Collecting Agates

Born in 1950, my passion for collecting agates began when I was about 6 years old. An older gentleman, by the name of Lou Jelinek, owned a sporting goods store in Jordan and was an avid agate collector. As youngsters my brothers and I used to hang around his store marveling at all the cool stuff he had. Lou taught us how to identify Lake Superior Agates and off we'd go to the many gravel pits surrounding Jordan, looking for agates. For every handful of small agates we brought in, Lou would pay us a dime. In 1956 that bought a lot of candy! During summers off from school I spent many hours hunting for agates.

My passion for agate hunting never left me. As our 5 children grew up we instilled the same passion in them. On summer evenings my wife Pam and I accompanied by our children biked out to the gravel pits to search for agates. The kids soon learned how to identify agates and so the collecting began. Over the years I filled 8 ice cream buckets with agates! They sat in a closet until about 2005 when Pam asked me what I was going to do with all of the rocks. I did some research on polishing stones and bought my first rotary tumbler that same year. It was a small inexpensive 6 pound capacity unit and only lasted a few months. Over the next year I expanded my operation to 4-12 pound tumblers. They have been running 24/7 since 2005 and are only shut down when changing the grit size. After I had all of my stones polished, I started purchasing rough stones of various varieties and soon had over 300 pounds of polished stones. Now, what to do with them?

That has brought me to where I am today, putting together mosaics with a variety of different stones, and in many different colors. I purchased my tumblers and all of my stones, grit, specialty tools and other materials from a place called "The Rock Shed". The quality of their products and prices are the best I've found anywhere! Check out their website, it's quite incredible. http://www.therockshed.com//.

Again if you have any questions or wish to purchase one of my mosaics please e-mail me at;

theagateman@gmail.com

You can also call me anytime at 612-719-9806

Check out my new website at; http://www.polishedagatemosaics.com/

Below are some links to other great sites!!!!!!

http://www.deltaonelapidary.com/

http://www.rockngem.com/

http://www.coolrocks.com.au/

http://www.escalanterockshop.com/

http://www.gemstonebuzz.com

http://www.coolrocks.com

http://www.therockshed.com/

http://www.225waterstreet.com/

http://www.agatenodule.com/