Agates

Written By: admin - Mar• 24•10

Agates

So are you ready to go and find some wonderful stones that can be any color of the rainbow, and best of all can be found in many parts of the country and the world? Then banded agates may be a good fit for your treasure hunting vacation.

What Do Agates Look Like?

You’re probably wondering, “What do agates look like?” Well for banded agates you need a little background on how they are formed. No worries this isn’t a geology class so we’ll just stick to the basics.

So, about a billion years ago there where many areas through out the world that were experiencing great out bursts of volcanic activity and in many of these regions iron, quartz, and many other minerals where brought up with the magma.

As the magma cooled it trapped water and gas inside of it. This water and gas created voids in the lava that are called vesicles. These are literally just round holes that can be anywhere from the size of a grain of sand to many feet across.

Stay with me here class is almost over, I promise.

Over the following millennia water with large amounts of the quartz, iron, and other minerals dissolved in it, began to seep into the vesicles and deposit this mixture in layers inside of them.

Due to the deposits of quartz and iron being harder then the surrounding lava, as weathering and chemical decomposition ground down the lava, the agates were left behind. Thus today we have banded agates like the Lake Superior Agates.

In other areas the lava formed fissures in between different layers as each eruption covered over the older magma flows. Subsequently over the next few million years, water with the quartz and iron deposits dissolved in it began to seep into these fissures and create sheets of banded agate. Examples of this can be found at the Thunder Bay Agate Mine in Ontario, Canada.

It’s all right you can yon and rub your eyes now, geology class is concluded, not too painful, right?

No Really What Do Agates Look Like!

Banded Agate

I’m sure you’re probably saying, “hey that’s great Mr. Wizard, but I asked, what do agates look like?” Well these agates have many different formations of banding on their surface with the most common type is known as the fortification agate.

The fortification agate has bands that run all the way around it, these bands often look like a fence or wall around old military forts when photographed from above, thus the name fortification agate.

Common subtypes of the fortification agates that have perfectly strait parallel bands are often called onyx-fortification or water level agates. These straight bands were produced by puddles of quartz and iron rich solutions that crystallized inside the vesicles under very low fluid pressure.

The eye agate is probably the most popular and is also one of the rarest, which can also mean they sell for more. This type of agate has many round circles on the outside of the stone thus appearing to be eyes on the outside of the stone.

Improving the Value of Your Agates

Once you’ve gone and collected your agates from any of the sites shown below you may wish to improve the way you banded agates look, one way to do this is by having them cut or polished by a lapidary.

A fantastic idea that is a really quick, inexpensive, and easy way to improve the value of your Lake Superior or banded agate is to rub mineral oil all over it. This really makes the coloring of your agates come to life.

Where to Find Agates
So where can you go to get your agates? Here are some of the best sites we’ve found for your agate hunting experience:

Thunder Bay Agate Mine Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada

Lake Superior Agates Eagle Harbor, Michigan

Lucky Strike Mine Mitchell, Oregon

Woodward Ranch Alpine, Texas