How to Find Lake Superior Agates

hi everyone my name is thomas and today i'm going to be showing you how to identify lake superior agates now i chose a gravel road because that's probably around here the best place to find a lot of little lake superior i gets we probably aren't gonna find anything too big but we should find lots of little tiny ones and practicing with those will help us get better at spotting the big ones so let's get right to it all right so we have our first bigger find of the day [Applause] this guy right here it actually looks like that's a full nodule kind of a weird shaped one but you can see that there's pitting on that side and pitting on that side interesting hopefully if we find something a little bit better than this all right we have our second find of the day you can tell because of the way it is no it actually looks pretty waxy like from my perspective and i have a feeling that that one's gonna have some pretty nice bands to it oh yeah that one's got a pretty little triangle in it that's a bit of a nicer find all right here's an example one that might be a little bit easier to miss [Applause] but it looks a little bit waxy but you can definitely see some pits in it and then it's probably not showing up on camera but you can kind of tell that it's a little bit transparent but if you haven't spotted it yet it is right there and another full nodule so i'm not going to bother spraying this one off because you won't be able to see any bands anyways all right here's one that might throw you off it's red and white or orange and white but i can tell right away that it's not an egg it agates don't do that they don't have this type of luster to them where it reflects like that so this is feldspar and the white is probably quartz and the reason it does this is uh it breaks off in planes and so when it fractures or whatever it does it along one plane and it leaves you with a fairly smooth surface and it reflects the light all right here's another one that's going to be really tricky to spot i actually didn't spot it until i spotted way down because i had found something else you see how this one right here looks really waxy and then i can see through it a little bit [Applause] so i keep almost missing it when i look up too it's ridiculous but that is definitely a little tiny like superior i get it's really sunny out so my water is drying instantly although you can definitely tell it's a lake superior i get look at that orange along the back but you notice how waxy it looks [Music] that's like the best way to spot him i think all right there's a few reasons why i know this one is that i get right away uh first off the color is very obvious but besides that you can see these it almost looks like if you were to break glass these are concordal fractures and again it's got that waxy appearance none of these are very big that's kind of the downside of looking on gravel roads you're not really going to find much that's very big but it really helps for learning what to look for so that when you are somewhere where they're really big they're easier to spot it's kind of weird the bigger ones i think are actually a lot harder to spot and identify than the little ones so it helps to have a lot of practice and these are good for using as cushioning material in the tumbler or even just tumbling them they can be really beautiful here's another little guy that has some really obvious signs that he's an egg so you will see that it is glowing you can definitely see translucency in it and then on this side you will see that yellow husk from the lymanite staining and if we spray it we might see some bands but i am not seeing any great so sometimes getting low helps uh i was looking at this piece of quartz for a different video that i'm working on uh you'll understand this in the future why that piece of quartz might be intriguing to me but anyway while i was down here i looked over and spotted that now this one's kind of funky because it's not your typical eggette color this one's a paint take it and unless i had gotten really low i would have probably missed that one but look at the bands on that that's really pretty so you'll be kind of surprised what you'll find even when you just are squatting or looking at a different rock it doesn't hurt to get low so upon further inspection this one it turns out is actually sun bleached so this has been facing up for so long that the light from the sun just like anything else that gets unbleached has faded it then i think has made it actually more beautiful and interesting but that's what it originally looked like so that's pretty neat all right i'm about 75 percent sure this one's an egg it's got the pits it's kind of the right color but it doesn't quite look that waxy there's a bug crawling on it but i'm pretty sure it's an egg it just because of the pitting the color and it just looks eggety so let's find out jury's still out but this one's looking more quartzy but it never hurts to check because i'd rather be wrong thinking it is an egg it then not thinking it's an egg it and just passing it by because that would have been the best one of the day so far all right so right there is where i picked up that last one a few feet over i spotted something that looks i think this one's an egg it even more than the last one it's got the pits it's a little bit transparent and it looks pretty waxy it's got that what they call potato skin so i'm almost positive this one's an idiot it's even got the lima knight staining [Music] and this one's definitely an egget but it's a nodule oh there we go there we've got a window look at that that one's got it's dirty but it's got a nice pretty little triangle in there so there's actually two of them here uh there's this little guy another thing you can look for is obviously red and white or orange and white a lot of times when i'm looking in the water i'll look for an orange rock with a white center that's how i spot him oh one of the ways anyway all right here's another one that'll throw you off so you can see that it's pretty waxy looking it's also red but it's too dark of a red and it's not when i spray it off it'll turn bright red and then it's not transparent at all so this is jasper it's made of the same material as i get and it'll still polish up nice but if you're just after i gets this ain't it all right this is one of those where you just find it after practice there's not really a way that i could say that this one jumped out to me i mean it was a little bit the red and white color and then i got closer and realized what it was i'm trying to identify it through my phone i either have to focus on my phone and then i can't see the rock as well or the rock but then oftentimes i'll not be paying attention and lose it out of frame jury's still out on that one this one might be like a jazz or something let me get it sprayed off and get a better look at it and then i'll let you know all right so upon further inspection this is a lake superior agate and it's a really unique kind i believe this is a brecciated egg it because there are bands in there but they're very angular and they don't really like their spots like that white spot where there are like concentric bands that you'd normally find on like a fortification i get but then there's also what appear to be those but just like kind of stop randomly so so i think this one's appreciated i get which would be very cool i don't think i've ever definitively found one before all right here's another one that i spotted right away [Applause] see it looks like it's been dipped in wax and it is indeed an egg it also has the pitting anytime you see those two things it's almost a guarantee it's got some nice bands in there [Applause] all right this one's got some concordo fractures but if you want a really easy way to tell whether or not it's an agate give it a little spritz and the bands just pop right out that only works if the bands are showing though but sometimes they'll look more translucent or they'll just look more like an egg it when you spray them off like that i wasn't gonna film this one at all because it's just a little tiny thing but check out all the eyes on it isn't that crazy that's really cool all right so this is kind of the exact opposite of what i was talking about that would be a red center the white outside but that is very much still a like superior agate well i hope you found at least some of that helpful it just kind of goes to show you that you don't need to go to anywhere crazy to find some pretty neat eggots thank you so much for watching i'll see you next week

Channel: 99 Rockhounding

Views: 12,478

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Id: iUycV1KwS_w

Length: 15min 45sec (945 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 24 2022