[meteorite-list] The big red grinder and the meteorite pie ***apology

From: David Freeman <dfreeman_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat Feb 26 11:42:58 2005
Message-ID: <4220A764.5000101_at_fascination.com>

Dear List;
I wrote a very satirical post yesterday about cutting and grinding your
meteorite and making a pie.
PLEASE do not take any of this literally. Meteorites are much to
valuable to be fooling around with in this fashion.
I have owned over half a dozen diamond blade saws in the past ten years
and own three today.
I probably run my saws over 500 hours a year minimum. I mostly cut
stromatolite, jade, petrified wood, banded iron.
I cut a gold basin once years ago. I used water and my favorite small
saw. I could see then that a meteorite, being so rare, would be forever
altered by the saw, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the
bad...perminently! Fortunately, my cut turned out for the good but it
could have went the other way very easily.
I do not cut meteorites today. I do cut meteorwrongs for hobby purposes.
I recommend anyone that wants to start cutting meteorites to start
cutting Earth rocks for a while and then get a professional or very
experienced meteorite cutter to tutor them individually about how to
select the thin blade, the best methods. For anyone to start out with a
tile saw would be really a very poor judgment move in my opinion. Even
the lowly Nantan or rusty Campo deserves better than a tile saw. My
fossil fish supplier used a tile saw for rough cutting fish plates. That
would be the extent of what a tile saw would be good for, not meteorites
or other rocks.
When I found my "Rock Springs" meteorite, did I cut my child: nope! I
sent it to a professional to do the slice for science cut.
Please, do not play around with sawing up meteorites, even NWA's until
you have practiced/perfected cutting on terrestrial rocks, and only cut
meteorites as an apprentice under an experienced person who knows what
they are doing.
I am sorry for posting the satire about the tile saw and
grinders....because there are those that don't have any common sence and
MAY try it after all. PS: if you do, be sure to use chocolate pudding
and the frozen pie shells, they taste better!
Dave Freeman
(no, I won't cut your meteorite)
Received on Sat 26 Feb 2005 11:44:20 AM PST