stormwarning
off to a rocking start
Member since January 2012
Posts: 1
|
Post by stormwarning on Jan 7, 2012 16:58:51 GMT -5
Hi- I'm sure this has been answered many times on here, but my search didn't bring anything up! Anyways, new here & new to the hobby.
My question: I have the Lortone 4A ? (3lb tumbler) and just purchased 1lb each of blue quartz, red/green jasper, & blue quarts from therockshed.com. There is an indicated MOHS hardness of '7' given to each. Now, there probably won't be enough room in the tumlber to put the 3lbs in, but could I mix in a little from each bag? Is it a bad idea to mix differing rocks like that even though the hardness is relatively the same? Thank you in advance for any & all input!
|
|
snuffy
Cave Dweller
Member since May 2009
Posts: 4,319
|
Post by snuffy on Jan 7, 2012 17:31:50 GMT -5
Welcome.Those should tumble well together.One thing to watch for is to get a mixture of different sizes. I've bought every kind of rock the Rockshed carries and sometimes they are almost all the same size.Some add pea gravel,ceramic cylinders,broken safety glass,etc. If you just put the rocks out of the bag only,they wont grind properly in a small tumbler if they are the same size.
snuffy
|
|
|
Post by susand24224 on Jan 7, 2012 19:53:22 GMT -5
I would not tumble the blue quartz with the others. There are two factors to watch out for when tumbling, the first being similar hardness. The second I will call, for lack of a better word, brittleness. Blue quartz, rose quartz, amethyst, etc. is very prone to shattering. Blue quartz is one of the trickiest tumbles I've ever done, keeping good company with fluorite.
Now that I've said this, I am sure there are people on the board who have tumbled them all together successfully. So if you want to, go ahead. The worst that will happen is that you will be backing the blue quartz back to 500 grit to get rid of cracks, etc. The onld adage of "you learn by your mistakes" should be carved, in stone of course, in my garage over my tumblers!
Susan
|
|