I’ve buckets of agates and jasper, among other things (like petrified wood) that I’ve found in fields while doing my ag job here in the willamette valley of Oregon. Oregon as a whole is amazing for rockhounding. There are some spots where I can’t go a several feet without seeing a 1cm or larger agate just laying there. Makes it hard to concentrate. I’ve mostly got it out of my system now though.
Cleaned up a bunch thanks to an ultrasonic cleaner, and one day will tumble a bunch to give away.
Among others, but this one is one that is well known among gemhounds/lapidarists.
Slightly older, I graduated to polishing cabachons on a grinder system.
Teenage me learned to solder gold rings to new sizes, which benefitted young electrical engineering me - gold and lead solder very similarly.
All of this, I now realize, was more-or-less a planned arc/quasi-apprenticeship training for the family store.