And away we go! My wife and I walked to downtown Vancouver today for some shopping and lunch (A&W), and on the way home near our neighbourhood we came across a small street fair offering clothing and jewelry, and something very interesting to me: black kyanite.
I’d never heard of kyanite of any color, of which there are several, but apparently it’s a common mineral with many practical applications in the production of ceramics, abrasives, and electronics. Here’s a photo of the two black kyanite pieces I bought. They’d actually make nicer earrings, but I have a better use for them. Here’s an image of them. Can you think how I might use them? Each one is about a 2.25 inches long (just over 3 cm):
It’s a bit of stretch, perhaps, but I think they look enough like coral to be coral for my Nautilus model’s base. But, actually, I often went fossil hunting with my dad when I was growing up in southwestern New Mexico, and fossils not too dissimilar to the kryonite were common. Here’s one that I found; it's about four inches long:
Just because that fossil is a few kazillion years old doesn't mean that Captain Nemo of the Nautilus couldn't have discovered living relatives of corals that were thought to be extinct. Captain Nemo saw lots of seemingly impossible creatures, plants, and experienced many unprecedented events.
I think that, painted appropriately, whatever that means, the kyonite will look enough like corals to please me. Or I might just leave then as-is, i.e. unpainted. I’d never heard of Kyonite, so I googled it. It’s old, for sure: it was formed during continent-continent collisions which resulted in the formation of the super-continent Pangaea during the Carboniferous Period, 335 million years ago.
Creating realistic sea critters and plants won’t be as difficult as I thought. For one thing, the base for the giant squid and the Nautilus submarine model is smaller than I remembered, and is mostly taken up by the squid’s abdomen. (Do squids have abdomens?!) Anyway, I think it will be kinda fun turning a few found objects into denizens of the deep, and there’s a fossil shop nearby on Robson Street which might have a few small fossils that would work.
Bob