Watch the tour and then read below for more details on the completion of the new headquarters:

The Museum

The wall shelves display the best and most diverse specimens I have found on The Carver Agate Field. The shelves are made from local cedar trees I cut on my property and had milled by a neighbor on his ‘bandmill’ sawmill. They are rough but work well! The work and equipment tables are all made from wooden pallets I salvaged from the shop construction project. I added wooden legs with roller wheels on each to allow the easy movement of all the tables. They can be locked in place by brakes on each wheel. The table tops are left over sheathing from the building construction project. The black plastic cabinets and drawers also have wheels and brakes. These contain polished museum specimens that could not fit on the wall shelves.

The museum has an old oak cabinet salvaged from the ‘dump’ without a top….. however, using oak I had cut years ago, I fashioned a new top for it in my wood workshop. The cabinet was free and I selected it to carry the weight of the enormous nodule(geode ?), being the largest one I ever found on The Carver agate field. It is surrounded by select, colorful cabs I have cut recently. The lighting is all LED. The art gallery/shop is cooled with lots of windows and, when necessary due to high humidity, a heat pump. The three uncut nodules under the ‘hog table’ are, and will remain, uncut as specimens, perched on a double cedar stump cut on my property. The tripod is used with my Nikon camera to photograph all cabs and specimens after which they are loaded on my laptop. There are thousands of photos readily available. The window sills are mostly uncut and very special cut specimens that benefit from being viewed with bright natural light.

More detail

The shop has 3 diamond saws to cut the rocks you see. Large, medium and small (trim) saws. The medium saw cuts small stones; the trim saw cuts away waste rock to avoid extensive grinding when making cabs. I use a CabKing grinding unit to progressively shape and then grind rocks using diamond impregnated wheels that go from 80 grit to 5000 grit. I use a 14000 diamond lap to finish. I don’t really polish the stones . . . I just use ever finer grits until the scratches are not visible to the naked eye, e.g., it looks shiny!

TAA New World Headquarters

This has been a great labor of love, and despite not being able to ‘go rocking’ on The Carver Agate Field any longer, I am discovering more secrets of The Carver every day–it continues to show its beauty and diversity!!!