Thursday, December 12, 2013

Lake Superior Agate Close Ups

It is still snowing outside my house.  Today I had to drive to Seney to get a wheel bearing and ABS sensor replaced.  When I left, it was a complete white out.  I would have not driven 25 miles in those conditions, but I looked at the weather radar before I left.  For the second time in a week, the lake effect snow bands set up over Grand Marais.  Less than 10 miles south of town -- it was not snowing at all.  By the time I was most of the way to Seney -- there were blue skies and sunshine.

I didn't get a chance to post a blog update this morning, and tomorrow I am going to focus on making mineral art for my custom orders -- so I decided to pull out my USB microscope tonight.  As I was looking through my stash of rocks, I spotted a small jar full of Lake Superior agates collected by the museum founder, Axel Niemi.  Most of these specimen are rough, uncut, and unpolished.



Notice in the photo below how iron oxide deposited between the agate bands.




Lots of color....








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