I'm lucky. In Colorado we have "Geology Under Foot" and "Hiking Colorado's Geology".
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I have 4 or 5 of these and recommend them. What is another relatively boring slight rise in the road can all of a sudden turn into where a glacier ended or the edge of some ancient lake bed. Those buttes were caused by the clinkers of ancient coal fires.
Even if you are traveling through at 70 mph it makes the trip much more interesting.
Does anyone have any recommendations for how to cut these stones? I would like to say tile saw but what if the stone is too big. Also as far as I know Stone such as Novaculite aren't the easiest stones to cut.
I break mine down with a large gas saw and then break them down further with what was a 10" tile saw. If you build a vise to clamp pieces down they will have less lapping to do in the end. I hand lap on diamond plates so less lapping is super important.
An old old method is put a score line in the rock and work hammer and chisel back and forth across the score line. You can split some incredibly large rocks with this method. You just need the time. It ain't quick.
You can also use naturally formed cracks and fissures in the rock to do this.
This rock hounding resulted in me reading two books by John McPhee in less than a week, 'Basin and Range' and 'Rising from the Plain'. He has a four book series on geology. Very enjoyable IMO. Nothing directly related to hones except that geologists drive poorly as they go through road cuts also.
I just got 'Annuls of the Former World', which is a compilation of the whole geology series bound into one book, out of the library.
Can anyone tell me about the Devonian period and its relation to JNATS and Coticules, slates, Thanks Gents.