TOLUCA

THE 13TH SPHERE OF MY COLLECTION

COMPLETED NOVEMBER 14TH, 2007

When I first started to collect meteorites I purchased slices & cut them down to 50mm x 50mm squares to determine how the material would look as a 50mm sphere. The first slice I bought was Toluca. In my opinion it displays the best widmanstatten pattern of all the irons. I searched the Internet for a specimen large enough to produce a 50mm sphere & about 2 years later I finally found a 3.4 kilogram specimen on eBay that was very close to the size I needed for a 50mm sphere. I bought it & when it arrived I had serious doubts that it it would produce the size rough my machinist need to make an iron sphere. Processing it was very stressful, one bad cut would render it useless as a sphere rough. When I was done I had a variety of slices but the sphere rough was too small for my machinist, even though I had used my unconventional Iron meteorite cutting process . So I called John at The Rare Earth Trading Company to explained the situation. He said if it was to small for his core bit machine he could have his best employee, Ken, hand grind it into a rough sphere at which time he could finish it on a conventional 3-head sphere machine. The process time on this sphere was excruciatingly longer then normal but Ken was successful & I finally had a Toluca Sphere for my Collection. In the interim I sold the excess material & even made a little more then my initial investment.

If you would like to read more about my process, click this:

UNCONVENTIONAL IRON CUTTING PROCESS