Over Spring Break, I took some kids on a roadtrip down South to see tornado-related tourist sights. On the way back from Oklahoma, I decided to pass through Pearcy, Arkansas for a visit to Dan's.
We showed up on Friday morning during normal business hours, but without notice after a nice drive through the Ouachita mountains. They don't have a retail store, but the people working there were super hospitable and friendly. The lady in the office called an owner, Sterlin, and he came down from the woodshop to help me. I spent about an hour with him in the warehouse, and the lady in the office was incredibly kind to watch my kids while we were gone.
In the picture below, you see the office. They have a bunch of great mineral specimens around including the petrified logs shown out front, and hammer stones and various minerals inside on the desk. There were fire ants in one of the petrified stumps, which my kids found very exotic and exciting.
Here are some of the stones. You can see in this picture that some of the translucent grade stones are pretty dark in color. This natural character doesn't change the product or pricing, but the super rare pink stones are more expensive.
Sterlin mentioned that he has one customer who has gotten several custom stones including convex stones made, so if you are in the market for a convex stone or other special dimensional features, it would be worth giving them a call.
I decided to get these three: a 12x2x1 True Hard with contrasting colors on top and bottom, a 10x2.5x1 translucent, and 6x2x0.5 pink translucent, the only pink stone I saw in there when I was looking around. Sterlin told me that the True Hard and translucent are cut from the same slabs, have the same performance, but are graded differently based on translucence, while the Surgical Black stones are from a different geological source, and have very slightly higher specific gravity, but performance is very similar. Translucent and True Hard are basically the same thing, while surgical black is slightly different.
They use one piece flow in packaging and receiving, which is a good way to maximize efficiency and inventory utilization. As a result of the process, he selected boxes for my stones, and then screen printed them with the correct product name. They also have stuff there for Case branded stones, which are the same quality as their OEM branded stones. They don't produce any lower graded private label stones.
They are just now bringing the box making in house with the new woodshop. The new boxes are of better quality, with more solid wood, rather than the glued on hardboard bottoms. I got the old style of boxes for my stones because they are first-in first-out. They match the True Hard I already have. Sterlin dried the ink and shrink-wrapped my stones for me as well. He is very careful not to get any fingerprints on any of the stones, so I wan't allowed to touch anything while I was in there, but he let me take pictures for the purpose of publishing them here.
They are good people and it is a wonderful little company. I am glad we stopped by.
We showed up on Friday morning during normal business hours, but without notice after a nice drive through the Ouachita mountains. They don't have a retail store, but the people working there were super hospitable and friendly. The lady in the office called an owner, Sterlin, and he came down from the woodshop to help me. I spent about an hour with him in the warehouse, and the lady in the office was incredibly kind to watch my kids while we were gone.
In the picture below, you see the office. They have a bunch of great mineral specimens around including the petrified logs shown out front, and hammer stones and various minerals inside on the desk. There were fire ants in one of the petrified stumps, which my kids found very exotic and exciting.
Here are some of the stones. You can see in this picture that some of the translucent grade stones are pretty dark in color. This natural character doesn't change the product or pricing, but the super rare pink stones are more expensive.
Sterlin mentioned that he has one customer who has gotten several custom stones including convex stones made, so if you are in the market for a convex stone or other special dimensional features, it would be worth giving them a call.
I decided to get these three: a 12x2x1 True Hard with contrasting colors on top and bottom, a 10x2.5x1 translucent, and 6x2x0.5 pink translucent, the only pink stone I saw in there when I was looking around. Sterlin told me that the True Hard and translucent are cut from the same slabs, have the same performance, but are graded differently based on translucence, while the Surgical Black stones are from a different geological source, and have very slightly higher specific gravity, but performance is very similar. Translucent and True Hard are basically the same thing, while surgical black is slightly different.
They use one piece flow in packaging and receiving, which is a good way to maximize efficiency and inventory utilization. As a result of the process, he selected boxes for my stones, and then screen printed them with the correct product name. They also have stuff there for Case branded stones, which are the same quality as their OEM branded stones. They don't produce any lower graded private label stones.
They are just now bringing the box making in house with the new woodshop. The new boxes are of better quality, with more solid wood, rather than the glued on hardboard bottoms. I got the old style of boxes for my stones because they are first-in first-out. They match the True Hard I already have. Sterlin dried the ink and shrink-wrapped my stones for me as well. He is very careful not to get any fingerprints on any of the stones, so I wan't allowed to touch anything while I was in there, but he let me take pictures for the purpose of publishing them here.
They are good people and it is a wonderful little company. I am glad we stopped by.
