4th of July Agate Close Ups

Several weeks ago I posted a few photos of the unusual Lake Superior agate that I purchased earlier this summer from Mark Bowen.  As I already reported, this is the first time in 16 years that I negotiated to buy a single rock off of someone who came into the museum.  Mark had purchased this inland agate from EBay.  When he received it in the mail, it was very rough with a thick husk.

Mark spent an hour on his standard grinding wheel and removed the husk.

I used my Nikon camera with close up lenses to get a few more photos.

With my USB microscope camera I took a few photos.  Since Mark used just a grinding wheel and I don't want to complete the face polish since we think any more lapidary work could remove some of the detail, you can see some of the grinding streaks.