My passion for collecting agates began when I was about 6 years old. An older gentleman, by the name of Lou Jelinek, owned a sporting goods store in Jordan, Minnesota and was an avid agate collector.

As youngsters, my brothers and I used to hang around his store marveling at all the cool stuff he had. Lou taught us how to identify agates and off we'd go to the many gravel pits surrounding Jordan, looking for agates.

For every handful of small agates we brought in, Lou would pay us a dime, and in 1956 that bought an awful lot of candy!

In 2003, I started doing research on polishing stones and finally bought my first rotary rock tumbler that year. It was a small inexpensive rock tumbler, with a 6 pound capacity and only lasted a few months.

Over the next year, I expanded my rock tumbling operation to three 12 pound tumblers and one 15 pound tumbler which all run 24/7. The only time I shut the rock tumblers down is when I change the grit size.

I've since expanded to ordering stones from Brazil, Argentina, Botswana and Madagascar. I have three diamond saws and my own face polishing equipment. Everything in my mosaics begins from raw stones and expands to the final product.

Gotta keep tumbling!

The rocks are polished...now what?