A Letter From Dave Root MWF Lapidary Chair

Greetings, my name is Dave Root and I am the lapidary chairman for the Midwest Federation of Mineralogical & Geological Societies. I came to this position after the untimely passing of my predecessor Roger K. Pabian, but I fear I am ill-qualified for it. I know a bit about faceting but I’m fairly ignorant about the other forms of the lapidary arts. I’m aware of a few gifted people from clubs in my own neck of the woods, but I am certain there are many, many more out there in the clubs that make up the Midwest Federation.

What I am trying to do is create a lapidary skills database. So if we have a member of one of our clubs that, say, was trying to take up stone carving and had questions or problems there would be a resource where he could go to get answers.

The purpose of this communication is to request that if you have club members who are particularly talented in one or more of the lapidary arts, to send me their names, specialty and contact information.  I’m looking for those skilled at polishing, cabochons, carving, intarsa, silversmithing, faceting, gem pictures and trees, wirewrap and any other form of lapidary art that I failed to mention. Please put “Lapidary Skills Database” in the subject line and also include the name of your club and your state.

Note:

I assembled my lists of email addresses from the 2011 MWF directory. Where possible I sent the message to the president of the club, however there are some clubs that did not have an email address listed for the president. In those cases I used any email address I could find. So if you are wondering “Why did he send this to me?” that’s why. If you do not feel you should have gotten this message please forward it to the appropriate person.

Thank you for taking the time to help me with this project.

Dave Root

MWF Lapidary Chair

Next Meeting and Some Black Light Surprises

It was decided at the April meeting to have a field trip to Keokuk to dig geodes. We are going to try the weekend of May 26 and 27th with meeting at Jacobs Sat. morning, staying overnight for those that want to get a full weekend of digging in.
  Tom went down in Feb. with a generator and hammer drill with a chisel and said that it took almost all the work out of it. So we are going to try it with a couple of generators and hammer drills or demo. hammers or whatever we can round up so that we can make the digging easier for everyone.  The next meeting is May 17th so we will have more information then.

Here are a few rocks and minerals under blacklights that were at the Monroe Show in March.