JKowalski33
spending too much on rocks
Member since August 2004
Posts: 451
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Post by JKowalski33 on Nov 28, 2004 1:01:22 GMT -5
i know tin oxide works the best, but i dont have any or want to buy any as it is so pricey. what i do have is cerium oxide and titanium dioxide. out of those two, which works better?
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James
freely admits to licking rocks
Member since October 2003
Posts: 876
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Post by James on Nov 28, 2004 1:53:43 GMT -5
I don't think you'll get good results with either of them. Buy 1/2 lb of tin and save it when you're done and reuse it the next time. Cerium is suposed to work but you'll need to super high grade cerium. You know the "French" stuff. Never tried it tough. But I have tried regular cerium and it does a lousy job on obsidian.
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Post by puppie96 on Nov 28, 2004 2:48:47 GMT -5
I recently completed a batch of obsidian, and had rotten results with tin. Truthfully, I've been unimpressed with all my results with tin. I ended up using titanium. There are photos in the other section from maybe a month back.
pup
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JKowalski33
spending too much on rocks
Member since August 2004
Posts: 451
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Post by JKowalski33 on Nov 28, 2004 13:18:04 GMT -5
so puppy, you had good results with titanium then?
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Post by connrock on Nov 28, 2004 13:50:38 GMT -5
Pup, I took a look back at you pic's of your obsidian and may be able to help you. One thing is all the pits and cracks are nothing but little grit carriers.They will come back to haunt you and drop off the grit in the polishing stage which will lead to a poor polish. Another thing I noticed is that some of the obsidian has some sort of white material mixed in with it.It especially shows up in the bottom center piece this pic:  If the white material is harder then the obsidian then you're for sure going to have problems. I know I always get myself in trouble here when I say that you have to start out with good material if you expect to get good results. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT TAKE OFFENCE TO THIS. I am only trying to help and I think these are your problems. As James said a while back how there's no mystery to polishing obsidian and he proved it. Go back and read what he wrote and stick to his methods. He deffinately gets the "Obsidian Award"!! Tom  |
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WilliamC
spending too much on rocks
Member since August 2003
Posts: 416
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Post by WilliamC on Nov 28, 2004 15:16:27 GMT -5
Greetings All, I've polished a batch of obsidian with cerium oxide and it came out pretty good, not a mirror smooth finish but definitely polished enough to reflect light and bring out the color play in the rainbow obsidian and silver sheen obsidan. I've finally got some tin oxide, as well a cerium oxide and aluminum oxide. I've got seperate barrels for all three and I am going to try to build up enough rocks out of the 600 grit stage to run in triplicate in each polish. Eventually I want to be able to do direct comparisons with titanium oxide and maybe even rouge or chrome oxide as well. Within a couple of months I'll be reporting on direct comparisons  WilliamC |
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Post by puppie96 on Nov 30, 2004 1:10:46 GMT -5
Hi Tom, actually, I didn't post the help request, I was just commenting on the thread. You found my photos for sure, actually, those (in real life) polished well and have something close to a mirror finish, but for the pits. I didn't have any luck with tin but titanium polished them. As far as the pits go, I put it through the entire cycle twice, lost a lot of mass, and decided to quit at this point -- not a whole lot was left. Several of the rocks did have inclusions or attached matrix such as the white on the rock at the bottom. I loved the look of that rock as well as some of the others with inclusions. This was collected rock, not bought, by the way.
Anyhow, I'm not the one actively polishing them right now, all of my machines are tied up working on Missouri found agate, while I'm biting my nails with impatience.
pup
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Skipper
spending too much on rocks
Member since March 2003
Posts: 258
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Post by Skipper on Nov 30, 2004 14:44:17 GMT -5
I use Titanium with pretty good results. The issue I have is taking it through the 600 grit stage to prepare it for polish for pre-polish. I had not done this in the past and the obsidian was not smooth enough for polish.
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rickityrock
off to a rocking start
Member since November 2004
Posts: 23
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Post by rickityrock on Dec 1, 2004 13:19:02 GMT -5
what i did was i saved up all the pieces of obsideion from my fine grit staged, and kept doing that until i had enough to do a whole load of just obsidion and did it all in one batch, saving the tin for just obsid. since other types of rocks would not neccesarily need tin
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