5/8 DF Glacial Banded Slate **NOW SOLD**
5/8 DF Glacial Banded Slate Mayan Flares
$65 shipped NOW SOLD
'uncommon' coloration
Excellent pair of 5/8 Mayan flared tunnels available! Great satin finish and unusual dark mahogany coloration as opposed to the more usual slate grey.
Double Flare
Rear Flare is 1.35mm ish
Front Flare is 18.7mm
$65 shipped. Paypal is middlewoodland@yahoo.com
If larger fronted Mayan flares usually sag for you, you will find my saddles much more comfortable with NO front flare sag. They'll fit nice and snug.
This pic shows color compared to 'normal' slate coloration.
Back story on this material:
Banded slate is formed as sediment deposited at the bottom of a lake downstream from a melting glacier. Our planet has gone through numerous 'ice ages' of glaciation and this particular slate would have been formed during the Precambrian period. This material is known to 'outcrop' or, be present at the surface in Ontario and Quebec, Canada. The darker layers are laid down during winter and the lighter layers in summer. The last period of glaciation then 'bulldozed' this material southward as the glaciers grew and moved leaving a huge pile of 'till' consisting of rocks and debris where it stopped.
As the last age of glaciers began melting back 15,000-8,000 years ago, people began exploring and settling into the new areas available. In the areas of Indiana and central Ohio there was to be found banded slate delivered by the now melting glaciers. Probably attracted to it's beauty with its typically black and grey stripes and patterns, the ancient people began carving this material into various objects such as pendants and most notably atlatl (spear thrower) weights and 'winged bannerstones' (pictured below). There is some debate about what these winged bannerstones were used for but there is no debate on their beauty! There are no known examples of this material used as ear spools but I have always loved it's ancient aura and wonderful satin finish so I obviously began making ear spools with it.
Some of you might remember the field trip I took a couple of years ago to go out and locate this material myself. With some research, I discovered a rather obscure map actually showing, some 55 miles south of my location, where banded slate has been deposited in an 'unusual' large amount. It seems that some geologist from New Hampshire has done some studies on these glacial 'erratics'.
So I set out to north Richland county to go locate them myself!
The small rock used for this pair
Some unusual purplish material was found as well
Showing the usual grey, more rare green (back), and uncommon reddish brown
During the trip, I was able to locate quite a good supply and a large portion of that is the 'usual' beautiful grey and black striping. I only found this one rock with a dark mahogany reddish brown and black color and I also found (pictured above) only one rock of dark olive green color. The others shown in the pic above have a purplish coloration and again, was a very small amount located.
To give you some idea of what the archaic people of 8,000 years ago made with this material, here are some pics:
This one is actually made of the same exact colored slate!
These slate artifacts sell for thousands of dollars.
https://www.google.com/search?q=wabash+moraine+ohio&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=oxJIU8TCLej22QWykoHwDA&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAw&biw=1152&bih=707#q=banded+slate&tbm=isch&imgdii=_
Link above for further pics of artifacts made from this material