JoeM wrote on Nov 16^th, 2023 at 10:29am:


I have thought about doing a water drip and did try it some using an old backpack water pouch. When I do this, my wheel sure doesn't want to cut. I guess I could get dry speed but less wheel durability, or slow speed and more durability.

I have been making a ton of marbles and listing some online with little luck. I'm still short and getting shorter on material.

On the flip side of all that, I found where my dad had stored all sorts of rock tumbling gear and buckets of compound. I would estimate that if I were to order everything he has here again, it would come out to probably $500 or more, so might as well play with it. He's still kinda interested in it.

I mention it because the material I wanted to get help with identifying is now in the tumbler. There's some nice pieces he had started probably around 15 years ago. These pieces (even though they need run a lot more) would be much better for identifying I think since they'll show the colors. Or that's my thought process at least. Maybe natural formations would be better.

Rock hunting in the Tennessee Valley sure has come up with nothing. Or at least nothing good for marbles. The rivers and lakes are low for winter plus the severe drought, so there's plenty to look at. Locally I'm not finding much info for local rock hunting besides some lists online of some far away locations.

JoeM wrote on Dec 3^rd, 2023 at 5:54pm:


The guys here seem to have really embraced the diamond wheel for some reason. I have a couple old grinder wheels that don't seem to do all that good, and recently made grinding cups out of a 60/90 grit wheel from harbor freight. I did compromise the wheel by doing this so I don't know about fitting it on a grinder, but have thought about it to see how it cuts. With any carbide wheel they just wear out fast and all the guys have a vast assortment of wheels that didn't last all that long. Of course we also have the tradition of just taking old wheels we find here and there, so this army of worn out wheels may just be the wrong type of wheel.

Anyways I got a couple photos from some pieces that aren't in the rock tumbler. I'll post them in a second.

Man something with this forum just does not get along with my internet, laptop, or both.

But here are some of the stones I have here. Notice the banding in many of them which is how most material I find seems to be. With the large pieces I find, they are always filled with faults and nearly impossible to work with. I was able to make a single marble out of the larger pieces I've found.

I do have a ton of cubes made from this stuff but have not been motivated to try any more of them. I probably have around 15 or so of these cubes, maybe more. Even the nice cubes like to explode when grinding them, so one good marble I have here took a few attempts before any material behaved for me. When compared to the usual material I use, this stuff is also soft and more dusty. Even when I was using a poor condition wheel, it ate this material like nothing I've seen.

Some material has layers of what I guess is quartz, with layers of sandstone or something inbetween. This causes most cubes to break apart as well. A lot of the failed pieces ended up in the rock tumbler.

I have half a marble that when nearing completion, it exploded and the other half flew away. It sure would have made a pretty marble, but it would be no good for Rolley Hole. Even if I sold them I would be worried they would break when dropped or someone would try playing with it.

When giving someone a marble with the back story of Rolley Hole, they just can't help trying it out. I've given cracked marbles away and sure enough the new owners are out there shooting them.

No shame to decorative marbles of course. Some guys I know sure put in amazing work on those marbles. There just ain't nothing like a good Rolley Hole shooter especially watching the real shooters demolish an opponent. Even the best marble, when worn, will start to internally fracture and look like a spider web. In my short time in the game I have seen only a single marble break, and man was the owner mad as fire. The game stopped while he was there picking up shards and swearing.

Scott LaBorde wrote on Dec 4^th, 2023 at 8:40am:


Check out this link from the marble forum: https://marbleconnection.com/topic/36265-making-rolley-hole-marbles-this-year/

When going through the forum you'll see a ton of my posts and a whole lot of photos.

Basically I cut a cube from a nodule, then I form that cube into a cylinder. Once the cylinder is even, I make the flat ends cone shaped, then keep whittling down to make a sphere.

Once I have my sphere, I shut down the gas engine side with the 60 grit wheel, and move to my other bench grinder arbor. I place the rough sphere into a stone cup made from a diamond blade dressing stick or an old grinder wheel. Putting the marble in the cup, I move the marble up to the rubber wheel to get it to grip and then spin in the stone cup. With the right cups you can really start cutting some marbles quickly.

I use some calipers to get it more even if need be, then it's a matter of touchup on a mildly abrasive stone wheel and more spinning until it's round. We can get marbles in spec up to a thousandth of an inch.

It takes a lot of work and is rough on the hands. People often ask me what I've done to my hands, especially when I'm fingerprinted for government jobs.  My right thumb is worn smooth from spinning the marble, and I have tons of cuts, scrapes, cracks, etc. My hands are so rough that electronic touch screens have a hard time working for me.

It's a rough hobby, but fun. There's nothing like demonstrating some marble making for people and then taking that marble over to the yard.

JoeM wrote on Dec 7^th, 2023 at 7:48pm:


I sure hope my wheel isn't worn out. I don't think it is, I just want to cut super fast which is due to me not being patient. If I could make marbles faster, I could sell them cheaper. But by "sell them cheaper" I really mean to have them priced low enough that people will even bother considering them. I have sold only around $100 worth of marbles which was 4x marbles to one person. The issue is people of course like them, but very few people have use or funds for a $25 marble unless they're a Rolley Hole player. People who don't play but like rocks and such (which is common in parks) would rather have some cheap spheres from the internet. One of the marbles I have is made from Dalmation Jasper and was given to me by the man who made it, but there's big eBay lots for pretty much the same thing, and cheaper.

As for the Chert, I don't know. It's tricky because I have made a marble from Buffalo River Chert found in Tennessee. With shaping the marble, the material was really brittle and broke away a good bit. It made a pretty awesome marble but I don't think it would survive Rolley Hole.

I'm not a good shot, or a hard shot, so I can get away with all sorts of junk material. A real player can shoot so fast and hard that you never even see their marble, you just see their marble exchange places with their opponent.

When I played with the real players, my marbles took on some crescent impact marks that are normal for play, but something I was never able to do.

On my weird material here, I'm not too worried about it. I'm mostly just curious. If I make a marble out of any of it I would sure like to know what it is so I can answer for people who ask.

I put in some more miles hitting Roane County for some rocks. I found absolutely nothing.

One thing that I was thinking of is I am mostly playing around in man made lakes from the FDR new deal era, with most of these being bottomland hardwood forests which were flooded. I was thinking of some reading I did a  while back about how these nodules I look for are in slate, and due to the flowing of streams this slate wears away and leaves these nice hard nodules laying around. Some nodules I find have to be pried out of holes in slate where erosion hasn't freed them just yet.

Maybe I'm in the wrong area for really finding this stuff, and need to focus more on long-established streams.

Over around the Oak Ridge area there seems to be some quartz hanging out, but you have to be careful with the federal stuff. TVA and Army Core managed places are pretty hardcore about that kind of stuff. In parks you are allowed to take a "reasonable amount" of natural items that you can carry in your hands (this excludes natural areas). Sometimes I would catch people with an armful of rocks and they would drop it all and skitter away, but technically it's allowed if you do not have any foreign containers like a bag or bucket. It's a grey area there.

JoeM wrote on Dec 9^th, 2023 at 7:02pm:


Right now here there's some heavy rain and a lot of thunder and lightning. Currently no wind so hopefully it stays that way.

I was in the Cookeville tornado of 2020. Every time it storms I think about that night and the sound of that tornado ripping through.