Welcome, fishinaberyl.
Catchy name, but too easy.
We get a lot of questions about what there is to hunt in that area.
There are all kinds of minerals to be found in Norfolk and Virginia
Beach area. Biotite, Brookite, Calcite, Diopside, Enstatite, Epidote,
Garnet, Ilmenite, Kyanite, Magnetite, Monazite, Olivine, Siderite, etc.
Problem is, it's all sand and gravels. So get out your microscope and
knock your self out.
A good book on the mineralogy of Virginia is,
Minerals of Virginia, 1990, by R.V. Dietrich. You can order this book
online from the Dept of Mines,VA. And there is more information and
maps available on their site than you can shake a shovel at.
www.dmme.virginia.gov/Now I have done a very little carving. There all kinds of good videos
and sites on the net. Just Google stone carving or sculpting. I think
you will find you can spend a small fortune on tools for the trade.
And you may want to start with something a little softer than the
ruby zoisite. Virginia has a world famous steatite quarry in the
Charlottesville area and talc of some form or another can be found
in all the counties of the Blue Ridge and Piedmont provinces. It
would be a lot easier to start carving with and would get you to
areas closer to other rocks. Also you could probably get all the
carving material you wanted out of the dump piles at some of the
talc and/or marble quarries for free, such as the Virginia Lime and
Marble Company, south side of Goose Creek, Loudoun County.
Some of the talc is soft enough to carve with regular old wood
working files and knives. I get most of mine at auctions and flea
markets so it doesn't cost much. The tools to carve marble or
harder stone are going to get much more specialized, numerous,
and expensive, but on a small scale you can do a lot with a Dremel
tool with a flex shaft and some fairly inexpensive diamond bits.
Good Luck and let us know how it goes.
Joe
