Selection of Tumbled Ward Beach Stones: Part 5 – Hard Stones

This Series features tumbled stones from Ward Beach, Marlborough. These are part of a selection that I am leaving with Ronnie and Ian who run the Flaxbourne Motels in Ward. The first four Parts in this Series highlighted stones that are softer than usual for the polish tumbler. Part 1 dealt with trace fossil limestone pebbles, Part 2 with other kinds of limestone pebbles, Part 3 with veined stones as well as stones with dendrites, and Part 4 with stones that are a mix of soft and hard material. This final Part in the Series presents a number of hard Ward Beach, the more usual and better suited material for tumble polishing.

I usually look to collect the softer stones from Ward Beach, especially the trace fossils which I find particularly intriguing. Sometimes, a harder stone crops up, though not very often. That may be because I am not looking out for them. During my most recent visit, I deliberately looked for stones that I normally don’t focus on – see towards the end of this Post. Some of the following were found at that time.

The most spectacular of these stones is this small one, probably a form of chalcedony but I am unsure. The detail inside it is amazing:

Another interesting mainly brown-coloured stone but with a striking dash of white:

This one is an interesting mix of muted colours, caused by different minerals within it:

I particularly looked for red jasper stones in March this year and found a few, many of which weren’t very interesting. These were the two best, the first one also having hematite in it (a type of iron oxide) – see the second entry in this Post for details on hematite jasper. The second has a white quartz vein with tiny fragments of jasper in it:

A few stones that initially looked like limestone but turned out to be much harder:

The previous two stones are igneous, most likely from a volcanic source – the light and dark crystals that grew while the molten rock cooled can be seen in them. The final three stones are also volcanic in origin:

This is the final Post in this Series. The first Post can be found here. The Index is here.