I Transformed These Ordinary Beach Rocks Into Unique Gemstones

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Welcome back to the channel, everybody.

[00:00:02]Today, I have more black rocks, and I've been finding these on our local beach, Scott's Bay Beach here in Nova Scotia.

[00:00:11]And I've got three more here that have been found on that beach.

[00:00:15]And I'm going to see if I can work these, isolate the black. This is black onyx, I believe. All three stones are black onyx to various degrees. This one's really black, super jet black.

[00:00:31]Uh this one's got more quartz in it, but I can see it's got the the black center.

[00:00:37]And this one's a really nice big one.

[00:00:39]It's a little fractured. I'm hoping as I grind it down, there'll be less fracturing, but this one's a really big intact piece, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to see if I can work some of the basalt off, uh maybe smooth some edges off, see what it looks like flat um with a window.

[00:00:59]And yeah, just see what I have here, and then we'll decide what we're going to do with it after. So, I'm going to take it over to my Hi-Tech Diamond Flat Lap and start getting rid of some of this basalt and flattening some edges.

[00:01:10]So, let's go get started.

[00:01:25]Okay, we've worked all three of these stones, and there's some unique things about all three, and I'm going to go through them right now. So, this first one, it's got black onyx in there, but you can see it's laced with some white, probably white chalcedony.

[00:01:41]You can still see a little bit of basalt. I didn't So, I grinded the top basalt down till I got through the husk and just started showing the the innards of the agate, and I can start seeing white there.

[00:01:54]Another interesting feature on this, it's pretty black at the bottom, but you can see there's some banding.

[00:02:04]Right there, and it's really fine banding.

[00:02:08]So, while I believe and you can see where the the top little quartz you can see where that lace ends.

[00:02:16]And then we have a little layer and then some banding. So, I'm not sure what I want to do with this.

[00:02:23]I don't know if I want to go for the just the black and then or have some of the banding in there.

[00:02:31]But, uh some black onyx does have banding. It has that white it'll have that white sh- almost shadow-like banding, at least the stuff from Scott's Bay.

[00:02:41]So, I'm going to I'm going to think on this one a little bit and see I can still see some some clear bits in there. So, I'm not sure I'm going to get a a very jet black piece. I really want a jet black piece cuz if you recall from the stuff I made before, but I might be able to get something there's there seems to be a dark layer right there.

[00:03:03]So, anyway, we'll we'll put that one aside for now.

[00:03:07]This one here uh very interesting. So, I started grinding down and you can see there's a red vein of jasper going through that.

[00:03:18]But, what you'll also notice when I shine a light under it here is it's glowing. So, it's got a clear hollow center, but you can see the surrounding areas are black.

[00:03:29]But, that red vein is really cool.

[00:03:32]Uh it doesn't go through all the way, but I can see some red tinge in there and I see a little I see a little black vein. I don't know if that's corresponding to that. Anyway, I don't know how deep that red vein goes.

[00:03:47]That was just under the basalt layer.

[00:03:50]That's really interesting. This could be a nice little pendant if I left it if I grind it down and I'll kind of shape it a bit.

[00:03:58]But yeah, I could I could set that in some sterling silver.

[00:04:03]And yeah, that'd be that'd be cool.

[00:04:05]I really like that. If that vein wasn't there, that red vein, I don't know if I'd bother, but I think that adds some really uniqueness to this rock.

[00:04:16]It's really cool.

[00:04:17]So, I think Yeah, I'm going to think on this one, too, but that's that's super neat.

[00:04:25]You could see you could see it's that you could see the the the different shades there. It's definitely got the black jet black on the outside.

[00:04:34]For sure.

[00:04:39]But I think that'd be a really cool a really unique pendant piece. I'm going to I'll really think on that one.

[00:04:47]I don't know how deep that goes.

[00:04:50]I'm not sure how deep that that red goes, but this [snorts] one here uh turns out I don't think it's black onyx at all. When I shine a light through it, I'm getting a little bit of a glow.

[00:05:02]Also, this kind of has a a matted almost translucent It's not black. It's not jet black. So, I don't think this was black onyx. It It looked pretty dark. I thought maybe it was one of those ink spots where the inside of it was black onyx and the outside was quartz, but it's not. It's not one of those.

[00:05:25]So, this one I don't think we're going to work with.

[00:05:29]Um We'll set it aside.

[00:05:32]So, we're left with these two.

[00:05:34]So, I'm going to think on this overnight and get back to you tomorrow.

[00:05:46]All right. So, it's the next day and I have decided what I was going to do with these and I in fact I've worked them a little bit more.

[00:05:52]Um this one here I cut a slab off to isolate some of that darker material.

[00:05:58]This is the stuff that had more chalcedony in it and I'll show you what that looks like behind a a light.

[00:06:06]So that's this is a typical ink spot agate. So all that black in there is black chalcedony.

[00:06:15]Mixed in with clear chalcedony.

[00:06:17]So that's that's really cool. That'll I'll probably put that in a tumbler or something.

[00:06:22]Tumble that up. That's going to be a nice little little tumble piece.

[00:06:27]And then this is our bigger piece with some darker material in it.

[00:06:31]You can see as I shine a light through it doesn't really readily get through.

[00:06:35]So there's darker material in this one.

[00:06:38]And we'll look at isolating a nice little cab piece out of that.

[00:06:44]But the star of the show is this piece here. It did have the red going all the way through. You can see it's just barely poking through now. I grinded this side away a little bit more. I also smoothed out the sides.

[00:06:57]Which is all black onyx on the sides and in the center we have that little vein of red jasper.

[00:07:08]And some clear chalcedony in the middle, but you can see it's it's black onyx on the side cuz no light's passing through.

[00:07:14]So this is going to make a really nice I think pendant piece.

[00:07:18]Um I got it to the thickness I want. I'm going to dome, keep it this shape and I'm going to dome this side.

[00:07:25]And then have this side flat and we'll see what it looks like all polished up.

[00:07:28]I'm going to dop both of these pieces up now.

[00:07:32]Stencil this one and I'll leave this one as a free form and we'll dop them up and then we'll start working on the cabbing machine.

[00:07:40]Okay, I got both pieces doped up and we'll that uh sit over sit overnight to harden. We'll get back at it tomorrow.

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