A Busy Year for Me and a Slow Year for Tumbling

2010 was a busy year. Lots of great things were going on but not so much with my rock tumbler. My experiment with granite didn't turn out too well. The trouble was that granite is made of grains of three different materials that have different physical properties and so they don't wear down evenly, this makes it very hard to polish by tumbling. Moving on from granite, I decided to work on some of the other stuff that I had collected. Unfortunately, most of what I collected had a lot of cracks and pits meaning it has taken a very long time to get it all smoothed out. I also added some quartz that my friend found for me locally. I was on schedule to finish this load just in time for Christmas when my tumbler motor burned out. I ordered a new motor and installed it, and everything is working great now but it has set me back a few weeks. Hopefully I will have some more things to post soon.

I did get one load finished this year. Most of it (the black and white stuff) I found at a railroad crossing while visiting my parents. I have no idea what it is but it shined up pretty well. It was a bit on the soft side so I included a bit of purplely granite like material that didn't seem to be having the same problems as the rest of the granite and a little bit of plain old glass. All in all I think it turned out pretty well considering the softness and irregularity of the material





I like this picture, the red spots on the rock are the reflections of my flower boarder.

Here you can see an ant that wandered through most of my photos


If all goes well I should have another load finished in a few weeks. Thanks for checking in.

Finally Done!

The rocks are finally done. I have been working on these since January and they are finally done. If I had my old tumbler I would probably be working on these for another couple of months. It's probably a blessing that it broke. I'm really pleased with how they turned out. Remember to click on the pictures to see them in full size and detail.

This one is probably my favorite one of the batch. Like most of them, I don't know what it is but I like it.

If you look closely at some of these you can see me reflected in them.

Pre-Polish

Here's a look at the rocks after the pre-polish stage. Now its off to polish for about 2 weeks.

Stage 3

I've gotten behind on my posts. Here are the rocks after the fine grit (500) stage. They are actually just finishing up the pre-polish stage tonight so hopefully I can get those pictures up a little faster.

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.

Current Project Update

Finally ready to move on. As you know, I have been rough tumbling a few pounds of rocks that I got for Christmas for months and now at long last they are ready to move on to the second stage. Things should move a lot faster now. Here's a picture of what some of them look like after the first stage.

I love me new tumbler, if I were using me old one I would probably still have a few months of stage 1.