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Dante's Inferno describing Gravity 1300


Opus Magnus

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Oh my, all this discussion of rocks is making my heart flutter. Not that I make tools out of 'em, I'm mostly removing plugs. But the wily old-hand tricks are there for us too - drilling along the foliation of gneisses, staying away from quartz-rich bands, staying away from fractures, leverage.

@Swede I'd imagine the dacite issues are those pesky phenocrysts. Textural homogeneity helps with the reliability of behavior, I'd imagine?

@Jarocal Nothing like some experience to give one an appreciate of fine cleavage.

This talk of quartzites is giving me PTSD to one of the first times I ever drilled - I had passed up on some sandstones earlier in the day and opted to drill into a variety of mostly quartzite clasts. Eww. And all that for terrible results (as one would expect).

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5 hours ago, Harte said:

Well, all I can say is chickens fear me.

Harte

You underestimate yourself. I believe most living creatures, other than slugs, find you utterly terrifying.

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45 minutes ago, Hanslune said:

You underestimate yourself. I believe most living creatures, other than slugs, find you utterly terrifying.

Harte doesn't terrify me, although I can't profess to be as smart as a slug. All I can say with certainty is that Harte's perfect brilliance astonishes me. Chronically.

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38 minutes ago, ShadowSot said:

As a slug representative, we are fairly alarmed by Harte. 

Oh so you are declaring yourself an honourable slug eh? Care to recount to us your genealogy and song of victory recounting your ancestors many heroic actions in slimming  pathways?

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9 hours ago, Hanslune said:

You underestimate yourself. I believe most living creatures, other than slugs, find you utterly terrifying.

Slugs too, I guess.

I wouldn't quail at eating slugs.

I wouldn't slug at eating quail either, for that matter.

But I can cut a chicken into eleven frying pieces in less than 60 seconds.

That's probably faster than you guys can make a point.

Harte

Edited by Harte
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On 11/16/2017 at 6:33 PM, Piney said:

I stick with the local stuff. Pennsauken cherts and Cohansey quartzite. The cherts can be tempered with high temperature after they are already shaped but with the quartzite just falls apart, even the smallest chips.

 That post was what I remembered from a Jack Cresson lecture, who I thought you were referring too

Yes, one can imagine that the quartzite, due to its granular composition, would become quite friable. Somewhat analogous to the often encountered granitic FCR. Am unaware of any heat treated quartzites being recovered from a primary context. It is also worth noting that other materials also vary in their response to thermal alteration. For example, Knife River Flint (KRF) (technically a silicified sediment) will respond well to a certain, rather narrow, temperature range, but will be fail at higher temperatures. English Brandon flint would also not appear to react well to thermal alteration.

.

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8 hours ago, Harte said:

Slugs too, I guess.

I wouldn't quail at eating slugs.

I wouldn't slug at eating quail either, for that matter.

But I can cut a chicken into eleven frying pieces in less than 60 seconds.

That's probably faster than you guys can make a point.

Harte

Heck I can squish a chicken into one mass and swallow it whole and raw - in 55 seconds

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On 11/16/2017 at 9:40 PM, Jarocal said:

While the majority of my stonework has a rather generous tolerance in regard to variation, I do agree with the material " will talk to you" assertion that you made. After spending decades smacking various rocks with blunt objects I can pretty much look at a piece of limestone, granite, schist, flint, quartz, or chert and tell how it will want to break. It is a guilty pleasure of mine to watch a new(ish) apprentice try and use that shiny new chipping hammer to take a sliver off of a piece of limestone veneer only to strike it at the wrong angle or wrong side and have to set the incorrectly cut piece aside and grab another to make fit. Limestone is relatively cheap and rather bland. I would shudder to see what some students of yours do to a beautiful piece of flint or obsidian.

Chuckle! Yes, many fine specimens have met their demise. In general, the novices are started with more resilient materials such as siltstones. Materials such as these are utilized to allow the students to gain experience in hammerstone selection and wielding, target edge angle, etc. Once some degree of understanding of the dynamics of fracture mechanics is achieved, higher grade materials are introduced. The obsidian is generally reserved for more advanced students due to the inevitable lacerations. As I forewarn the students, obsidian is “obscenely sharp”. In that light, some lithic trivia:

  • Obsidian: Obsidian can be flaked to edges as thin as one molecule. This equates to about three nanometers which equals .0000001184”. As another frame of reference, the diameter of single atoms ranges from .1 to .5 nanometers. Thus, three nanometers equates to the width of, depending on the element, 6-30 atoms.  Yes, very sharp.
  • Flints: While there are a number of materials that are named as flints (Flint Ridge Flint, Knife River Flint, etc.), the true flints are of European derivation and are a subset of the chert family. These flints are primarily found in the late Cretaceous Santonian and Campanian formations located in France, England, Spain, Denmark, and a few other locales. Many of the materials that are generally called flints are actually rather high grade cherts though, as noted previously, Knife River Flint is technically a silicified sediment.

.

Edited by Swede
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22 hours ago, Socks Junior said:

Oh my, all this discussion of rocks is making my heart flutter. Not that I make tools out of 'em, I'm mostly removing plugs. But the wily old-hand tricks are there for us too - drilling along the foliation of gneisses, staying away from quartz-rich bands, staying away from fractures, leverage.

@Swede I'd imagine the dacite issues are those pesky phenocrysts. Textural homogeneity helps with the reliability of behavior, I'd imagine?

@Jarocal Nothing like some experience to give one an appreciate of fine cleavage.

This talk of quartzites is giving me PTSD to one of the first times I ever drilled - I had passed up on some sandstones earlier in the day and opted to drill into a variety of mostly quartzite clasts. Eww. And all that for terrible results (as one would expect).

Hi Socks,

Yes, homogeneity is assuredly a desirable trait. You can only imagine the frustrations that result from formational grading, glacially induced micro-fractures, etc.  In regards to dacite, the presence of phenocrysts may be more of an indicator than causation. Rationale:

  •           One rather regularly encounters the closely related rhyolites with larger (~1-2 mm) phenocrysts in which the phenocrysts are cleanly cleaved in conjunction with the rest of the flake detachment. While the rhyolites are less amenable to reduction than dacite, some are nonetheless workable.
  •           In the case of most higher-grade dacite specimens, the phenocryst size is notably smaller than those often found in rhyolites and can, as usual, vary through a formation due to the differential cooling. 
  •           It is my speculation that, while the phenocryst development can be indicative of differential cooling rates, it is the overall molecular structure throughout the flow that results in a rather wood grain-like structure. This structure can result in the undesirable step-fracture flake terminations, directional preferences, and so on.

It would be interesting to conduct large-format, thin section analyses of selected and comparative dacite specimens.

..    Edit: Format

Edited by Swede
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9 hours ago, Harte said:

Slugs too, I guess.

I wouldn't quail at eating slugs.

I wouldn't slug at eating quail either, for that matter.

But I can cut a chicken into eleven frying pieces in less than 60 seconds.

That's probably faster than you guys can make a point.

Harte

True. Though 60 seconds would allow ample time to produce a series of utilizable flakes with which to dissect the fowl of your preference. 

.

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30 minutes ago, Hanslune said:

Heck I can squish a chicken into one mass and swallow it whole and raw - in 55 seconds

Chuckle! There are actually more refined methods of extracting the tasty and nutritious bone marrow that you apparently crave. Those fine bone splinters...

.

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38 minutes ago, Swede said:

Yes, one can imagine that the quartzite, due to its granular composition, would become quite friable. Somewhat analogous to the often encountered granitic FCR. Am unaware of any heat treated quartzites being recovered from a primary context. It is also worth noting that other materials also vary in their response to thermal alteration. For example, Knife River Flint (KRF) (technically a silicified sediment) will respond well to a certain, rather narrow, temperature range, but will be fail at higher temperatures. English Brandon flint would also not appear to react well to thermal alteration.

.

My friend owns the Late Archaic quarry on the Salem cuesta belt.  The FCR there shows no signs of temper. During that time period in Southern New Jersey lithics was a localized specialized craft not like in the Woodland period so it was probably tempered where ever the artisan lived, who by the way was probably a holy man of sorts too. 

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19 hours ago, kmt_sesh said:

Harte doesn't terrify me, although I can't profess to be as smart as a slug. All I can say with certainty is that Harte's perfect brilliance astonishes me. Chronically.

So you view Harte's brilliance with the same credulity that a fringe theorist views the stonework at Puma Punku?

So much lore could you learn needing only but to renounce the fallacious Feline doctrine currently adhered to and embrace the glorious path of our Past Basset Masters which leads to peace, knowledge, and understanding.

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On 11/17/2017 at 11:56 PM, Hanslune said:

Oh so you are declaring yourself an honourable slug eh? Care to recount to us your genealogy and song of victory recounting your ancestors many heroic actions in slimming  pathways?

Yes. Though I was adopted, after being abandoned in a cabbage patch. And it's mostly just about slime. And rotting vegetables. 

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4 hours ago, ShadowSot said:

Yes. Though I was adopted, after being abandoned in a cabbage patch. And it's mostly just about slime. And rotting vegetables. 

Aw, you were such a cute little slug.

tumblr_mw8pbeI4z31syknpmo1_500.gif

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55 minutes ago, kmt_sesh said:

Aw, you were such a cute little slug.

tumblr_mw8pbeI4z31syknpmo1_500.gif

Ah, Rupert who can speak snail (it has a vocabulary of 131 words but only one verb. Says this fellow is named Sabretooth and has a nickname of Betty.

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On 11/18/2017 at 5:44 PM, Swede said:

Hi Socks,

Yes, homogeneity is assuredly a desirable trait. You can only imagine the frustrations that result from formational grading, glacially induced micro-fractures, etc.  In regards to dacite, the presence of phenocrysts may be more of an indicator than causation.

I certainly can. Fractures are my enemy too. If they're not causing the sample to break, they're an avenue for fluid flow and associated diagenesis. 

On 11/18/2017 at 5:44 PM, Swede said:

Rationale:

  •           One rather regularly encounters the closely related rhyolites with larger (~1-2 mm) phenocrysts in which the phenocrysts are cleanly cleaved in conjunction with the rest of the flake detachment. While the rhyolites are less amenable to reduction than dacite, some are nonetheless workable.
  •           In the case of most higher-grade dacite specimens, the phenocryst size is notably smaller than those often found in rhyolites and can, as usual, vary through a formation due to the differential cooling. 
  •           It is my speculation that, while the phenocryst development can be indicative of differential cooling rates, it is the overall molecular structure throughout the flow that results in a rather wood grain-like structure. This structure can result in the undesirable step-fracture flake terminations, directional preferences, and so on.

It would be interesting to conduct large-format, thin section analyses of selected and comparative dacite specimens...

Indeed, interesting thoughts. With the dacites, you're in the general andesitic realm, just quartz-rich. Hmm. Maybe the issue is xenocrysts versus phenocrysts - the former would probably be more "compromising" to the structural integrity of the rock.

With your third observation, seems like you're talking about the primary igneous textures? With Si-rich lavas like dacites, you're going to have some interesting dynamics, especially when small solid structures (xenocrysts/phenocrysts) are considered.  

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With chicken, the key to the wing is through the armpit.

Harte

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On 11/18/2017 at 4:13 PM, Jarocal said:

So you view Harte's brilliance with the same credulity that a fringe theorist views the stonework at Puma Punku?

So much lore could you learn needing only but to renounce the fallacious Feline doctrine currently adhered to and embrace the glorious path of our Past Basset Masters which leads to peace, knowledge, and understanding.

Well, peace, knowledge, and ham.

As a group, their understanding can be... underdeveloped. But I feel like omniscience and omnipotence (and killer psychokinesis) more than make up for that.

--Jaylemurph

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23 hours ago, Hanslune said:

Ah, Rupert who can speak snail (it has a vocabulary of 131 words but only one verb. Says this fellow is named Sabretooth and has a nickname of Betty.

Blatant lies. That is his honor, his grace, the right honorable keeper of the lost cabbage and the forgotten thing under the cupboard, His worthiness Sam slugsworth

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8 hours ago, jaylemurph said:

Well, peace, knowledge, and ham.

As a group, their understanding can be... underdeveloped. But I feel like omniscience and omnipotence (and killer psychokinesis) more than make up for that.

--Jaylemurph

Ham is as good (if not better) than understanding in any case.

Just be sure to leave some meat on the bone before you place it on your household altar.

Harte

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On 11/18/2017 at 5:11 PM, Piney said:

My friend owns the Late Archaic quarry on the Salem cuesta belt.  The FCR there shows no signs of temper. During that time period in Southern New Jersey lithics was a localized specialized craft not like in the Woodland period so it was probably tempered where ever the artisan lived, who by the way was probably a holy man of sorts too. 

Hi Piney,

Your thoughts on the holy man aspect are interesting. One can indeed visualize ceremony being associated with the process given the rather elaborate nature of such. One wonders if the process may have been handed down along a somewhat specific lineage or similar line of descendancy.

Also, my earlier use of the acronym FCR may have caused some confusion due to regional variances in usage. In my case, the utilization of the acronym was in regards to fire cracked rock as associated with hot-rock boiling, winter interior heating, etc.

Edit: Phrasing

Edited by Swede
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On 11/20/2017 at 8:49 AM, Socks Junior said:

I certainly can. Fractures are my enemy too. If they're not causing the sample to break, they're an avenue for fluid flow and associated diagenesis. 

Indeed, interesting thoughts. With the dacites, you're in the general andesitic realm, just quartz-rich. Hmm. Maybe the issue is xenocrysts versus phenocrysts - the former would probably be more "compromising" to the structural integrity of the rock.

With your third observation, seems like you're talking about the primary igneous textures? With Si-rich lavas like dacites, you're going to have some interesting dynamics, especially when small solid structures (xenocrysts/phenocrysts) are considered.  

Hi Socks,

Your mention of xenocrysts prompted me to subject a known problematic specimen to some additional lens work. The only suitable unit at hand was my 20x-40x stereoscope. Close study of the specimen revealed only minute phenocrysts, with xenocrysts not being apparent. As previously mentioned, some thin-section analysis may be insightful.

Am in full agreement as to the complex dynamics of the primary materials, but am still curious as to the specific mechanics of these materials. Should you encounter any related papers, etc., would be interested to peruse such.

.

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