Post #244854 by Paipo on Tue, Jul 25, 2006 2:37 AM

Flynny and Benz, I may be able to help you out with some jade, although it is hard to get here nowadays as there is no commercial extraction of the resource at present (nor has there been for several years). The entire pounamu resource was given to the South Island Ngai Tahu tribe as part of a treaty settlement. This has caused some resentment locally (I live on the northern fringe of "Jade Country"), as many of the deposits were only discovered by modern lapidaries using helicopters from the 1960s onwards and had no traditional history of usage.
So it's a seller's market these days, and the sellers are few and far between. I'm hoping to get a little more stone soon from a friend, and am sure I can pass on enough for a couple of beginner projects. I've always got odds and ends kicking around too. Bear in mind you need a reasonable kit of diamond tools for even a fairly simple piece - rocksaw, grinding wheel, dremel with diamond burrs etc, all of which needs water running onto it.
One easy way around this is to use pebbles, which are already shaped and can just be carved with the dremel, which is what I did before I got my workshop together. Anybody can still collect pebbles from the beaches here - these are some of the pieces I've picked up over the years I've been here:

Conga and AA, thanks for stopping by too. Your threads are both on my regular watchlist - I'm pretty envious of all you "big tiki" guys, and feel it's only a matter of time before I give in to the urge and get myself a set of chisels.