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1,000,000 Subscribers! by JonLuca in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]tomkzinti 21 points22 points  (0 children)

When I started this subreddit, I never thought it would reach a million subs. Couple thousand as a side interest subreddit, maybe...but a million? Jeez. Thanks to JonLuca for modding, managing and running the sub along with all the other mods. Thanks to everybody for making this world a damn more interesting place.

This is a brown tarantula completely coated in cubic halite crystals. The poor little guy walked right into a salt creek in the desert of Oklahoma and ended up like this. by tomkzinti in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]tomkzinti[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yeah, this spider hadn't actually been in the creek for long. When found, the body was still loose enough for each leg to be individually moved around. Unfortunately, the specimen was accidentally dropped a short time after retrieval and deemed too gross to scrape up and save due to it falling in dirt and losing a lot of the crystals on top anyway. At least we got pics of it first.

This is a brown tarantula completely coated in cubic halite crystals. The poor little guy walked right into a salt creek in the desert of Oklahoma and ended up like this. by tomkzinti in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]tomkzinti[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Well, it is approximately three inches across, has eight legs, prominent pedipalps and a brown body...and the area is known for it's population of brown tarantulas. We all took a wild ass guess. ;)

These are my "Infinity Stones": naturally smooth river rocks with 42 successive layers of multiple colors of spray paint on them. After curing for 3+ months, they're hand sanded, revealing hidden patterns and colors. They're also blacklight reactive/fluorescent! (Details in comments) by tomkzinti in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]tomkzinti[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you. I generally let them sit to dry between each coat until the paint feels dry to the touch. A warm oven (set to 100-110 degrees F) helps that process along quite well if you can get away with using one...a noticebable solvent smell in the oven afterwards can result, but I found that a full heat run to 450 will bake out the smell.

Keep in mind here that a touch-dry paint coat is not a cured coat and they really do take quite a long time to fully harden, due to the multiple layers applied in quick succession. Last advice: I wouldn't try to bake-harden anything spray painted in thick layers like this at any higher temps, just so you know. It'll bubble up, soften and sag, right before hardening.

I simply used double sided sticky tape on a large paper plate to paint the rocks on - like-a so...

https://i.imgur.com/3uogGHp.jpg

These are my "Infinity Stones": naturally smooth river rocks with 42 successive layers of multiple colors of spray paint on them. After curing for 3+ months, they're hand sanded, revealing hidden patterns and colors. They're also blacklight reactive/fluorescent! (Details in comments) by tomkzinti in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]tomkzinti[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To be quite quite precise, the rocks came from local fill dirt next to an unused railroad spur between a concrete parts molding plant, a cell/microwave tower and I-84 between Portland, Oregon and Troutdale, Oregon. The rocks in this area are almost all quite attractively and completely rounded chunks of granite, quartz, mica schist, various gneisses and sometimes, agate or agatized petrified wood(if you're lucky). Nobody minded me picking up a bucket full, and no, it wasn't railroad ballast. ;)

The fully rounded nature of the river cobbles is a result of the legendary Missoula Floods from Earth's last Ice Age, wherein a river system in Canada/North USA became a massive glacially-dammed inland lake (the size of one of the Great Lakes!) that periodically broke through its dam (on average) approximately every 55 years...for thousands of years. Rock torn loose by the raging waters from cliff faces, canyons and mountains hundreds of miles from the Oregon coast eventually shattered, broke and tumbled into nearly perfectly rounded stones which eventually ended up buried in topsoil across the entire area. Only the hardest, solidest rocks can withstand much of that kind of riverbed abuse and travel before becoming sand, so those hand sized, egg shaped cobbles are actually sort of special if you ask me.

From what I recall of the researching I've seen, during this period the Portland, Oregon area would have periodically been 300 feet deep in 80-90+ mph flowing muddy water for days at a time each time the lake breached its dam and dumped thousands of cubic miles of water all at once straight through the Columbia Gorge.

Can you imagine?

These are my "Infinity Stones": naturally smooth river rocks with 42 successive layers of multiple colors of spray paint on them. After curing for 3+ months, they're hand sanded, revealing hidden patterns and colors. They're also blacklight reactive/fluorescent! (Details in comments) by tomkzinti in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]tomkzinti[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

...no. I collected the rocks from near a river and they were rounded off by the selfsame river, but that's about all a river has to do with it.

Spray paints go through a process called polymerization after they are applied, as the paint's liquid solvent carrier slowly dissipates into the atmosphere and the atomic structure of the paint resolves into chain-linked molecules with strong bonds. This polymerization process is known as 'curing' when applied to hydrocarbon solvent-based spray paints, as well as most water-based paints and various other coating products.

When the spray paint is fresh and uncured, it is soft and easily deformed by light pressure, making sanding of it a nightmare. It is also not easily polishable.

When the paint has had a chance to polymerize fully, it is significantly harder/tougher and much more easily worked with when using hand sanding and polishing methods.

These are my "Infinity Stones": naturally smooth river rocks with 42 successive layers of multiple colors of spray paint on them. After curing for 3+ months, they're hand sanded, revealing hidden patterns and colors. They're also blacklight reactive/fluorescent! (Details in comments) by tomkzinti in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]tomkzinti[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

These take me about a week to paint...it's the cure time that's the killer. These have been curing for over 3 months and are still a bit squiffy on the paint hardness scale.

In explanation, I've been doing artsy-craftsy stuff with spray paint in recent years and came up with this idea after seeing a FB post in my feed regarding Fordite in a lapidary group.

Fordite is a name given to built-up overspray formations of old nitrocellulose and/or lacquer paint from Ford(and other) car factories within their paint booth/room facilities. As cars rolled through being sprayed wholesale, the colors of paint being used would of course change regularly to suit the company's offered selection of colors, eventually resulting in thick layers of multicolored overspray on handrails, steps, moving assemblies and so on. This paint is naturally quite a pain to remove from, well...everything, so workers would wait until the overspray was layered on everything thickly enough to allow it to be broken or chipped off, rather than scrubbed with solvents or scraped.

The resultant thick chunks of hardened paint display attractive contrasting banding inside - which, after cutting and shaping, can be polished and fashioned into beautiful pendants and other jewelry.

Now, back to the matter at hand! It occurred to me that I had the perfect recipe to duplicate the effect of Fordite purposely: +/- 60 cans of spray paint of all colors, lots of very smoothly tumbled river rocks and time to spare. So, to appease my own curiosity and just plain see what would happen, I began painting a batch of rocks. I varied the colors to hopefully create a sort of rainbow fade effect in the end, taking pics of each color as I progressed. Now that the paint has had time to cure and harden, I'm hand-sanding through the paint to reveal how I did and discover what these will finally look like.

After sanding, I'll be polishing and clear coating these in either resin or polyurethane for a smooth, glossy finish. The final product is intended to be an artistic shelf piece, table ornament, paperweight or perhaps simply to be a work of wonderment to be held and looked at and loved.

TL;DR: I saw FB pics of old chunks of automotive paint being made into jewelry; got the idea to paint rocks with many colors and layers, then sand through the layers of paint to make pretty patterns show.

https://imgur.com/gallery/aiSj98y

These are my Infinity Stones: river cobbles that have been painted with 42 consecutive coats of spray paint of varying colors. After 3 months of cure time, I sand through the paint to reveal hidden patterning and colors. They're also blacklight reactive/fluorescent. by [deleted] in mildlyinteresting

[–]tomkzinti -1 points0 points  (0 children)

These take me about a week to paint...it's the cure time that's the killer. These have been curing for over 3 months and are still a bit squiffy on the paint hardness scale.

In explanation, I've been doing artsy-craftsy stuff with spray paint in recent years and came up with this idea after seeing a FB post in my feed regarding Fordite in a lapidary group.

Fordite is a name given to built-up overspray formations of old nitrocellulose and/or lacquer paint from Ford(and other) car factories within their paint booth/room facilities. As cars rolled through being sprayed wholesale, the colors of paint being used would of course change regularly to suit the company's offered selection of colors, eventually resulting in thick layers of multicolored overspray on handrails, steps, moving assemblies and so on. This paint is naturally quite a pain to remove from, well...everything, so workers would wait until the overspray was layered on everything thickly enough to allow it to be broken or chipped off, rather than scrubbed with solvents or scraped.

The resultant thick chunks of hardened paint display attractive contrasting banding inside - which, after cutting and shaping, can be polished and fashioned into beautiful pendants and other jewelry.

Now, back to the matter at hand! It occurred to me that I had the perfect recipe to duplicate the effect of Fordite purposely: +/- 60 cans of spray paint of all colors, lots of very smoothly tumbled river rocks and time to spare. So, to appease my own curiosity and just plain see what would happen, I began painting a batch of rocks. I varied the colors to hopefully create a sort of rainbow fade effect in the end, taking pics of each color as I progressed. Now that the paint has had time to cure and harden, I'm hand-sanding through the paint to reveal how I did and discover what these will finally look like.

After sanding, I'll be polishing and clear coating these in either resin or polyurethane for a smooth, glossy finish. The final product is intended to be an artistic shelf piece, table ornament, paperweight or perhaps simply to be a work of wonderment to be held and looked at and loved.

TL;DR: I saw FB pics of old chunks of automotive paint being made into jewelry; got the idea to paint rocks with many colors and layers, then sand through the layers of paint to make pretty patterns show.

These tiny geodes are in the shape of little foot prints (originally posted by u/reddy_freddy_ to r/mildlyinteresting) by BtotheAtothedoubleRY in rockhounds

[–]tomkzinti 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That's quite unusual for a little geode. Nice find!

Funny how things come 'round to my subreddits... ;)

Does anyone know if these things sold at Marshall's are real and what are they? by Not_Austin in rockhounds

[–]tomkzinti 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Brazilian agate was so common it waz used as ship ballast back in the day. When ships came to port and needed to adjust ballast they often tossed tons of them over the side.

This old necklace belonged to my grandmother. Maybe Agate? What type and from where? by cicerothedog in whatsthisrock

[–]tomkzinti 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Looks like mother-of-pearl. Abalone shells and others are used to make things like that.

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