This is living archaeology to me. Very interesting watching you using authentic tools rather than modern substitutes to get a better feel for how the process may have been undertaken.
Rainey Butes! I got some of that! Rare as hell! Mine is pure chocolate. Its kind of crunchy but love the way it breaks. Thats a beautiful piece. That silica your wondering about comes from silica dissolved into solution from surrounding eroded material in other rocks. While in solution i can also be precipitated out in cavities (eg. geodes etc.) but commonly fills voids in wood as it decays on a microscopic level. As ph and conditions change in the ground water silca can precipitate out again. Much like stalactites and stalagmites form after the cave has dissolved out and ground water receeds. Yep me again! Sometimes i have to just shut up and watch you videos again.
absolutely....no word for it. beyond beautiful. and thank you for protecting your eyes. You are too important to mother earth and your fans to be injured by a stray flake.
I'm so glad Will is making videos. He is so calm that watching him work is actually calming and peaceful to me on rough days.Gentle soul. Rare in this world. People like Will are priceless
In 100% cases I know of (petrified wood from the USA) the silica came from volcanic ash that was blown over the ground where the tree trunks had been previously deposited. It doesn't mean that the tree trunks themselves were covered with a layer of volcanic ash, instead the dead trees could have been already meters underground, slowly rotting away while the silica from the freshly deposited volcanic ash was being washed away and carried underground - thus slowly saturating and mineralizing tree cells with every rainfall.
Buttes is as far as I know in Oregon on the west coast of the US. Many volcanic napable material comes from there and petrified material too day site obsidian of many different kinds originate there.
I was watching a video about vitrified Hill forts in Scotland and elsewhere, bit of mystery attached to them concerning how the rock came to be hot enough to melt. I wondered then if the material in question,could be knapped.
Rainy Butte is in Slope County, which is in the southwest corner of North Dakota (ND), which itself is basically the top state if you look at the ones stacked straight down the middle of the contiguous 48 States. If you look for Regina up Saskatchewan, Canada) and go mostly due south and slightly east a bit, then huddle up in the lower left corner of ND, that's the general area.
I find big chunks of petrified wood all over my creek bottom here in Southern Oregon. Some actually looks enough like wood that I almost mistake it for flood debris at first glance.
This is awesome. I was just thinking " If you lash a flake to an arrow shaft or spear stave, it's the conceptual epitome of all pointed sticks!" and then I hear you say " - Deadliest splinter ever.". Guess great minds think a lot alike.
Unfortunately, not all petrified woods are completely mineralized. My home state, Washington, has petrified wood as its state gemstone. There's a lot of variety in quality, wood type, and so forth, but also a lot of variety in mineralization/fossilization. That means some of it still cleaves along the wood grain, rather than with the smooth, conchoidal fractures found in all the best knapping materials (flint, chert, glass, obsidian, agate, onyx, opal, chalcedony, agate, opal, & more).
