CompuServe Messages

I try to crack them all. Of course, I'm not done yet. 🙂 Seriously, you scout an area, find some likely looking candidates, and pick one that shows a hint – maybe a little sagging, this appears to happen during the formation of the boulders if they're pretty hollow, too hollow to support themselves in whatever semi-fluid state they were in. As for heavy equipment, none at all. I use an Estwing rock hammer, safety glasses, and a sledge hammer that I think weighs in at 6-8 lbs. I put the point of the rock hammer into a crack or simply where I think it'll be likely to do the most good, and drive it in with the sledge. Usually, the "skin" of the boulder will break out within about 10 minutes of work. From there, if the boulder is indeed hollow, you can insert the hammer tip in crevasses inside the boulder and break it open. They almost always fracture right across the whole boulder during the process of getting through the very hard skin – I think the outer surface was baked hard by the sun, it both appears to be a different material, and certainly offers much greater resistance than the interior of the boulders. If they haven't fractured across, you start somewhere else on the boulder that seems likely to encourage it to do so. One boulder can take anywhere from 20 minutes to open to all day… you have to peek inside them to guess if they're worth that kind of extended effort, but usually, they are, so I'm pretty consistant – once I start, I go until they're reduced to collectable chunks. It's definitely difficult work – but it's definitely worth it. 🙂 Inside the boulders you can find barite, calcite and selenite crystals – I've got a selenite specimen still on the matrix that is about 8 inches long, very beautiful. Calcite occurs in drusy layers, mostly… I have yet to find a large crystal of it. The barite is the most common, and a trip out virtually gaurantees some beautiful specimens, though I admit we've had one or two dry days. Ben