I worked on and off today creating a couple of Lake Superior Agate Pendants. I NEVER get tired of Lake Superior Agates.
The first pendant was just about the prettiest agate I’ve seen, and it made a remarkable piece of jewelry to take to the Celebration of Agates in Hopkins Minnesota.
This pendant is big, bold, and beautiful!
Beautiful pastels adore this great Lake Superior Agate.
I promised you I would let you see what I made today, so here they are.
Attendees at the Celebration of Agates Show in Hopkins Minnesota will be happy to see my Lake Superior Agate Jewelry.
Since 1969 the Lake Superior Agate has been the Minnesota State Stone. Glaciers deposited Lake Superior Agates throughout Minnesota, as well as south as far as Kansas.
Many of you know that Laker’s are my favorite gemstone. I am amazed at the variety of colors, types, and patterns. No two are ever alike.
The multi-pattern was amazing on this Laker.
Moons and stripes. I liked this one.
The trick is finding those extremely rare flawless, or nearly flawless Lake Superior Agates to use in my jewelry. Remember Laker’s moved vast distances from bedrock in the Keweenaw area. Most of them were ripped from bedrock. Lake Superior Agates are also tumbled on the Lake Superior shoreline. It is really amazing that any Laker’s can be found that are not cracked.
Three Lake Superior Agates were selected from my stash of slices, cut into cabochons, and hurried to my workbench. These were all distinctively different, as you can see.
An unusual ledge agate.
Each agate talked to me, and I was able to make some exceedingly fine pendants, don’t you think? Let me know which one you like best. I sell many Lake Superior Agate Pendants to Minnesotans. I expect when they see these agates, and well over 100 more Lake Superior Agate Pendants, this jewelry will make them ecstatic!
Morrisonite (Morrison Ranch Jasper) is considered one of the finest Jaspers in the world, and is often referred to as “The KING of Jaspers”. Unfortunately it has not been commercially mined from its source in SE Oregon, along the Owyhee River, since 1996.
Marvelous coloration is a trademark of the finest Morrisonite. The slab needs to be a piece of Jewelry.
The rockhound’s favorite government agency, the Bureau of Land Management, closed the hunting area and dynamited some of the mines, deeming them unsafe. I heard Gene Mueller of The Gem Shop speak on hunting the area before it was closed. It took a lot of material to produce any “good stuff”.
The combination of the area closing and the limited production in the past has driven priced to several hundred dollars a slab in recent years.
I recently discovered that I had some Morrisonite from an old collection I acquired last fall. I suspect this material may be 40 years old.
It did indeed need to be a pendant. Morrisonite like this is so very rare!
When we bought this collection I hardly checked the material. We just loaded all the rock in buckets, loaded the truck, and drove it home. The buckets ended up in storage, then winter set in, so I’m just now discovering what I bought… .Gotta love it!
“Ghostbusters” is another pendant of the “Debbie Collection”, one of her earlier purchases. When Halloween time comes around, you often see her showing off how her ghost seems to fly through the air!
My inspiration on this one came as I was cutting slabs from a very unusual Lake Superior Agate. The agate had distinctive eyes as well as some fortification structure with unusual coloration, mostly white but including some yellow, which is quite rare in Lakers. I immediately saw a face on the second slab, and the pattern continued through the next three slices.
I cut a calibrated oval 30X40 mm cab with the eyes in a position showing the face of the ghost. The position of the eyes toward the side of the cab made me think of a flying ghost.
I took this cab to William Holland School of Lapidary Arts in Young Harris, Georgia for an advanced wire wrapping class I was taking. The first incarnation of the ghost came into being at that time. I thought the piece was quite whimsical and artsy. I kept that piece of jewelry around for a couple of years and my wife wore it at Halloween time each year. Debbie was looking through my pendants one day and fell in love with the ghost. By the time she looked at the original piece I had made a second, less extravagant ghost pendant, but Debbie wanted the wild unit I had created at lapidary school. 
I re-wrapped the original ghost simply because my skill level had progressed substantially and I could see some flashier things to do! This is the pendant that Debbie loves.
The ghost appears to be flying rapidly through the air throwing up a trail of smoke. I really enjoyed creating this extra-ordinary apparition.
Two children were kicking rocks around one day in 1906, when suddenly one kicked out a very rusty, heavy rock, which seemed so strange and out of place that they took it home. The Muonionalusta area is in northern Sweden north of the Arctic Circle. Scientists did not study this rock until 1948 when it was discovered to be a piece of an iron meteorite. Since then, numerous pieces of the now famous Muonionalusta Meteorite have been found. These meteorites are famous for their fantastic etched patterns (Widmanstatten figures). These patterns are not visible until the meteorites are acid etched.
I first discovered slabs of these meteorites at the Tucson Gem & Mineral Shows in 2008. I had an inspiration that I could make jewelry out of these slabs. I showed Debbie this material and being the adventurous type, she wanted a pendant and ear rings from this material.
It actually took me a few months to think about how I could work with this material. Fortunately my neighbor, Mike, is a tool and die maker, and has a fantastic machine shop. I had Mike cut two rectangular cabs as well as four smaller rectangular cabs for earrings. For the earrings I had him halve the almost quarter inch slab in order to lighten these small cabs so they were suitable (light enough) for earrings. Muonionalusta’s often have small stone inclusions, and metal saws do not like rocks! I watched Mike’s expensive wire-feed saw spark its way through the meteorite, but every time it hit an inclusion it would stop and shut itself down. Then the saw would have to be backed out and start all over down the same cut line. Usually the second cut would make it through the inclusion and continue until the cut was done or it hit another inclusion and shut itself down again, in which case the cut would have to be restarted. This was a very expensive computer-controlled machine, so I owed Mike Christmas jewelry for his two daughters and his wife. Nice that he is a good neighbor and likes to barter.
I rounded the corners of these rectangles on my Genie, then coated the iron 
with epoxy to make them shiny and seal them against rust. I drilled a small hole in the corner of each earring cab.
I wrapped the pendant cab with Argentium and added two violet CZ’s and a Mystic Topaz to one side. I thought they reminded me of stars and they definitely gave the pendant sparkle. I hung the unit at an angle to simulate the meteor tumbling into the atmosphere. The silver wire was the obvious choice, matching the silvery patina of the meteorite.
This jewelry set is one of my favorites and I’ve never seen anything like this before.
Believe me, Debbie loves this set and I see her wearing it often. It is one of the newer additions to the “Debbie Collection”. I’m going to make at least one more similar set in the near future and post it up on this website.
While cutting an interesting Lake Superior eye agate one afternoon, I saw a fish eye develop. I had an inspiration that if I cut an oval cabochon, then backed that agate with a thin sheet of Jade, I could somehow make a fish come to life. The dilemma then became how to do it.
I first cut a thin slice of mottled green Jade from a rock I found in my collection, then cut it out in a fish shape using my Taurus Ring Saw. A Taurus saw has a continuous circular, diamond coated wire that allows cutting in any direction. It’s a machine that I use occasionally, but on those jobs nothing else works as well. One of the uses for the Taurus is cutting Christmas tree ornaments. Another use is cutting the State of Michigan shape out of Petoskey Stone.
I used two-part Epoxy to bond the fish-eyed cab to the Jade. I then continuously wrapped a frame from Sterling silver, finishing the wrap at the bottom of the fish.
I left extra wire at the bottom and ran that extra wire up the rear of the fish to lock the wire to the fish frame.
Debbie always likes matching earrings for her pendants. In this case I used the same piece of Jade as I used for the backer, and using the Taurus Saw again, I cut the blue gills. With a Foredom and diamond bit I drilled tiny eye holes in the earring fish as well as hole to hang the drops.
Debbie is an enthusiastic rock hound, has eclectic tastes, and claims many of my unusual pendants. This was one of the early pieces in a growing collection, I refer to as the “Debbie Collection”. I have a lot of fun designing pieces with her, and she graciously has agreed to have her jewelry in the next few blogs. I expect when I become “Rich and Famous” (right!) Debbie should be able to open up a museum of my strange, unusual, and weird stuff.
You can see some of our available agate pendants on several pages: Various, Crazy Lace Agates, Lake Superior Agates, Petrified Wood, and Queensland Agates.
