Dinosaur bone sphere collection

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Very kind words, thanks so much. I have great respect for any kind of art work or form that requires this much patience and time. It always amazed me that with a little work you can hold such a gorgeous piece of a real dinosaur that was once alive and walking about . There is just something empowering in holding a finished piece in your hand knowing it could be from a stegosaurus, or perhaps allosaurus. I often have the trim pieces made into jewelry that I wear. I have two rings , a few necklaces, keychain, money clip, and enough different belt buckles to wear a new one every day of the week. I sometimes use the trim slabs to pose my various dinosaurs on, or with for a nice effect. The stunning thing is being able to see the actual cells and patterns in the bone, as well as features like growth rings, haversion canals, pathologys, sometimes bite marks. There just as many things that can happen with the bone after death as well.....peices that contain river gravel, calcium preservation, agate preservation , water lines, calcite crystalization, agate fortification, and every color and pattern you can possiblly think of. There are localities that are legends to dinosaur bone collectors for the gorgeous material they contain, scattered all over the American west. Utah, Wyoming, colorado, arizona, and about anywhere else that the Morrison formation surfaces contain areas that are littered with float bone spots.

[Georassic]

Ditto what Spino says. Amazing. 

[amargasaurus cazaui]

This piece continues to require
more work and time. In the pictures if you look closely you can detect small faint white lines, which are scratches and will require further work. Given the piece and its size and patterning, it is worthy of extreme effort. While I never sell them, a simple 1-2 inch dinosaur bone sphere can command 2-3 hundred dollars, and the larger the faster the price jumps exponentially. I have seen a five inch sphere sell for 4300 dollars, and this piece measures at least that, and demonstrates more colors and patterning. So while it is time consuming and never quite seems finished, perhaps someday the effort will pay off.

[EmperorDinobot]

Well, that explains your sig. I kept wondering about that, the trabeculae seemed vaguely familiar, so I wondered whether someone was making spheres of dinosaur bone, and...well... It's kinda freaky and cool at the same time. Freaky because I consider dinosaurs gods, but cool because this is cool. Do you sell them?

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Well, that explains your sig. I kept wondering about that, the trabeculae seemed vaguely familiar, so I wondered whether someone was making spheres of dinosaur bone, and...well... It's kinda freaky and cool at the same time. Freaky because I consider dinosaurs gods, but cool because this is cool. Do you sell them?

I have never sold any of this work just simply because it did not seem necessary. I learned the art itself from my grandfather and have made a few hundred spheres of various materials ranging from ordinary glass, brass, an old cannonball, petrified wood, agate, crystal, marble, jade, mookite, plancheite, flourite, fern, palm wood, cycad, jasper and of course coprolite and dinosaur bone. The dinosaur bone spheres are my personnal collection and I have roughly 20 now, that I made myself. The more pictureseque ones do appear as my signature, making it a very unique signature
  I get hammered on a bit about the whole defacing fossils, damaging the bones and all of that for making them. Most of this is simply public ignorance and a complete lack of understanding how most bone is found and so forth. The majority if not all the bone I use is harvested from the American west, particularly the Morrison formation . I have yet to cut or use a piece that displayed any morphology or could be directly identified or given value as a specimen .
  Truth is much of this material is found as "float" or broken chunks, that have eroded free .There is alot of this type of material around, that is not of much value scientifically, as it cannot be placed within context of species, nor particular element of the animal. Most of it was hoarded over the years by rock hounds in the area, and the best collecting areas are now federal lands, that cannot be collected from any longer. The nicer material and colors and patterns are slowly disappearing and prices can get rather silly fast on this material.
  It does make for a unique display in the collection however, placing the models and figures around spheres, slices and pieces of actual fossil bone

I had an afterthought after I posted my comments. I believe you stated you attended WSU in Wichita Kansas at some point. In the geology building there is a display case in the hallway, and within are various things given by the Wichita Gem and Mineral Society, one of which is a sphere my grandfather made and put there. It is not done with dinosaur bone, but is still a nice sphere , and perhaps you have seen it yourself.It is this same organization I display my dinosaur and eggs through

[EmperorDinobot]

WSU= Washington State University.

Terrible school. Worst two years of my life.

[tyrantqueen]

WSU= Washington State University.

Terrible school. Worst two years of my life.

How come? Just curious

[EmperorDinobot]

Let's focus on the spheres now, shall we?    Let's just say it was a very low point in my life.


You sure you won't sell any of them? I would...like one at some point in my life, I mean this is certainly very VERY unique. Very beautiful. Very eye-catching.

[tyrantqueen]

Let's focus on the spheres now, shall we?    Let's just say it was a very low point in my life.


You sure you won't sell any of them? I would...like one at some point in my life, I mean this is certainly very VERY unique. Very beautiful. Very eye-catching.

Hey, you're the one who brought it up But sure thing.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Basic idea behind not selling spheres has been a mental quandry....consider. Lets take by example a three inch sphere of dinosaur bone. Raw cost of the rough to start the project will be say 250 dollars. The piece is then sawed into a preform or shape similar to a disco ball, and the high corners are hand ground down. Then it is placed into a machine with diamond sintered cups, that slowly grinds it round. Once round, it is necessary to switch to higher and higher levels of diamond cup, each level removing scratches from the previous level. The final step would then be polishing the project using canvas cut to shape, over the cups, and employing a paste of powdered aluminum or tin. Suppose the water, canvas, electricity, wear and tear on all of your gear and so forth are all free. In our example the sphere required perhaps fifty hours of work. This is quite normal and often understated. If there are cracks, vugs, soft spots, undercutting, or other issues it can only add to the time required. With dinosaur bone this is generally also always the case. In addition dinosaur bone tends to undercut badly..meaning the cell walls are softer than the cells, and cut deeper, leaving an orange peel texture which you have to address or accept as part of the project. Other stones offer many other similar challenges, all are unique and cause their own issues. Malachite for instance can be quite dangerous to work with and make you quite ill if you breathe in the dust from it as you work. Jade requires its own type of polish..chrome oxide, due to its unique character.Petrified redwood is notorious for fractures. The learning curve for the hobby is high and there can be serious problems if you do not pay attention and learn carefully. I often utilize a sealer and filler called Opti-Con that has to be mixed at precise proportions, hardener to filler. As the two interact the substance solidifies until it is solid as the rock you are sealing or filling with it. However, if you add too much hardner, it causes the material to heat and at the extreme it can get so hot it will melt plastic gloves, crack glass and eat right through a plastic dish. The grinding process when making a sphere can render lots of dust, and ground material. Wiping your eyes is poorly considered.
   Point being by the time you are done, using knowledge it has taken my family three generations to glean, and more specialized machinery and gear than you can imagine, and generating expenses of canvas, power, water, and materials, how much is your time worth?
  That is an age old debate..but how do you pay yourself for your time and effort spent on a hobby? If the sphere in my example took fifty hours.....and the rough material had already cost 250 dollars.....if you paid yourself a rather princely sum of five dollars an hour and recouped just your rough expense, you would have to get 500 dollars for the piece.That is all great and wonderful when dealing with dinosaur bone, where people will normally pay the price, but suppose your material were Mookite. This is a common substance similar to limestone in the United states, but found in Australia and while quite colorful and nicely patterend tends to be fairly cost effective. A nice chunk for a sphere might run 60 dollars, and then factor in that same fifty hours work and you still need over 300 dollars to meet your five dollar an hour pay.Most people would give more than 100-150 dollars for a nice Mookite sphere so you run into a quandry.
   In third world countries they make these spheres using these material, however they use a machine called a marble mill, similar to a muffin pan where they can make fifty at a time. The workmanship is not as precise or well refined, but since each piece is not hand made they can afford to sell for perhaps 30-50 dollars the same sphere you are asking or thinking you would need 300 for. While the imported piece will not be as perfectly round, or well polished or show as much workmanship, it is hard to compete with the prices.
  This all began for me when my grandfather died and I realized he had never made me a dinosaur bone sphere, an unfilled promise since I was age eight. My father was not interested in making me one either...so I learned it for myself and made my own. 21 of my own to be exact and more coming....it is a bit of something personnal for me that I am not sure I understand.
  The other materials and spheres are all simpler than dinosaur bone generally. Cost is lower, less cracks, more to choose from, and alot less natural problems to sort and handle. I consider most materials to make spheres from pretty simple....I cut my teeth at this with dinosaur bone which just happens to be one of the most complicated messes you can attempt for a sphere.
  I do sometimes trade a sphere or give one away for the wrong reasons usually. I tend to hoard the bone spheres as mine however.

Having said all that , I watched my grandfather sell his entire sphere collection when he went into an old folks home. I had to go and bid like like everyone else to get them. I never thought he would sell them. When we get older our priorities and ideas change, and things shift, so who knows.

[EmperorDinobot]

That is a very touching story. The business is super complex, I can see that now. Maybe technologies will improve?

[amargasaurus cazaui]

This is an area where the technology improve by  leaps and bounds, however affording it is another matter. Consider the hobby began some five thousand years ago with the Japanese, taking a rough rock between two reeds, adding sand and water inside the reeds and slowly grinding the stone into a polished sphere. Some spheres would take generations to finish. My grandfather worked with an antique sphere machine designed similar to a sewing machine, with two heads. Its original purpose was to smoothe and repair bowling balls. He used silicon carbide to cut with and hand added water as needed. My machine uses cups to cut with that are diamond sintered, and utilize a water drip, in a three head pattern. Opti con repairs were out of my grandfathers reach seemingly although I do them routinely. Perhaps the next generation will be able to simply laser cut these . I have seen a coring machine round out a sphere within ten minutes, however the down side is it literally chews every bit of unneeded material into dust. Using my method you at least save off the sawed material for specimens or to be made into jewelry. There are four head machines on the market that work with pressure behind the cups to grind a sphere in record time apparently, but it all costs. Just a simple three head model that I use, bought used and refurbished, still cost well over 700 dollars and has had one motor that had to be completely rewired at enormous expense so far. Cheaper better technology would help.
  At the end of the day it is still a stunning feat to be able to shape and smooth a rock to your will and make it so flat and well finished that you could eat off of the surface. It is not as easy or as simple as many might guesss

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Since I was posting over here already figured I would add these two recently finished works.Neither is dinosaur bone, however they are not hard on the eyes either.

The first sphere is a 4.5 inch sphere of Fossil redwood that will go to my father. He bought a large bunch of this stuff at an estate sale with the idea I could of course in all my free time sphere it up. There will eventually be eleven spheres from the material I selected.I will choose one or two and give the rest to him.....priviliges of being a father I guess.










The second sphere here, is from Australia, and is called Marra Mamba Jasper, or wide eye tiger eye . If it had more blue to it, it might well be considered Mirramamba Jasper, which is one of the rarest forms of tiger eye known. It could also easily be considered Tiger Iron...tiger eye mixed with layers of hematite. You will notice the bands of silverish metallic , which are indeed Hematite, as well as the reds mixed in throughout, another sure indicator of iron within. For my collection I have chosen to name it Marra Mamba Jasper as I believe that to be most accurate. It is a sphere in the four inch range I made for myself.

[EmperorDinobot]

Those are great.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

I remember looking through my grandfather's spheres he made, and finding a gorgeous sphere he made that was pink. Later I would learn the material was calle Rhodonite, and is the common matrix from silver and gold mining areas.The black webbing often see with this material is actually manganese. I always wanted to make one myself and am now working at finishing my own.A work in progress but this one will be for my personnal collection

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Not really dinosaur bone, but the next sphere to be polished. This one is blue tigereye and from the look of it, it will require hours more work due to several scratches. Still you can get an idea how it will look....this one has a large amount of chatoyance I was able to catch in the pictures. Some forms of tiger eye can be heated and the color changed , with the most common color being yellow, followed by red, then blue and green. This piece of blue I have here is natural and was not heated. Make note of the golden streaks in it.It is also very rare to find tigereye with this wide of a band to it. It is generally seam matertial and an inch or two wide at best. Stunning piece .
On the plus side, finished the rhodonite sphere. A quick examination once done confirms this one is a show-winner, and exceptional material . Workmanship is pretty nice too, even if I say so myself.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Another one for my dad....petrified Redwood. When I first polished this one I was not happy with it and used a method of my own to get it alot smoother and prettier. I make compounds that utilize vaseline, floor wax, and diamond mesh and are rubbed by hand into the surface to smooth and remove small flaws. In this case a shot glass and some 60,000 compound did the trick. If you are familiar with simple sanding for wood ....when I rough cut these round I use a grade of material that is 50-70, then smooth scratches using 600 grade, followed by 800 grade, and then 1500. So you can imagine how fine 60,000 would be. My smallest mesh is 100,000 , and all of the mesh I use above 1500 is measured in microns.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

This one is Redwood and has some good colors...reds, blacks and yellow are a great combination. The material has alot of fractures to work with and can be quite......tedious to deal with.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

Finally one for my own collection although it isnt a dinosaur..this material is from India and is a type of Obiccular Jasper......

[Georassic]

Beautiful work. The bottom one reminded me of the twin Carnegie Dilophos.