earthquest minerals

Welcome to Earthquest Minerals

We thought it would be fun to share a few pics of "Earthquest operations" with our not-so--local friends out there. If you have an agate specimen or piece of petrified wood from us, well this is where it is cut and polished. We prep all of our agates and woods in house and take great pride in the professional high quality finish that is created by our processes.



December, 2015:
This Coyamito agate has been waiting a long, long time to be cut and polished! During the early 1960's Dana's aunt Pat was a newlywed and just getting into lapidary as well. Her husband, "Speck" made a trip to Mexico and ended up purchasing over 45 lbs. of Mexican agate, 90% being Coyamito, Laguna and Monteczuma all in whole nodules. Pat ended up getting involved in other pursuits and eventually the agate nodules found themselves lost in her enormous barn, along with many other treasures. When Dana and I became interested in minerals in 1991, Pat mentioned to us that she had boxes of agates and "rocks" somewhere out in that barn and that we should go looking for them sometime. Needless to say, years and years went by without us looking and the agates gathered more and more dust. This past summer a major fire burned through Calaveras Co., and we were forced to evacuate to Dana's family in Gardnerville, NV. Pat invited us over to look for the agates and after climbing deep into the dark and dusty upper loft and following a trail of scattered lapidary supplies, behold, WHOLE UNGRADED MEXICAN AGATE NODULES! Seeing clean whole nodules by the dozen was a real thrill and Pat thought we were crazy for getting so excited!



December, 2015:
It's a messy job cutting Coyamito's but somebody has to do it! I wore out two 4" blades on my little trim saw before I broke out the 10"! There's a little more waste with this one, as the blade is quite a bit thicker. To the right are the good ones, to the left is a hefty pile of duds. Probably 25% of pieces cut were decent quality material.



December, 2015:
The finished pieces are turning out very nice.



November, 2014:
A box full of Blue Forest limbs. There are several "Holly" specimens in this lot that are pretty darn nice. All of the pieces were collected by Mike Wagner 2008 and cut and polished 2011.



November, 2014:
A flat of newly cut and polished Texas Springs limb casts. Earthquest Minerals takes great pride in every bit of work that goes into producing high quality polished fossil wood specimens. Detailed geological data, as well as pertinent locality information are provided with each and every specimen label.



September, 2014:
An excellent lot of Congo malachite purchased at Denver from a frenchman that lives part-time in the Congo. We learned here that if wine is offered during a mineral deal - that the price for the lot may go up or down...depending on how good the wine is...



September, 2014:
A few of our Denver show purchases. Those moroccan blue barites are soooo beautiful! Also, please don't criticize us to badly for those synthetic bismuths... it was a moment of weakness - Dana and I just caved in as they were KILLERS and we had to have them! Plus, just look at all the natural minerals we bought that are around them, right?



September, 2014:
A choice lot of freshly collected calcite crystals from the Elmwood mine that we purchased on our last day at the Denver show. The friendly folks we purchased them from deal directly with the Tennessee miners and said that mining was back in full swing and that we could expect more from Smith County in the near future. Praise the mineral gods that Elmwood is back in production! (BTW, Those are some freshly collected Naica gypsums sharing space with the calcite...yum yum!



April 17th, 2014
Our work counter during minor production. That Arizona rainbow wood is being stabilized and is still unpolished but those Blue Forest woods and Texas Springs limb casts are all polished up pretty and ready for shows or to be listed on the site. Oh, and BTW, you can never have to many pairs of safety glasses when you work with rock!




April 17th, 2014
There's several steps that go into each and every polished specimen on our site. After cutting, grinding, washing and baking, 3 dozen Texas springs limb casts await sanding and polishing.



earthquest minerals
April 17th, 2014
Some of our show and website stock. There's lots of fine minerals, agates and petrified wood in all of those boxes!



earthquest minerals
April 17th, 2014
The workhorse equipment that gets all of those agates and woods sanded flat. The 36 grit belt sander on the left and Bull Wheel on right.



earthquest minerals
April 17th, 2014
Our 24" Highland Park saw cleaned and ready to cut more agate and wood.




April 17th, 2014
Here you can see our material that has been cut and cleaned and ready to be polished. I know it it looks like just a pile of ugly rocks, but after they are prepped and polished they will shine like the sun! Those are some really choice Blue Forest Limbs at bottom right.


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