineral Society Show, Lake Havasu City Community Center, 100 Park Ave, Lake Havasu City, AZ

 

2003

July 11-13, RMFMS Show and Convention, hosted by the Natrona County Rockhounds Club, Parkway Plaza Hotel and Convention Center, Casper, WY.

 

 

A gentleman is one who holds the camper door open while his wife carries in the rocks.

 

From Hygrader & Beehive Buzzer 10/94

Via Golden Spike News 12/01

 

I Have Recently Been

Diagnosed With AAADD

Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.

From Cyberspace. Anonymous of coarse.

 

This is how it goes...

I decide to do work on the car, start to the garage and notice the mail on the table. OK, I’m going to work on the car...

BUT FIRST I’m going to go through the mail. Lay car keys down on desk. After discarding the junk mail, I notice the trash can is full. OK, I’ll just put the bills on my desk....

BUT FIRST I’ll take the trash out, but since I’m going to be near the mailbox., I’ll address a few bills.... Yes, Now where is the checkbook?

Gops… there’s only one check left. Where did I put the extra checks? Oh, there is my empty plastic cup from last night on my desk. I’m going to look for those checks...

BUT FIRST I need to put the cup back in the kitchen. 1 head for the kitchen, look out the window, notice the flowers need a drink of water, I put the cup on the counter and there’s my extra pair of glasses on the kitchen counter. What are they doing here? I’ll just put them away...

BUT FIRST need to water those plants. I head for the door and... Aaaagh! someone left the TV remote on the wrong spot. Okay, I’ll put the remote away and water the plants...

BUT FIRST I need to find those checks.

END OF DAY: Oil in car not changed, bills still unpaid, cup still in the sink, checkbook still has only one check left, lost my car keys, And, when I try to figure out how come nothing got done today, I’m baffled because...

I KNOW I WAS BUSY ALL DAY!

I realize this condition is serious.. .I’d get help.. .BUT FIRST.. I think I’ll check my e-mail.

 

Via GRAVEL GAZETTE 9/01