# Petrified Wood.



## ripjack13

I happened to run across a lil piece of million year old wood.
Has anyone ever tried turning it into a pen? Or something else?
Here's some pix...

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## JR Custom Calls

I've heard its hard as a rock

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## ripjack13

Yep...it sure is....


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## HomeBody

I do lapidary work. You need to get a diamond wheel for your angle grinder. It's called a "V crack tool", or crack chaser. Mount the angle grinder in a B&D Work Mate and you now have a diamond grinder. Grind the PW into a rough cylinder shape. To drill the perforation, you need a piece of thin wall brass tubing, a drill press, and 120 grit silicone carbide abrasive. Diamond burrs in a Dremel the rest of the way. I'll post a how-to with pics if you're serious. 
This is a piece of quartzite. Hardness 7 on the mohs scale. It's a copy of an Indian banner stone. The perforation took 5 hrs to drill with the above method. Your wood would be about the same. Gary






crack chaser





crack chaser mounted on angle grinder and clamped in work mate. This rig eats rocks for breakfast.

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## ripjack13

i am semi serious...i have questions first...

would i be grinding freehand?
by the term perforation, are you talking about the hole?
what's with the brass tubing?
and 120 grit silicone carbide abrasive? is that sander or drill bit?

5 hrs to drill......damn dude. what speed is the drill on? i have a big ol delta.....(not sure of the lowest setting, but i can look)


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## ripjack13

I just looked...the lowest i can go is 170... is that low enough?


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## Final Strut

HomeBody said:


> crack chaser mounted on angle grinder and clamped in work mate. This rig eats rocks for breakfast.
> View attachment 73964



And fingers too?

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## kazuma78

My mother found a red quartz bannerstone once. It was a saddle banner and beautiful. Quartz bannerstones look awesome

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## Nature Man

How to with pics would be appreciated. Chuck

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## HomeBody

ripjack13 said:


> i am semi serious...i have questions first...
> 
> would i be grinding freehand?
> by the term perforation, are you talking about the hole?
> what's with the brass tubing?
> and 120 grit silicone carbide abrasive? is that sander or drill bit?
> 
> 5 hrs to drill......damn dude. what speed is the drill on? i have a big ol delta.....(not sure of the lowest setting, but i can look)



Yes, freehand with gloves on.

Perforation = hole.

The "hole" you are drilling is not a hole. Ever install a lock in a door? You cut out a plug, you don't drill the whole thing. Same with the tubing. The brass tube is your "drill bit". It catches the silicone carbide abrasive and you slowly abrade your way through. You can't simply drill PW with any kind of regular drill bit.

The drill press (old Delta) is on the slowest speed. You sprinkle some abrasive on the PW which is in a jig of sorts, give it a shot of water, then lower the brass tubing until it abrades. Silicone carbide will wear out quickly. Dump out the old, put in some new and go again.

You are abrading a hole, not drilling, which is why it takes so long. You end up with a plug and a perfectly smooth straight perforation. I'll show you some.

I'll gather up some pics and take some new ones and show you how I do it. Stay tuned.

Here's another quartzite bannerstone. Before and after. I get my quartzite at the lake a couple miles from here. You'd never guess those ugly rocks would polish up so nice. Gary

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## HomeBody

kazuma78 said:


> My mother found a red quartz bannerstone once. It was a saddle banner and beautiful. Quartz bannerstones look awesome



Very lucky to find one of those. They're worth lots of money. A very famous one that is similar shape to the one I just posted above recently sold for over $100,000.00. Gary


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## HomeBody

Nature Man said:


> How to with pics would be appreciated. Chuck



That's easy for you to say! I'll work on it. Gary

Reactions: Thank You! 1


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## kazuma78

HomeBody said:


> Very lucky to find one of those. They're worth lots of money. A very famous one that is similar shape to the one I just posted above recently sold for over $100,000.00. Gary


 Winged banners are pretty cool. My mother sold it in the early 1980's to help pay for college. They saw it for sale in the early 90's for $5000 or so. Im sure a private collector has it now but I know several of the prominent collectors in Ohio and they have never seen it. Im sure its worth at least 10,000 to 20,000 now. I love original pieces but I only buy from old time collectors I trust and original finders because there are so many replicas nowadays. My father found a partially drilled birdstone a few years ago, I was amazed, great find! I have pieces of a notched ovate banner, knobbed crescent banner and sandle sole gorget all found locally. But I havent been able to hunt the fields for awhile. Especially with moving around so much.


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## barry richardson

@HomeBody Dang Gary, your a man of many talents! Had to look up banner stones, wasn't familiar with them. Do you do the rough grinding dry? I have a set of diamond disc for finishing stone counter tops etc. Do you use anything like that during your process? Takes a lot of patience I imagine, but considering the gun stocks you make, I guess you have it..... thanks for posting!

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## ripjack13

I just looked em up too. Very cool to know about....


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## ripjack13

HomeBody said:


> That's easy for you to say! I'll work on it. Gary



If you want to , then go ahead. But...I think I'll just keep it as a paper weight for now. Thanks though...


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## HomeBody

First you need to make some adapters so you can clamp the angle grinder in the work mate. These fit my DeWalt grinder.





These are my core drills. They are all used up. They were 8" long when new. The abrasive not only cuts the stone, it wears down the brass as well. Various sizes, around 1/2" OD. I had a machinist friend make them for me. They have to be drilled out on a lathe.


 




This is the abrasive powder. From Brownell's gunsmith supply house in Montezuma, IA. This pound can has lasted me a long time.

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## HomeBody

This piece of wood with the bolt going through it gets clamped in the cross feed vise on my drill press. The nub sticking out it what keeps the stone centered for drilling. To set it up, you clamp the wood in the vise, then lower the brass tube drill onto the bolt nub and center it. Lock the cross feed. Next grind a small hole that matches the nub on the bottom of your stone blank. You sit the blank on the nub, then give the top of the stone a shot of water from a spray bottle. Sprinkle on some abrasive powder. Lower the brass tube until it make contact, keeping it centered. The grit starts abrading and you will see a ring appear. The stone is held in your left hand while you lower the drill with your right. There is no jig or clamp to hold the stone, just your hand. Since the brass tube is smooth, it doesn't grab at all and you drill the entire perforation like that. (A "hole" can be any depth. A "perforation" goes all the way through.)
I'll try and get pic of the whole thing set up on my drill press. My press is set up for another job right now.







Here are the cores from the stones I've drilled. First two are banded slate. Slate is metamorphosed shale and isn't too hard. Probably 30 min. to drill those two. The next two are granite. A little harder, but not too bad. Probably an hour or two drilling those. Number 5 is a conglomerate. Little rocks "glued" together. The rest are quartzite. The longest quartzite one came from the pinkish banner I posted above. That was the 5 hr. job.






Here you can see the dimple I ground on the bottom to center the drilling.





I'll post more when I can get to them. Gary

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## kazuma78

Thats really cool. Pretty much the same way the native americans did it but without the power tools. Cores are pretty neat, a friend of mine has a couple from original banner stones. From what I understand, the cores from them are pretty rare. Very cool!

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## ripjack13

I was just thinking.....Would a masonary bit / concrete bit work? I'm figuring since I use em to drill through concrete at work, and there's rocks in the concrete, it should....
But....the next problem is how to turn it into a pen tube....that's essentially what I'm thinking of doing.


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## HomeBody

A carbide bit will drill some rocks but not all. I doubt it would touch silicified wood. Way hard. Petrified Wood (actually called silicified wood) is notorious for having cracks filled with sand. Very hard to work one of those unless you have a clean piece. Gary

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## ripjack13

Or....maybe a diamond coring bit.


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## barry richardson

ripjack13 said:


> Or....maybe a diamond coring bit.


Yea, I was thinking of those as well, don't know if they would go deep enough, but they sure drill plugs in granite slick..

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## HomeBody

I have two but they are too short. The problem is getting one with the depth. Or, you could drill to the limit of the coring bit, then break off what core is relieved. This would let you go deeper with the short tool. Gary

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## HomeBody

Here is how I drill stone. First, the jig with the nub is clamped in the cross feed. The brass tubing is lowered and centered. Lock cross feed.





This is the stone I'll attempt to drill. It's flint from Alabama. Harder than the hubs of hell.





Here is the dimple I placed in the bottom to sit on the steel nub in the vise.





Next, give it a shot of water from a spray bottle and sprinkle some silicone carbide powder on.





Lower the brass tubing until it comes in contact with the stone. You have to manually keep it centered until the ring appears. Again, there is no way the drill will catch. The cut is completely smooth which allows you to hold it in your hand. I put some plastic down to keep my cross feed from getting soaked.


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## HomeBody

You can see the carbide did it's work and abraded a ring in the flint.






Now you dump the used carbide, give it a quick spray out, add more carbide and go again.


 





Repeat many times and 5 hrs later you will have a perfect perforation in incredibly hard stone. Gary

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## ripjack13

I'll make this into a how to later on today. Do you have more pix coming?


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## ripjack13

So far this is very interesting! Thanks Gary!


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## JR Parks

ripjack13 said:


> So far this is very interesting! Thanks Gary!


Amen Thanks Gary.
Marc I wanna see that pen when you finish! I love PW

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## ironman123

A very interesting process Gary. Enjoying it immensly. Keep it going.

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## HomeBody

That's about it for pics. Try it, you'll like it. You probably have good igneous rocks in your area to grind. Another addiction! The good thing is the stuff you make with rocks lasts darn near forever. Gary

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