Wes Rolley on fri 3 may 02
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Several months ago, I asked the list about a couple of potential stops
along the way on a trip to New Mexico. One was the Luna Mimbres Museum in
Deming, NM, advice from Joyce. We did make the stop, and then camped
overnight at "Rockhound State Park" about 15 miles outside of town. This
park actually encourages people to find rocks and pack them away, up to 15
lbs per person per day. The rocks include agate, geodes, jasper and things
called "thundereggs". If I were from Oregon, I would know more about
thundereggs, as they are the "State Rock" of Oregon.
In any case, I did not find any of the above mentioned minerals, but in one
location I did find some white mineral with flakes of obsidian-like black
in it. This is where other had mined out the thundereggs. The park ranger
said that this was "weathered rhyolite." I remembered something that Hank
Murrow had written and brought about 5 lbs of the white mineral home with
me. I crushed it up and ran it through an 80 mesh seive. I mixed some
with water and molded it into a little ball, placed it on a pinched pad of
red firing stoneware and fired it to cone 10. Some of it fused to the pad,
but I only succeeded in calcining the rest.
However, the second experiment was better. I added 10% of my wood ash to
it and glazed the inside of a sake cup, same red firing stoneware. It
melted nicely to an oatmeal color with some tan in the bottom where it
pooled.
Now, just to figure what the formula is so that I can enter it into
Insight. Of course, I will probably never get back to Demming to get any
more.
Wes Rolley
17211 Quail Court
Morgan Hill, CA 95037
http://www.refpub.com
"When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only
how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not
beautiful, I know it is wrong." -- Richard Buckminster Fuller
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