Not many play marbles anymore, but that doesn’t stop Dan O’Leary from making them.
Inspired by his father’s German agate marble collection, O’Leary has been making marbles, primarily from agates and jaspers, since 1991.
The marbles are similar to the stone spheres that can be found in little shops and rock shows everywhere. The main difference is in the size. Spheres are typically larger than two inches in diameter. O’Leary’s marbles range from seven-eighths of an inch to two inches.
O’Leary will have his marbles on display at Saturday and Sunday’s Sweet Home Rock and Mineral Society Rock and Gem Show. He also plans to have some of his equipment on hand to explain the marble-making process.
O’Leary buys rocks from rock shops and when he travels, many from around the world.
The first step in the process is selecting the stones for work. He then cuts them into slabs. O’Leary takes the slabs and puts them into a chop saw, which makes cubes of the stones.
Those cubes go to a cobbling saw, which is used to cut notches into the stone. He cuts the notches to the diameter of the new marble, then knocks off the resulting protrusions from the “cobble.”
At that point, the stone is a small, rough sphere and goes to the sanding saw, which is used to smooth out the stone.
O’Leary works about 50 stones at a time. When they’re ready, they are mixed with small rocks and a polishing compound and placed in a vibrasonic polisher. The polishing process takes about five days.
Cutting and shaping a stone takes about half an hour.
O’Leary sells the product at the new Three Sisters shop and craft fairs. They also sell well at the Oregon Country Fair.
“My dad played marbles when he was a kid,” O’Leary said. “He had some old agate marbles he got from Germany.”
There were no rocks to be found where O’Leary grew up, he said. “When I got to Oregon, there were agates all over the place.”
O’Leary came to Sweet Home and began working in the woods in 1970. He collected rocks for years, then he got the equipment and started making the marbles. Most of his equipment is used or hand-built. His cobbling saw is entirely hand-made. He customized his sanding saw so much, for all intents and purposes, it’s hand-made too.
Though he would like more people to get into playing marbles, most marble buyers take the stones and keep them in their pocket for good luck, or they put use them as decorations.
Playing marbles among grade school children went out in the 1950s, but there are still marble enthusiasts. Every now and then, O’Leary said he comes across an old timer who played marbles. He can tell which of them are skilled at the game and which ones are just telling stories because of the way they hold their shooter, or “taw.”
Shooting marbles is an ancient game, dating back to the Neanderthals, O’Leary said.
Most of the time, when people ask what they’re for, O’Leary just tells them they’re for good luck.
There’s nothing special about the stones that make them good luck, but if it’s in your pocket and you can pull one of the beautiful stones out, “look at it, it makes you feel better,” O’Leary said. “When you feel better, your luck is better.”
Some folks like to ascribe metaphysical properties to various stones, O’Leary said. “That’s a reach in my mind, but if you can identify with it.”
Most people make spheres, O’Leary said. “I’m kind of unique in that I make small marbles, and I don’t use a sphere machine. I consider the whole craft as one piece of art.”
O’Leary went to his first rock show the year after he moved to the Sweet Home area.
“It just kind of knocked my socks off,” O’Leary said. “I didn’t have any idea these rocks were here in Oregon.”
That’s when he started finding those stones laying around out in the woods, where he worked.
This is his first year showing his marbles at the Rock and Gem Show.