What's in the other barrel?

As you can see, my tumbler has two barrels. The first barrel is currently running the rocks I've been documenting here on the blog in the fine grit stage, so what's the second barrel doing these days...Granite.

The near universal conclusion on the forum is that tumbling granite is usually not a good idea. Granite tends to be a bit on the soft side (although that can be compensated for) but the big problem with granite is that it is made of lots of flecks of different materials which are not always the same hardness or toughness. This means that when you tumble granite, it is really hard to get it smooth and round and to get it to take a polish. All that being said, granite is about the only remotely nice looking rock that seem to occur here naturally (meaning I can gather it for free) so I thought I'd give it a try anyway. Besides, it's like Strong Bad says, "when have I ever backed down from a bad idea." We'll see what happens.

Progress Report

Well, the rocks have now been in the medium stage (120/220 grit) and an overnight wash in borax. Here's how they're doing so far.

This was taken outside just before sunset so the angle of the light was too low. We took the next two inside.

I'm excited to see how these will turn out since they are already starting to take a shine. This level of shine is about the best you will probably get even after the polish stage if you follow the directions that come with a tumbler. This is why I'm really glad that I found the rock tumbling hobby forum. Now it's on to the fine stage (500 grit) for two more weeks.

Here's my two year old son getting pictures taken of his rocks. He loves to "help" me when I work on my rocks. I give him his own rocks now that he plays with while I play with mine. He loves rocks. We have a great time together.