The most interesting of the five stones is the “ghost,” shown below in two different angles.

Click each image to see an enlarged version.

Rock #4910

Rock #4909

Next we have a yellow fortification agate in an “octopus garden beneath the sea.”

Rock #4894

     

Photo 4906 below is the slab from another nodule creating a cut and polished agate which looked blue before being cut and more red to orange after being fully polished.

     Rock #4906

Rock #4906 close-up

Photo 4896 is a jasper/agate free form designer cab. I just liked the colors.

    Rock #4896

For the lapidists out there, photo 4899 below, which I call the flower garden agate. is the most interesting cut that I have done in a while. Usually I take a nodule, cut a thin slab from a crosscut of the nodule, and then grind and polish, as is the case in all of the stones shown above.

The flower garden agate, however, was not a slab from a nodule. It is a very heavy grinding from the outside of the nodule rind into the nodule until all of the white rind was removed and the layers immediately beneath the white rind appeared almost magically. The result is what you see and what I have described as the flower garden agate. Had I slabbed this nodule, as would usually be the case, and ground a stone from the inside out toward the rind, the look of the stone would have been totally different. For lapidists out there, it is sometimes worth grinding from the outside in to see what you get. This is not the first time I have utilized this process, but it is one of the more interesting results from the outside to inside cut.

Rock # 4899