OK, it started as a sale. That's before the club discovered we had well over twice as many rocks taking up unnecessary space in the club as we thought. There was a whole other room! They HAD to go.
We did advertising via email out to the club membership. A few - relatively - of them were polished or tumbled. Many were slabs ready to cut and polish for cabochons. Wayyyyyy too many more were chunks. Some huge chunks. Yard rocks. So we had to let everybody know that however they desired another hundred rocks, we pretty much had it for them. For the yard, check. Line a flower pot, check. Make coasters, check. Work your lapidary skills on, check. Gather a variety for your favorite children to interest them in rocks, check.
By the time the second room yielded its bounty, the officers all decided that since we HAD TO get rid of all of them, we'd change our pricing system and make them all free. We all agreed to show up Monday an hour before the sale started to gather them, spread them out on the set of tables that stretched about 24 feet long, and organize them. Silly us, thinking first that all of us would show up then, and that it was enough time to get the job done.
I worried about that enough to come into the club on Saturday. First task was taking all the various pieces of carpet and foam rectangles, line them edge to edge all the way along the tables, just to protect the surfaces from the rocks. That took the first 15 minutes. By then three other people showed up, planning to do their own something-else in the quiet of a Saturday morning. They wound up hauling boxes and 5 gallon buckets and totes of rocks out and onto the tables, organized somewhat by size, large to small. The large ones got spaced just far enough apart that they could be picked up without smashing fingers. The smallest ones - 8 foot of table worth, got stacked about 5" deep because they needed to be. (This had the benefit of revealing real beauties to latecomers after having been buried by several previous layers.)
The middle of the length of tables was mostly rock slabs, standing on end in boxes and totes so pretty much all of them were visible and easily picked out. Possibly the oddest items in the sale were various size rocks attached to 2x4s. When I say attached, I mean they were not coming off. The point of the wood was for our very large rock saws, the kind that turn round rocks into a series of slabs, ready for further cutting and polishing, etc. The wood goes into a clamp, the clamp moved into place so the saw cuts through the rock in a series of parallel cuts, avoiding all fingers and any other inadvertent body parts. Wood can be separated from rock, possibly with a wood saw judiciously used, possibly by freezing if the adhesive is wax, partly by the old good-luck-to-you-finding-the-right-solvent method. If necessary they can always have the wood buried in the ground to "keep it from rolling away" as rocks are wont to do when others envy them.
Not everything went into the sale. We have a long-standing practice of offering small polished rocks free to children, so long as they come in with an adult. (Hopefully the adult is shopping, but that's not a requirement.) We also have tiny ziplock bags one can fill for $.50. Our supply was getting low and there were hundreds of candidates to pick out, painstakingly. More went into a labeled box in the office for later refilling the children's supply. Some complete crap went into a wastebasket or three, or set out on a table with a "free" sign attached. While the sale was announced to start promptly at 10:00 AM Monday, the few of us helping on Saturday got a limited reward for their work.
Very limited. While we opened the "sale" up to everybody at 9:00 AM for review, and strategy development for getting the most top choice rocks before others did, we refused to officially open until exactly 10:00 before any rocks could be picked off the tables. We wanted to make it fair to everybody.
Recognizing it wouldn't be a case of easily carrying out their selections, several of us provided boxes and bags for everybody to collect their treasures in. I brought in my heavy-duty two-wheeler, aka hand cart, for hauling heavy loads out to cars as they accumulated. Seven or eight people greatly appreciated that, mostly ones gathering yard rocks of course. Including me, also of course.
I took my camera, getting shots of the whole layout before people showed, the layout with folks looking them over, and the actual picking and boxing. My last shot was one person with her box on the two-wheeler heading towards the door. The picture does not show the first two boxes she loaded on her first trip. All those shots will get sent to the club for use on our website.
There was one very polite discussion when two people wanted, very badly, the same yard rock. They reconciled it by agreeing to saw the rock in half, literally splitting it. Practically everything else was one of several, even multitudes of others, even some lapis lazuli pieces suitable for making jewelry. Our pair of British members, both rock experts, willingly gave identifications of rocks for any interested. Our two newest members now are seriously considering taking their class in lapidary so they can learn to work with some of their new treasures. That's a win for everybody!
By the time I left, nearly 2:00 PM, the tables were cleared back to a short stack of three bowls of rocks. They will remain through tomorrow morning for one member who requested a look at the remainders and couldn't make it in Monday. Otherwise a different member promised to take the last dregs home to her yard. Those tables are needed tomorrow. Tuesday afternoons are workshop days, and the space is needed. Meanwhile, we can walk into the saws room again without finding a path between 5 gallon buckets of rocks. Half a wall of office space is now available for... well, I'm willing to bet that within a month we have the answer to that as well. My front yard has about 10 new decorations, and a new plan for plantings in between that can actually survive going from full shade to hot summer sun down here. There's a bag of rocks for the great grands, once the youngest is past putting everything in his mouth, to hopefully interest them in the variety out there in the world of rocks. If so, another big win!
Meanwhile it's nap time. Rocks are WORK!
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