Why We Love Rockhounding and Lapidary: Real Stories
If there is anything you need to know about rock oil it’s this…..
Rock Oil is not oil squeezed from rocks. Now that may seem overly patronizing, but when I was six years old I moved from Texas to Toluca Lake, Calif, ‘and at that time I learned one of the biggest lessons in life. It’s all about Perspective.
Consider a ranch kid straight to the big city. To help me make friends, mom gave me a birthday party. A game we played was “Where does it come from?” Mom held up various items and asked the question “Who knows where this comes from? Best answer would be the winner. Mom, holding up keys, “Where does this come from?
…Answer “Dad’s pocket”, “Mom’s purse”, “The little table in the hallway”, everyone screaming their answers. Mom holding up a dog collar “Where does this come from? “My dog has one but it’s blue”, “I don’t know”, “What even is it?” or “My cat had one but it died”. (Ugh) etc. But the last thing was Mom holding up a picture of a Buff Orphington chicken and asking “Where does this come from?” My little girl stands up and shouts, “I know, I know! THE DEEP FREEZE!”
So there you have it – the reason I mentioned that rock oil – any rock oil – does not come from squeezed rocks.And no, fracking does not involve rock oil, either, nor does it involve squeezing anything. (I digress!)
However, what ID Rock Oil can definitely help with, is exposing the beautiful secrets hidden which are to be found within the outwardly common appearance of what we might refer to as the everyday, common and often downright ugly, rock.
And that might lead to the next question we wanted answered, “WHY do you like being a rockhound and what keeps you interested in this hobby?” Well, we got the following answers on our quest to learn more about this particular product customer of our business.
Real Stories of Lapidary Fans
“I was down here doing some work – I’m in construction, by trade. I looked in that window and saw all these fellows bent over various pieces of machinery and was curious. I went inside. Just got hooked and never looked back. I’ve learned sooo much.”
“My grandmother was a rock nut. We often went to the beach in Ventura, Calif and my grandmother went with us. There aren’t any there anymore, but in the 50’s and I was small there were these rocks we kids called ‘holy rocks’ because they had holes all over them – some went all the way through and some of the holes were only about an inch deep.
Sometimes, there were little empty baby clam shells in the holes that had gotten stuck in there. These were not dinky rocks. Some of them weighed 10 lbs and my grandmother always wanted to take everyone we found home with her. I can remember my dad having so many rocks in the back of our ’57 Ford station wagon it was barely off the ground. Those were some of the greatest memories I have! ”
“When we were kids, we had a rock tumbler. It was just real small and really was just a toy – nothing professional. We used to go out to Death Valley as a family for an overnight camping trip with my grandparents in our little trailers. I remember how quiet it was in the desert. My sister always loved crafts so I would dig up all these pebbles and when we got home we would put them all in our tumbler and turn it on. I remember thinking it took forever. Like, we couldn’t turn it off for what seemed like weeks except to add water and see if it needed more polishing powder. Everyone would always crowd around when Mom said we could finally turn it off. My sister made charm bracelets with all the pretty polished rocks hanging around and I remember making bolos. Everyone got those for Christmas. I just kept doing it – and people are still getting stuff for Christmas! ”
The True Value of Rockhounding and Lapidary
Along with these real stories connecting and illustrating rock collecting with knowledge, family memories and the pleasure of downtime, we’ve had people tell us rockhounding and lapidary have provided them with:
The pleasure of exploration and mystery
Much needed peace and solitude
Time to contemplate Nature and the benefits of exercise
Opportunity to make new, and enjoy old, friends
Learn new skills
Time to reflect
A fun way to earn a little pocket money
The pleasure of giving something away they’ve made themselves
The purchase and study of rocks purchased from places around the world they will never be able to visit and yet feel, because they’ve touched, that they’ve been there.
And that brings us full circle back to perspective. Our Rock Oil is designed for an application which takes only a couple minutes - to make a cut into something that’s likely been laying around for millions of years. It just makes you stop and think. Possibly we should not think about it as a Rock Cutting Oil, but rather a real good attitude adjuster.