RolleyHoleMan

Here’s something mildly interesting. I brought my unfinished marbles to work and was shooting them a good bit and with some force, causing the “crescent moons” to show up clearly on the more clear marble. The others had these marks visible as well. For the first time I really looked at these marks. Well worn marbles are covered in these marks and over time they can start to internally collapse, and eventually chip. What I think is happening is each “crescent” is a small fracture. You see the initial mark, and can follow a line deeper into the material. Since these marbles are in progress and need to be spun more, we can see how deep these marks really are. The clear marble I’m not sure how much smaller I’ll make it. It’s in the sweet spot that really works well for me.

Last photo I forgot about. Those marbles went through the marble mill and they polished up since they weren’t bouncing. They also got oddly dark when doing this. Resurfacing them made them lighten up again.

Here’s some of todays marble adventure. I didn’t get started until a bit later in the day, but I did keep it up for a few hours. I’m already noticing wear on my new bench grinder bushings so that’s no fun, but bushings are cheap and easy to replace. This here is a marble mill rig I set up for some quick fun. Overall it doesn’t bounce or wear smooth marbles all that well even though the grinding wheel is 60 grit, but what it does do is spin rough orbs well and gets them ready for spinning in my more valuable cups that often chip away quickly when spinning a rough marble. One of the divots I made in this wheel wore through and the marble was bouncing on the metal underneath and that happened quickly with very little pressure, so this type of setup needs to be watched. My drill press was going at around 2000 RPM and the rubber wheel is a decal eraser wheel used on cars, which is what I usually use if for. Here is a rough sphere I cut out and am now spinning. When wet it really shows some great color and it certainly a sought after material. Most cubes I have of this are very sandy so it’s hit or miss when it comes to these. Cutting the cubes down with a trim saw saved a ton of time over just leaving them as cubes. Note the left bottom marble. It is from the same nodule as the one above, but filled with sand. I have little hope for it, but if finished it’ll at least be pretty. Lately I’ve been making marbles from problematic material much larger. No point in wasting time making them small when they can’t be used. Here’s all the marbles I’m working on. The clear marble on the top right is the one that has a bad spot I’ve been wearing down. The spot is mostly gone, but the very center of it runs deep. By .78 it better be gone. The marble on the far left is finished. I had a lot of issues getting it completely round for some reason, and it’s not as tight of a tolerance I would like but it is in spec for the average marble. Some of us just get more hardcore with roundness. It’s off by maybe .002 or so, but I can’t remember for sure. You can’t tell by feel or looking at it. Either way it’s a fine shooter and once done I shot it a bit and it’s one I’m accurate with, so it’s in that sweet spot for me. What im thinking of doing is having 4 of these more clear marbles for teaching. I was originally thinking of having 4 different color ones but was also considering marking each clear marble with a colored marker to help people keep track. The place I plan to teach marbles is pavement and this clear material seems more forgiving with potential damage.

The worry I often have with these cracks is even if I can get them out, the marble will end up small. Some marbles I cracked at .82 or so I was only able to get the cracks out around the .75 area or smaller. So I may just leave it for now.

Spent most of the daylight I had today cutting corners off cubes and better shaping them up to reduce wear and tear on the diamond wheel. I’ve not really got the hang of it yet, but the pieces I cut do look like a cube that’s been ground on for a good while, so it’s better than nothing. I finished one marble today, and it sure is a pretty one which the camera and my indoor photography doesn’t really capture. I started out making it a shooter and have it as round as I can get it, which is tight. When spinning it in the final polish I made a critical mistake of getting it too hot. When I rinsed it off, it seems the cooling may have caused these small spider cracks in the material. Maybe they were there and weren’t visible until the surface became highly polished. Sometimes you can spin it more and get rid of these but I’ll move onto the other marbles later. The other marbles should be fine shooters, and the material is excellent. The material from this nodule is so good that by accident I confused one of the marbles with 3 marbles given to me by Mr. Carr, a local marble maker. It took a long time to pick out which one was mine, and I was only able to do so by examining all the marbles and finding the one (mine) which did not have any “crescent moon” impact marbles from gameplay. When I made marbles at Standing Stone, I usually got to play with them or have the locals smack the fire out of them, so even the fine butterscotch marbles have impact marks from when I played Georgia Rolley Hole at the tournament. Those local boys really had a time beating me to a pulp. During British marbles they were more forgiving in the sense I wasn’t much of a threat, so others were targeted. The red material pictured came from a piece of material from Roane County, and the piece it came from kept breaking apart due to how it was layered. It might end up a pretty marble if it doesn’t explode. Locals call this stuff “paint rock” but it doesn’t seem to be the paint rock agate found in the state. At my last job interview they had a nice case of geological specimens from the State and their piece of paint rock agate was reddish and rather clear. It was tumbled and didn’t appear like the best specimen since it didn’t have the wild colorations. Of course standing in front of the display case I thought “dang, that would have been a great marble”.

Here’s what i got to earlier. Tomorrow I hope to finish these marbles up. The more colored marbles are going to be cool, but when I started on another cube of this material it was filled with hidden sand. I’ve never had a marble/cube that bad. I’d say it could still make a cool marble. Some point soon I might start listing some more marbles. I think at the moment I only have a couple white ones listed. If I can get a couple sold off I should be able to buy a new saw blade I’ve been looking at, then work on getting more material. With potential job interviews coming up, I have more chances to go to more places to look for material. In my last interview I was asked about how much time I put into Rolley Hole, and my answer was “well, right after this interview I’m meeting someone at a gas station to buy a rock saw”. Needless to say, I didn’t get that job.

These started all pretty big, so they’re going to take a ton of spinning to get to a decent size. I’ve not had any marble requests so I just make them how I want them. The marble on the right is going to be a hard one for sure. Once that rough spot is worn down it’ll be one solid shooter. I restocked my toolbox with a big bunch of cubes. I didn’t count, but thinking about it I’d say there’s 15 or so marbles on the way. I’m starting to get in the habit of spinning marbles before work. I work evening shift and don’t have to be there until 2pm so I’ve been taking a couple hours to spin marbles instead of watching tv or something. if my work uniform wasn’t all black I’d be spinning marbles there too.

Here’s what was done today. I spent most of my marble time cutting the renaming material I had into cubes. Some of the material does have some cracks and issues but will make pretty marbles. Other material without cracks will make some amazing marbles but I don’t know how good they’ll be for Rolley Hole. Im no expert when it comes to material, and am working with the info given by other marble makers with more skill and local knowledge. The main thing many makers obsess on is how light passes through the material and how a high powered laser should light up good material completely regardless of color. This is due to a more fiberous and tightly packed structure needed for durability. Some of my pieces do that, some don’t. This “yellow” material is very interesting. I have not seen anyone playing with material that looks like this, but I was given similar material by a former park manager. This material has a lot of veins going through it and looks like limestone (it’s not lonesome). Very interesting stuff but prone to having faults. Here is a slab from the above cubes Here is a stick that was later cubed. The ends are very sandy and the nodule this came from is the most unusual nodule I’d ever seen. I was told to not try cutting it up since it would be a waste, but deep in the large nodule there was some solid material. If this nodule was all good, i would have made 15-20 cubes. I got only 5 very good cubes out of it. Areas of this material had quartz deposits that looked like that children’s play foam from the early 2000s. Or like styrofoam. Good sections are a beautiful Smokey quartz. Finally we have the two marbles I started. My grinding has slowed due to me trying to make marbles using the original method I was taught (and forgot). One marble is cracked and from the material cut today, and the other is from the clear quartz I’ve been using for a while. The clear quartz will make a fine shooter, while the other I’m not sure on. I’ve talked to a lot of marble makers and everyone has an opinion on material that varies from the next guy. One maker told me cracks like this didn’t matter. Others say it means everything. I know makers who make cracked marbles and makers who toss any cubes with even the slightest issue. There is also the issue of fissures which from my understanding are cracks filled by mineral seepage that “seals” the crack. When you see a crack that has color in it, it is likely this.

Here’s some more material. I’ll have to inspect each piece but I did cut maybe 10 cubes today. I expect most to be junk, but the saw cuts fast enough that I push on. other material I cut looked great until I used a laser on it. Fault lines showed up in many of the cubes, and a blow from a hammer broke a few cleanly. Here’s some rock photos and a pile of scraps made in around an hour. Bigger pieces were from rocks that were cut in half and showed sand.

This morning I cut some test cubes. Seems all my remaining material is junk, but these two cubes will make some beautiful (but cracked) marbles. There are a couple more pieces I’ll try but for the most part I’m going to focus on trimming down cubes. Also the one cube I cut sure does have a butterscotch color going on. The material itself doesn’t pass light very well so the structure of the material is questionable.

Ended up getting the saw. I know it’s made by Highland Park, but don’t know anything else about it really. It does seem to run alright . it’s missing the (optional I think) auto feed parts. Sure would be cool to find that and not have to stand there.

Here are todays marbles. I made a smaller (ringer) quartz marble around .74” which is within regulations for the marble game of Ringer. The marble ended up so small due to issues getting it round. Some really like to fight but I have lost my touch when it comes to shaping cubes in any shape besides a cylinder. I was trying to regain this skill but have hardly used it. I’ve made somewhere around 75 marbles and most have been made from cylinders. The second marble is made from a the prized yellow (though I don’t consider it butterscotch) material I found. I believe it is either my last cube or next to last of this material. Original goal was for it to be around .80, but I had a bad spot in the material that had to be ground away. In the end it’s a .78 marble which is around the size I prefer to play Rolley Hole with. I left the finish rough since that’s what I seen to be leaning towards when it comes to playing marbles. I’ll probably hang onto this one since the material is so rare, and it’ll help with teaching people marbles.

Decided to do some more marble work and made a roughly .98 or so marble. Since the material would probably be no good for Rolley Hole, there wasn’t a reason to make it to spec. This material is more material from Roane County, I think from the Clinch River not far from where it merges with the Tennessee River. The area I found this stuff is part of the Watts Bar impoundment I believe, so 80 years ago it was likely farmland. The quartz nodules or pieces here (I don’t really think these are considered nodules) have a black exterior while other areas have brown, yellow, or grey. These 4 marbles are made from material found in Roane County. The top marble and the left marble are from the area near K25. They came from one of those delightful little streams that has a bunch of signs that say the fish will give you cancer. The right reddish marble is from material found on the family farm. I guess it’s some kind of Jasper, but it’s hard to tell. Light slightly passes through it so safest bet is to just cal it chalcedony and move on. It’s a fragile material. Bottom marble is the one I made today. Photos are hard to take of these but they’re all pretty neat marbles. They are very layered and faulted except for todays marble, so none are any good. I would consider them microcrystalline due to how the material breaks and has a sandy textire when broken. I might make some more tomorrow. I have a marble that’s going to make an amazing shooter and good teaching marble if it will shape up. Some marbles like to fight. You’ll have it seemingly good and then it’s .05 or more off. Once it’s fixed and smoothed out it’s back to being off.

It’s Friday, which means it’s marble day. I have a couple more marbles I might get to, but here’s two that are “finished”. I polished them a bit and am thinking of unpolishing one of them. When some marbles are polished, they have an uneven finish due to the structure of the material. When the same marble is rough, everything looks more uniform. The marble on the left is from the Emory River in Kingston, while the one on the Right is from Overton County. The marble on the right is from a nodule I was told was “no good”, but have gone on to make several good marbles and a few bad ones. Here’s a better picture of the Emory River marble. Structure-wise it looks like the other material in this area. I’m not sure how to explain it, but it’s easy to tell what pieces I have that are from the Emory River. The color is usually slightly yellow, with lots of white specs. The material also seems slightly less dense and more porous. The marble I just made is on the left, and one made by the local Mr.Carr is on the right. If I tossed it in with the boxes of marbles he gives to the kids, it would be impossible for anyone to tell it apart. Anyways, there’s still some time today for more marbles.

Here’s the marbles for today. All are unfinished but one I have in that .80 ballpark. The difficulty I have now with making marbles is setting an end goal when it comes to size and finish. Players have their favorite size and finish, so it’s hard to settle on what to do when I don’t have a player in mind. What I’m thinking is getting all works in progress to that .80, then setting them aside if they’re good shooting marbles. From there they can be finished however a player wants them. Marbles that aren’t for play can be finished however I want them. For more decorative marbles where the goal is to show the beauty and faults in the material, I’m thinking of making them/leaving them larger around the .85-.90 mark, and polishing them up. As a side note, as I’ve learned the game I’ve had many changes in what kind of marble I like. When I was still at Standing Stone, a coworker and I would shoot marbles and found our shots to be more accurate with smaller ones. As time went on I think what happened was our smaller marbles were more gritty and controllable while the larger marbles were always polished up.

The local Jasper, or what I think is Jasper, has a lot of issues. I have some nice smaller pieces I’ve tumbled which look pretty cool, but with marbles this material is no good. Every piece I find is very cracked up/fractured so it’s no good for marbles.

Here was todays project. I got my new bushings fitted into this old “polishing head” or grinder depending on who you ask. Took a little bit of old school fighting and force to get the old ones out and the new ones in. Now it runs smooth and quiet. Total cost was like $8.00 from the local hardware store. A regular bench grinder is pretty expensive, though there is a ton of used options online. For the price of my 3 grinders, 3 motors, and gas engine I could have had a single bench grinder from the hardware store. Back in the day a bench grinder would have been an expensive luxury for the guys around here. External arbors powered by electric motors were used, as far as I can tell, to cut costs and to make use of old electric washing machine “laundry” motors. Bud Garret was one of the many people to use standard laundry motors. Facebook marketplace often has a good selection of “grandads old grinder” listings that have the same setup of a washing machine motor, old grinder arbor, and a household electric switch. Apaprently I can’t upload videos, but there is a drawback to the dust from marbles. My motor will no longer start automatically when power is applied. I either have to wrap a rope around it and use that as a pull cord to spin it, or use an electric drill. These washing motors do not have a starting capacitor but do have centrifugal clutches and starting coils. Best I can figure, the dust has messed with my motor. When it’s blown out with an air compressor/ taken apart and cleaned, it’ll start usually. No point in cleaning it out. The bearings are sealed so dust can’t grind the shafts. Once it’s going it’s going. So if anyone has grandads old tools laying around, think about making some marbles. It’s not too hard.

A difficult question to answer actually. I only use local material and call most of it “quartz”. What it really is is Chalcedony. Materials such as Agate, Jasper, and Chert (to name a few) are also Chalcedony. Agate is banded Chalcedony, Jasper is opaque but colorful chalcedony, and chert is brown/grey/black Jasper which is… Chalcedony. That’s my understanding of it anyways. Not only am I always confused about it, I confuse everyone else. This is cryptocrystalline material while other material is microcrystalline (and will break). So. What this is is cryptocrystalline Chalcedony from a stream in Overton County Tennessee. Since it is yellow/orange it likely came in contact with elements such as Iron while it was forming. The darker this material is, the more foreign non-silica material it came in contact with during formation. Hopefully this helps. I confuse myself quite a bit regarding material.

Only finished one marble today. This one was done from start to finish. I had some other marbles to spin but didn’t get all that far with them. Once a marble is round and smooth, it takes forever to get it down to size. Also, this material is not “butterscotch”. I’d more consider it yellow than the real candy-looking butterscotch.

I’ve not had time for marbles, but hopefully will be able to change that tomorrow. Right now I may have a lead on a rock saw. The owner isn’t very responsive and being Facebook marketplace, I’ve not got high hopes. However if it works out I will be able to really start cutting material properly and hopefully making better marbles with a better selection of material. My current saw is a table saw fitted with a rock blade. What little work I’ve done with it has caused this saw to rust out pretty badly. I also broke the mount for the motor and have it loosly fitted. Because of this, the blade often stops with a little bit of pressure. Anyways we’ll see how it goes. In the meantime I found some local stuff and for $20 I have built a more portable setup which runs pretty quiet. My current setup is large and loud due to the cart and bad bearings in the grinder causing chattering. The plans with the mobile setup is to take it to the park I’ve been assigned, plus it’ll go to some in services to teach people how to make marbles.

It’s been a while since I’ve had the time to get to marbles, so here’s 4 that are in the process. Two of these I would consider “finished” if I wanted to leave them with a rough finish and bigger, while the other two are still in the process of becoming round. These are still much bigger than most marbles I make, and I don’t really have a solid size picked out for these. The two darker and more patterned marbles are from material found in Roane County in the Emory river/ watts bar area. I often have said the material is no good in this area, but these I have some hope for. Geologically the area I’ve been picking from is not going to be the best since it is mostly flooded bottomland hardwood and farm land from the 1930s or so. What that means is these pieces were not subjected to the weathering and wear that normally would break apart the weaker material. When going through streams (old streams) in other areas, you’ll find broken pieces all over the place. Among those broken pieces you’ll find that nice good worn nodule that has that extra toughness to survive, or that’s at least how I look at it. In Roane county the quartz is often more microcrystalline than cryptocrystalline, meaning the structure is more blocky, less dense, and more fragile. Durability isn’t something expected from 90% or more of the material found out here. The pieces that could be durable usually have tons of sand deposits and other issues making them no good. Anyways that’s enough rock talk. Here’s some photos. I need to sort and list some marbles on Etsy at some point. What’s been most enjoyable is that there’s been people messaging me and ordering marbles who were originally from the area where Rolley Hole is played. It’s kept me pretty busy but has been enjoyable to be able to send out marbles while keeping Rolley Hole alive.

Here’s some work from today. I’m still working on a couple seemingly solid shooter marbles, but did complete a marble from the Emory River here in Tennessee. As is normal for this material, it’s full of faults and issues that make it no good for shooting. I did accidentally drop it on concrete which is survived, but I was holding my breath as it bounced across the floor. I have another piece in the works that was found in the same area, but it’s white. I don’t know how good it’ll be but there is a fault that needs to be ground out. The material out here is no good, so it looks like the only option is to go back to Overton county at some point looking for more.

Here’s some poor photos of some rocks I’ve been tumbling. What I’ve started to do it if a piece is no good for marbles, it’ll get tumbled. These still had too much haze so they had to go back into the tumbler. I’m working on some more marbles, with one being from quartz found a few miles from home in the Emory River. There’s a small crack that may be able to be removed but there’s a long way to go. At some point I may list some more marbles but haven’t gotten around to it. My marble machine has gotten some extreme use and the bushings are starting to cause chatter. For normal work this isn’t an issue, but if I get to demonstrate, this machine needs to be as silent as possible. It’s hard to demonstrate and talk to let people know what you’re doing and why. Back to the tumbled pieces, some were used for marbles I’ve made and I have a ton that need to go into the tumbler. Polishing them up will help show people materials and what to look for / what is no good.

Here’s a couple more from today. The brown marble is from a piece sent to me by Matthew who makes marbles in Utah. I need to ask what it is. Then other marble is from a very interesting sandy piece found in Overton County Tennessee, and it was more of a “can I make a marble from this”. The piece was very risky and my other cubes from it have more sand it seems, but it made a nice TN square marble. I did polish it a good bit just to see inside it.

That’s one of the main things with marbles. You can take pictures all day long but you can never really capture a marble the way your eyes can. My quartz marbles have many cool things going on inside them which is always hard to capture.