Rock brings out the creative side of Paul Carter.

Like a sculptor, he can spend hours forming eye-pleasing pieces, only he uses saws, sanders and buffers to shape his work.

“I’m not artistic at all,” said Carter, a longtime rockhound from Oak Harbor. “I can’t even draw a stick figure. But I can look at what Mother Nature provides me and I can take that and make something nice out of it. I have an eye for what the rock provides. You can exploit that and make it look nice.”

Some of Carter’s work, as well as one of his special collections of rutilated quartz, will join the creations and collections of others on display for the public to admire at the 51st annual Rock & Gem Show Feb. 13-14, at the Oak Harbor Senior Center.

As the vice president of the event’s host, the Oak Harbor-based Whidbey Island Gem Club, it’s Carter’s job to put together the show, which generally requires its share of heavy lifting.

Not only will the club and vendors be on hand to to sell crystals, opals and other polished stones, as well as primitive tools, jewelry and slabs of rock, various skills also will be demonstrated.

One may watch demonstrations of silver smithing, cabbing and intarsia, stone bead making, wire wrapping, knapping and primitive-tool making.

To make all this possible, Carter and other club members have dedicated the past few weeks to staging the event. Some of the rocks compiled over the past year from shows and sites locally and throughout the Pacific Northwest will be available for purchase this weekend, ranging from jaspers to agates to thunder eggs.

“Once a year, we clear things out,” Carter said. “It kind of lets us get rid of a bunch of stuff and bring in new stuff. It keeps everything fresh.

“We’re going to have a ton of rock in buckets for sale for reasonable prices,” Carter added. “Most go about $30 per five-gallon bucket.”

Carter, 51, who retired from the Navy in 2013, has rockhounded since the age of 5 and his passion for the hobby still burns brightly. He and other club members spent the past year traveling to shows in other parts of Washington, Oregon and Arizona to find rocks associated with those areas.

He spoke highly about a summer trip to Madras, a small town in central Oregon.

“It’s the mecca for jaspers,” Carter said. “You can find some of the best jaspers in the world there.”

Locally, Whidbey Island is more known for its beach agates. But beach jade also can be found, and on very rare occasions, rockhounds may discover “dino bone,” according to Carter.

“They’ve found mastodon teeth out there,” he said.

Rockhounds also find petrified wood on the island. It was designated the Washington state gem in 1975.

Keith Ludemann, a longtime club member and vendor who owns the rock-selling business, Ludemann’s Lapidary, said a “monster piece” of petrified wood was found on the beach at Crescent Harbor years ago and was moved to the front of the Oak Harbor Public Schools district office. The club used to meet and have shows in the basement of that building, Ludemann said.

Ludemann said that good quality jade can be found on Whidbey beaches but it’s few and far between.

“Also another material that is very rarely found is pectolite,” he said.

Ludemann and Lee Dougherty were the driving forces behind starting the Whidbey Island Gem Club’s rock and gem show a half century ago.

“I enjoy it,” he said. “I really enjoy meeting the people.”

The Whidbey Island Gem Club, founded in 1936, has about 120 members. It meets monthly at the Oak Harbor Senior Center.