Maury Mountain Moss Agate

Here are a several cabochons of Maury Mountain Moss Agate from Oregon that I cabbed this past weekend. The colors in this stone are phenomenal, ranging from reds to yellows and green with some really crazy moss mixed with quartz druzy pockets (or “vugs” as they are often called) here and there.

The slab that these stones came from was a small one of about 3″x4″, but yielded eight nice cabs. One 30x22mm oval with a druzy pocket, two 20x15mm ovals, 24x14mm oval, a round cabochon the size of a nickel, and three free-forms… a 7.4x21mm teardrop, a 9.5×28.5mm kite and a 16.75×30.3mm quadrilateral which also had a druzy pocket.

The two cabochons above have the pockets of quartz druzy, with the oval having the largest pocket that extends to just the backside of the stone. It’s hard to see in the photos above, but the sparkling crystals in the pockets definitely add dimension and character to the stones.

The three cabochons above have some really nice red moss floating in with the translucent quartz. The oval on the right has some nice fortification banding in the translucent milky quartz.

And the three cabochons above were taken near the edge of the slab. The first oval shows some of the uniqueness in Maury Mountain Moss Agate with the mix of yellows and shades of green along with the red moss.

Overall I was quite pleased with the results, and think I got some really nice cabs out of the small slab with hardly any waste. I still have some small trimmings that I can form into tiny cabs for earrings or stacker rings, so there was very little of the slab that will not be used eventually.

I’m having an absolute blast on the CabKing machine. As the machine is built to use both polishing discs as well as flat laps on either end of the wheels, it’s actually quite versatile for someone on a limited budget. It came with both polishing and flat lap discs, and the 360-grit flat lap diamond disc that it came with is great for flattening rough stone, but eventually I will want to get at least 600, 1200 and perhaps even a 3000 grit flat laps for polishing faces on some of the rocks we have in our rock and mineral collection.

The diamond flat laps run about $34-$43 each, but when you have a natural rock specimen with a polished window on it, the beauty really comes out. I did this to one of the smaller pieces of Turritella Agate that we had, though the face was not perfectly flat in order to bring it to full polish (extremely difficult to get flat faces polished with wheels I understand, and I can see why). But still, the difference between a chunk of rough compared to one with a polished window where the details just shine so clearly (no pun intended) is incredible.