HIdden Inside ... Part 2

This one is going to be mostly pictures. I carted the geode stuff out to the garage as the first thing most of the instructions I read tell you is do it somewhere you don't care if it gets damaged like Geoff's tool bench out in the garage. He's already got cardboard on top of it (an unfolded cardboard box) and I added a small cutting board lest you think I don't care if we damage his tool bench! (By the way, the cutting board ended up splitting in two then three pieces!)

On go the goggles and now the search for a chisel which Geoff thought he had a good one but all we can find is a tiny one ... oh well, one works with whatcha got.

We start with the original geode I got back at Wall Drug and Geoffrey snaps on his gloves ... his gloves? Definitely he and I have different ways of doing things. I tend to plunge right in more careless of self I guess. Whereas he dons all the protective gear he might possibly be in need of.

Okay, now we're ready. The original geode is on the cutting board and the tiny chisel aimed at what looks like a weak spot and part of a possible crack. Tap ... tap ... tap ... wait a minute I think we need a Wham! more than a tap. I wish I could just snatch up the hammer and give the stupid geode a whack but old age and arthritis have combined to weaken my right hand and wrist to where they are really useless for this kind of thing.

It's cracking! He did it! It falls in pieces - two main pieces, one little one and a bunch of shreds.

That geode had a nice thin outer shell and was not too much trouble to crack open. We now started on the others with less luck getting two more opened of the twelve we have. One of these had babies inside ... okay, what would you call it? It opened to a nice lining of quartz but also had a number of small round crystals, loose and unattached.

The other was a small one that came apart into three pieces.

Of course, a good workman blames his tools (that's not how it goes?) and off Geoff goes to the nearby Ace Hardware to get a better chisel.

We got two more opened both with difficulty but they finally yielded to the new chisel. The two more to try I had chosen because they were different colors on the outside. They weren't as light as the earlier ones but didn't seem quite as solid as the rest of the unopened.

The original geode is in front, a pale one on the right and reddish on the left

The two above shown with the original both were more nodules than hollow. A 'nodule' is a geode that is filled inside without the open areas common to geodes. The grayish one is what I personally call stupid looking but it is interesting in that although mostly filled with the clear quartz common to many geodes, there is a small area in the middle that has not yet filled in leaving a small hole more easily seen on the half on the right side of the photo below.

The reddish stone on the left in the picture of three turned out to be a full fledged nodule with rock filling most of the cavity and an interesting arc of quartz curving around like a comet with a tail. This one I think I will have polished when I can find someone who does that kind of thing.

So here I sit at my rocky desk with six opened geodes and five or six unopened ones still out in the garage. Not sure how long they will stay unopened, they are of various sizes and all are rather heavy so are probably filled on the inside,  a couple of them are quite small.

I have reassured Geoffrey that I have no interest in becoming a rock hound or whatever the term is for a geode chaser. It has been truly interesting following this trail and looking inside some rocks but enough is enough and except for getting that one rock (well, the two halves) polished, they'll become part of my shelves and gather dust with the rest of my treasures.