Rock-A-Teer. ROCK-A-TEER AVAILABILITY By Larry Hoffman Club Show Planning Meeting

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1 1 Newsletter of the Puyallup Valley Gem & Mineral Club P.O. Box 134 Puyallup, WA February 2018 Volume 64 Issue 2 Rock-A-Teer ROCK-A-TEER AVAILABILITY By Larry Hoffman I am writing to let you know about the future availability of our Club newsletter, the Rock-A-Teer. Up until about two and a half years ago, most of our members read or downloaded the newsletter from the Club website. After our website was hacked and shut down, the newsletter was ed to those members instead. Now that our new WEB PAGE is up and running, the newsletter editor will stop ing copies of the Rock-A-Teer. The reason is because our membership roster changes drastically from year to year and it is very time consuming for the editor to keep changing the list every month. The target date to stop mailing the newsletter is April 1, This will also cut down on printing and postage costs for the Club. Those members who have elected to receive the newsletter by mail will continue to do so. Just in case you haven t heard, our new Club WEB PAGE has been completed for the most part and is up and running (See the article NEW WEB PAGE elsewhere in this newsletter). You can find it at Check it out. Thanks Club Show Planning Meeting Annual Club Show planning meetings are starting this month. They will be held at Mrs. Turner s restaurant. Location: 701 E Main, (downtown Puyallup) on Tuesday nights at 5:30pm. There will be two meetings per month to start with. 1 st meeting February 13 th and the 2 nd meeting February 27 th. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend. Please come and help plan this great event. Nancy LeMay Show Director Editor: Jennifer Barnstien, barnstienjp@comcast.net, Edited by: Helen Hammond, Tech Dept: Margaret Barnstien

2 Elected Officers Title Name Phone President: Nancy LeMay (253) Vice President: Glen Ripper (253) Secretary: Teresa Rodrick (253) Treasurer: Larry Hoffman (253) Federation Director: John Huber (253) year Director: Karen Lebeter (253) year Director: 1 year Trustee: Glenn Rodrick (253) gtrodi@comcast.net 2 year Trustee: Tony Johnson (253) Committee Chairs Title Name Phone Clubhouse Coordinator Jim Christian (253) Jimchristian_205@hotmail.com Club Show Nancy LeMay (253) beesknees369@gmail.com Editor Jennifer Barnstien (253) barnstienjp@comcast.net Field Trips Dennis Batchelor (360) hobbyhorse51@gmail.com Junior Group Diana Acosta (253) acosta10717@comcast.net Library Brett Lawrence (253) bandslawrence@comcast.net Membership Larry Hoffman (253) lhhoffman1@comcast.net Sunshine Debra Arneson (253) Newsletter Brett & Sherry Lawrence (253) bandslawrence@comcast.net Mineral Council Tony Johnson (253) The Puyallup Valley Gem & Mineral Club is a member of the Northwest Federation of Mineralogical Societies and the Washington State Mineral Council and affiliated with the American Federation of Mineralogical Societies. H & I Lapidary Mike & LaVon Siperek (253) Amber, Jewelry, Beads, Findings 4203 E 99th St Tacoma WA Gemstones, Slabs, Rough Material, yankees_diesel@comcast.net Fossils, and Aussie items

3 3 Obsidian Class Saturday February 24th 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM at the club house I will be putting on a program on Obsidian. Orientation of Sheen Obsidian, how to find it, cut it, grind it and polish it. Let me know if you are interested so I can get an idea of how many people to expect. You can bring your own material or I can furnish some pieces to you. Glen Ripper Washington State Mineral Council For the first time in many years we have a representative to the Washington State Mineral Council, Tony Johnson. Because of this we have seen club members from different clubs at our fieldtrips. AND this month we have Darringtons fieldtrip on our schedule. The council keeps track of many things that benefit Rock hounds, Greenway is going to stay open, They fight to preserve lands, They plan camp outs for rock hounds, to name a few. Thank you Tony. Submitted by Jennifer Barnstien Upcoming Shows as copied from the NFMS Newsletter Feb. 10&11 Sat 9-5 Sun 9-4 Whidbey Island Gem Club Oak Harbor Senior Center 51 SE Jerome Oak Harbor WA Keith Ludeman (360) rock9@whidbey,net Feb 24&25 Sat 9-5 Sun10-4 Idaho Gem Club Expo Idaho 5610 Glenwood Boise Idaho Brent Stewart (208) rocksbybrent@gmail.com March3&4 Sat Sun10-5 East King Co Rock Club Pickering Barn th Ave. NW Issaquah WA Cindy Smith showchair@eastkingco.org (206) March 3 &4 Sat.10-6 Sun 10-5 Owyhee Gem & Mineral Society O Conner Field House 2200 Blaine Caldwell, ID Darrell Ehlers ddehlers@fmtc.com (208)

4 4 CLUB CALENDAR: February **Please note class times have changed** DATE DAY DATE LOCATION COORDINATOR - INSTRUCTOR 1 Thursday 5:00 Cabbing Club House LaVon Siperek Saturday 10:00 Open House Club House Tony Johnson Tuesday 5:00 Cabbing Club House LaVon Siperek Tuesday 7:00 Club Board Meeting Fruitland Grange Glen Ripper Vice President 7 Wednesday 5:00 Wire Wrapping Club House Tony Johnson Thursday 5:00 Cabbing Club House LaVon Siperek Friday 7:30 Business Meeting, Show & Tell: Natural Heart Shaped stones Fruitland Grange Nancy LeMay President 10 Saturday 10:00 Fire Agate Cutting Club House Craig Oda Monday 7:00 Opal Club Meeting Club House Tony Johnson Tuesday 5:00 Cabbing Club House LaVon Siperek Tuesday Club Show Meeting (1) Mrs. Turner's Nancy LeMay Director 14 Wednesday 5:00 Opal Cutting Club House Tony Johnson Thursday 5:00 Cabbing Club House LaVon Siperek Saturday 9:00 Field trip to Walker Valley Sponsored by the Darrington Club Big Lake Grocery Mt. Vernon Contact: Ed Lehman Saturday 10:00 Open House Club House Jim Christian Tuesday 5:00 Cabbing Club House LaVon Siperek Wednesday 5:00 Wire Wrapping Club House Tony Johnson Thursday 5:00 Cabbing Club House LaVon Siperek Friday 7:30 PVG & MC - Club Meeting: Show &Tell is Brown Stones, Program is "Rock Sorting" Fruitland Grange Nancy LeMay President 24 Saturday 10:00 Obsidian Cutting Club House Glen Ripper Tuesday 5:00 Cabbing Club House LaVon Siperek Tuesday Club Show Meeting (2) Mrs. Turner's Nancy LeMay Director 28 Wednesday 5:00 Opal Cutting Club House Tony Johnson Fieldtrip: Don t miss the fieldtrip to Walker Valley Sponsored By The Darrington Club 2/17

5 5 JIM NICHOLLS A GOOD FRIEND by Larry Hoffman I believe most of you know that fellow Club member, Jim Nicholls, passed away on November 22, Jim and Jan Nicholls joined the Puyallup Valley Gem & Mineral Club in Since then they have been valuable participants in Club activities. They were some of the first Club members to welcome Sandy and I when we joined. They even had us over to their home several times to share tea and see the beautiful material in their display cases. In fact, Jim gave me a number of slabs (of my choice) from his slab material to get me started in rockhounding. He was very generous and was always giving things away. Jim loved to take time to show fellow Club members how to do just about anything. All you had to do was ask, and he would share his techniques, tricks and tips with you. He also made many lapidary presentations to kids during school classes and at Cub Scout meetings. And he also had samples to give away to the young ones. He was a consistent participant during the Club Show & Tell time displaying beautiful material. Jim was quite involved in the Club Show process. He helped transport equipment from the barn and shed to the Show and back again as well as working during the show. He loved working in the kid s area and built the first Kid s Mine that is still used in the kid s area at the Show. In 2008, he also built the first sifting rig used in the kid s area to find fossils in sand. Jim participated in the Club in other ways too. He held the office of Trustee on the Board in 2002, 2003 and He sorted rock at the Club Stash for Club shows and the WA State Fair. He willingly showed anyone his rock shop setup (including me) and gave out valuable tips. He was a skilled cab maker, tumbler and slab & geode polisher. Jim was also among the main contributors of material for our biannual Club Auction/Potlucks and the door prizes given out at our meetings. And if you listened to him, you got to hear some of his incredible stories. He was a kind, generous and loving man whose broad smile, firm hand shake and Hi, welcome, I m Jim. greeting will be missed but not forgotten. Thanks, Jim, for being such a good friend.

6 6 NEW WEB PAGE By Larry Hoffman Hi fellow Club members. Happy New Year! I hope you are all doing fine and enjoying the rainy weather by working on your lapidary projects. I thought I would take a minute to remind everyone (just in case you haven t heard) that our new Club WEB PAGE is up and running and it looks beautiful thanks to our Web Masters Stephanie and Rich Carlson. If you haven t seen it yet, you can find it at puyallupvalleygemandmineralclub.com. Check it out and let me know what you think. It still needs some information loaded, but we are working on that. We have formed a Web Page Committee which will be responsible for keeping all of the information that changes up to date and posting any new material that is needed. Also, if you have a computer, it will be the place to go to read or download your current issue of the Rock-A-Teer, our Club newsletter. It contains a lot of live links to places like the AFMS, the NFMS (where you can also get their newsletter, the WA State Mineral Council (for a list of field trips), WA State for the Fish and Gold Pamphlet and much more. These sites have a lot of interesting material and articles. Thanks for taking a look and enjoy! Volunteer plaques Congratulations to Larry Hoffman & Jennifer Barnstien! 2017 Man & Woman of the Year recipients. The stone is Serpentine from NE Washington and was cut, polished and donated by Club Members Jim Sahli and Jennifer Sahli

7 7 THE RARE, THE UNUSUAL, THE EXOTIC S H O S P E T I N A I L I Z A R B I U R E A H D I O P T A S E P R E N E G T M X C G A S P E I T E E R H T E I B D I E L A N R S I T W Y February Birthdays A I T L L G E N T E L E P L I H L L L I A Y I C I I E E L H O G E L I I N T G E T I X T I E E P R E O T P O E O E T E T N E T N A E N N E R T P N E E S A L C U E C B I I T E E T I R U B N A D T R S M P T I H L G T K J I F E I A B W A U E T N A E E Q L P D K T L R S H R P A I C I D O C R A S E I T E E E I T T S G Y S U N Q U C M N E R N D S E T I L E E H C S L A D A G R O N R T M E H E T I L U Z A L Y O T E T I H P R O M I M E H A E N K E Diana Acosta Daniel Giles Emily Hochstrasser Brett Lawrence Johanna Crichton Rachael Vellandi Lloyd Poehler 4th 7th 11th 21st 5th 22nd 5th AMBLYGONITE 10. EPIDOTE 19. PETALITE APATITE 11. EUCLASE 20. PHENAKITE AXINITE 12. GASPEITE 21. PREHNITE BERYLLONITE 13. HAMBERGITE 22. SCAPOLITE BRAZILIANITE 14. HEMIMORPHITE 23. SCHEELITE CALETONITE 15. IDOCRASE 24. SINHALITE DANBURITE 16. KORNERUPINE 25. SPHENE DIOPASE 17. KYANITE 26. SUGIITE ENSTATITE 18. LAZULITE

8 8 Hello Fellow Club Members, Thank you for reading the newsletter and keeping up on our Club s activities! This article is to let you know the highlights of what the Board members discussed at our first meeting of I mentioned in the January newsletter and had presented to the Board of Directors the idea of forming small committees based off of the Club s Bylaws. So far the response has been very productive and we have five committees established to cover our Auctions/Potlucks (Setup/Take down), Club Show-Volunteer dinner, Publicity: Flyers and announcements. These committees will be having short get- togethers before our regular Friday night meetings. Members will be contacted soon. We also have a Club House committee (Jim Christian - lead) and a Website committee (Larry Hoffman - lead). Other Board discussion: 1) Annual Club Show dates-june 1 st -3 rd. 2) Auctions/Potlucks-April 27 th and October 26 th. 3) Federation Show the end of April. 4) Tony Johnson and Karen Lebeter volunteered to scan and archive the Club s scrap-book photos. 5) We are looking at closing down the Club Library. 6) For now the Juniors group is without a leader. 7) Our Show & Tell, Program night themes and Field Trips are all established! Thank you all so much for participating in the volunteer efforts! It makes my job so much easier and less stressful! You re Awesome!!! Submitted by Nancy LeMay, 2018 Club President

9 How to get a great polish on your cabochons By Glen Ripper 9 Once you have your slab marked with the shape you want, trim close to your marked lines leaving about 1/16 from the lines. Start with the 80 grit diamond wheel to smooth out your shape. Next use the cab rest to get a 45 degree angle. Use the scribe tool to mark your girdle line and then mount on a dop stick. Start your grinding at 45 degree angle working from the girdle line to the center. Grind completely around the cab at this angle until you reach the center. Use light to moderate pressure using the whole face of the diamond wheel. (to optimize its life). Now increase the angle (so that the dop stick is closer to the vertical) and repeat the process, grinding from the girdle line toward the center. You will do this several more times, each time grinding at a shallower angle and decreasing the size of the flat area (in the center of your cab) until it is completely gone and you have a rough shaped domed cab. When you have formed the dome, work up and down over the center of the cab to the girdle line. This can be accomplished by rocking the dop stick back and forth like a pendulum, as you rotate the cab slowly from end to end. Do it in one direction, then turn the dop stick 90 degrees and do it again. Repeat this process so that you are blending out grinding lines developed during the grinding process. Check the cab as you work to be sure you are working symmetrically. Dry your stone to reveal any scratches or low spots. Use a strong light and maybe a magnifying glass. When the surface appears uniform and you have the cabochon shape it is time to fine tune it and remove the scratches left from the rough grinding, using the 220 grinding wheel. Use the same motion as the initial grinding to remove deep scratches or low spots. Dry stone look, look again and again as you go. The finer sanding you go the more you have to look. The most common mistake is not spending enough time on the coarse grits. These are necessary for properly shaping the curvature of the stone so that you won t scratch during the finish sanding stage, the polish. Don t go too fine too soon! The next wheel will be the 280 Nova wheel where you will be using the rocking motion back and forth. Be sure to use light pressure with all Nova wheels and use the whole surface area of the wheel. Now on to the 600 grit wheel. Same stuff as before dry, look, grind, look etc. After using the 600 wheel if you have done your job right and you have a nice uniform velvet look to the stone you can go to the polish wheel. If a scratch is detected you must go back to the 600 wheel and remove the polish from the entire surface before re-sanding to remove the scratches. It will not work if you just try to work those spots because the 600 wheel will put scratches at the edges on the polished surface and you will not be able to polish them out. Cont. on pg 9

10 10 Cont. from pg 8 People often blame scratches on the finer wheels, when really those scratches were in there from the coarser grits. When the entire surface is scratched up from say 280 wheel it is difficult to isolate any single scratch as being deeper than the others. Then when you sand away those shallower scratches, the deep ones are more obvious, keep working until the whole stone is uniform. Occasionally if the scratch is deep you might have to go back to the 280 grit wheel. There are two other wheels on the Genie 1,200 and 3,000. If you have done the first three wheels correctly you can skip the last two and go right to the polish. Polish wheel is charged with Optical grade Cerium Oxide. Using the water spray bottle give the wheel a few squirts. The best polishing is achieved when the polish is getting warm, but not yet dry. There is a fine line between too wet and too dry. As the polish starts to dry out hit it with a few sprits of water. You want to apply pressure and build up some heat as that makes the surface microscopically melt. Be careful and do not let the stone get too hot as you can break it. Be extra cautious of Opal it does not like heat. To avoid overheating use a small amount of water on the Opal cab to keep it cool. Key points, you want the whole surface to look the same before moving to the next wheel. Dry your stone and look at all angles with a strong light. On the polish wheel semi-dry and apply pressure.

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12 12 Rock-a-Teer Newsletter of the Puyallup Valley Gem And Mineral Club PO Box 134 Puyallup WA GOLD & FISH RULES There has been a bit discussion about the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Gold and Fish Rules for Mineral Prospecting and Placer Mining pamphlet. Does it or does it not apply to rockhounding and if it does, how/when does it apply? Although these rules were primarily developed for gold prospecting in the areas adjacent to streams and lakes some of them do apply to rockhounding. The most common questions rockhounders have is -- when do you have to have a copy of the pamphlet with you? The answer has to do with timing restrictions. Page 10 of the pamphlet deals with mineral prospecting without timing restrictions (see tables starting on page 16 of the pamphlet) and in this case, you do not need to have a copy of the pamphlet with you. Page 13 of the pamphlet deals with mineral prospection with timing restrictions. In this case, you must have a copy of the pamphlet on the dig site, not one for each person as has been suggested. To print your own PDF copy, go to and click on the gold and fish download on the right side of the page.