|
Post by Drummond Island Rocks on Feb 3, 2019 14:14:20 GMT -5
Living in a suburb in the Metro Detroit area adds a couple challenges to large quantity clean outs. For the last 7 years I have been running on average about 36 pounds every week in stage one. That's about 350 weekly clean outs of experience. The first issue is that living on a 100 ft x 300 ft city lot does not leave many options for grit disposal. The second issue is the cold weather months in my location. To handle the grit disposal I have a single 2 ft x 2 ft hole dug about 1 ft deep next to my house. I have used that same hole the entire time I have been tumbling. I remove the grit from the hole a few times a year with a shovel into buckets that go out in my weekly garbage after being left to harden. To minimize how much grit actually goes into that hole each week I have a total of 4 buckets that are used in the basement clean out process. Bucket #1 is clean water for rinsing. Bucket #2 is the one with the colander on it that the rocks get rinsed into, After the rocks are rinsed into this bucket it sits until the next week allowing the grit to settle. Bucket #3 is the bucket that bucket #2 is dumped into at after one week of settling. Bucket #2 then gets carried outside and dumped. Each week bucket #2 will have more and more settled sludge accumulating. When bucket #1 is about half full of thick sludge it gets replaced with a new bucket #2 and the full sludge bucket becomes bucket #4. Bucket #4 pretty much sits in a corner for a couple months until it has hardened and then it goes out with the trash. I have tried using a stage one slurry thickener exactly one time. For my clean out situation the negatives far out weighed the positives. Thicker slurry meant 3 times the amount of water to rinse and 3 times the amount of time. All that extra rinse water and the thicker slurry just meant more buckets of water being moved and way more sludge clogging up in the pit. If I lived on acreage in year round good weather I would probably have a different opinion. Here are my 3 12 pound barrels after opening this morning. 6 days in 46-70 (1 cup per barrel). Zero grit remaining. I set my stop watch before doing the rinse. Here is how long it took to thoroughly rinse all 36 pounds. Under 4 minutes. This the my rinse bucket after the clean out. At the very most 2 gallons of water were used. These are the rocks after the rinse This is my 4 bucket system. Bucket #1 on the left then bucket #2 and so forth .... (bucket #4 is shown all dried out and ready to go in the trash) Thanks for looking Chuck
|
|
|
Post by johnw on Feb 3, 2019 21:22:19 GMT -5
Drummond Island Rocks Hi Chuck, wow, that's some set-up you have going, congratulation. How I envy you after I spent over an hour cleaning out my debacle with the Covington and the Rock Miser, err, "Accident". You are indeed fortunate to have a basement area where you can store the buckets and BTW its a great idea you have with the sequencing process. Thanks for sharing. So with all the rocks you process what do you do with the finished products? Cheers, johnw
|
|
|
Post by Jugglerguy on Feb 4, 2019 6:53:05 GMT -5
Chuck, how do you do the actual rinsing? I used to put my dirty rocks in the colander and pour fresh water over them several time until they were clean. Lately I’ve been pouring water into the barrel and rinsing them mostly in the barrel with water streaming from my faucet. Or I’ll take a few at a time and dunk them in the top part of my waste water bucket. My newer method uses a little less water.
|
|
|
Post by Drummond Island Rocks on Feb 4, 2019 7:18:56 GMT -5
Chuck, how do you do the actual rinsing? I used to put my dirty rocks in the colander and pour fresh water over them several time until they were clean. Lately I’ve been pouring water into the barrel and rinsing them mostly in the barrel with water streaming from my faucet. Or I’ll take a few at a time and dunk them in the top part of my waste water bucket. My newer method uses a little less water. Fair question. For rinsing stage one I use the larger colander on the left. I dump half of a 12 pound barrel into that. From my clean water bucket I use that floating black dish (about 2 cups) and usually only have to dump two of those on that many rocks to get them clean enough for sorting. I dip and pour with my right hand while my left hands is in the rocks swooshing them around for even coverage. The colander will hold way more rocks but if I dump anymore then 5-6 pounds in there I can't get enough movement and that means a lot more water. For my normal mixed rock tumbles I am not extremely thorough about the rinse. If there is some grit/slurry left in pits and crevices it does not matter because after the sorting process those rocks are going back in stage one or going to the grinder anyway. My process is truly customized to my circumstances. Even if I could rinse all my rocks outside all year I still would not want to transfer all the barrels and rocks up and down the stairs every week. I pull the barrels out of the tumbler and set them right on top of it. The rinse buckets sit about three feet away. Between the 36 pound stage one clean out and my weekly loto stage clean outs I only take one five gallon bucket of water outside to dump. Chuck
|
|
|
Post by HankRocks on Feb 4, 2019 7:32:40 GMT -5
Chuck, how do you do the actual rinsing? I used to put my dirty rocks in the colander and pour fresh water over them several time until they were clean. Lately I’ve been pouring water into the barrel and rinsing them mostly in the barrel with water streaming from my faucet. Or I’ll take a few at a time and dunk them in the top part of my waste water bucket. My newer method uses a little less water. Fair question. For rinsing stage one I use the larger colander on the left. I dump half of a 12 pound barrel into that. From my clean water bucket I use that floating black dish (about 2 cups) and usually only have to dump two of those on that many rocks to get them clean enough for sorting. I dip and pour with my right hand while my left hands is in the rocks swooshing them around for even coverage. The colander will hold way more rocks but if I dump anymore then 5-6 pounds in there I can't get enough movement and that means a lot more water. For my normal mixed rock tumbles I am not extremely thorough about the rinse. If there is some grit/slurry left in pits and crevices it does not matter because after the sorting process those rocks are going back in stage one or going to the grinder anyway. My process is truly customized to my circumstances. Even if I could rinse all my rocks outside all year I still would not want to transfer all the barrels and rocks up and down the stairs every week. I pull the barrels out of the tumbler and set them right on top of it. The rinse buckets sit about three feet away. Between the 36 pound stage one clean out and my weekly loto stage clean outs I only take one five gallon bucket of water outside to dump. Chuck Good system for your circumstances. For me I am very lucky to be living on the Gulf Coast where I can do my washouts in the driveway with a jet nozzle on the hose year round. Also fortunate to have a garage where I can tumble year round. Between the 3 tumblers and the Vib Lap it seems I am doing some sort of washout 4 or 5 times a week. In the dry months of summer move them to the lawn. I am using a dry cake method of old slurry disposal, some to the trash and some for slurry starter for tumbling. The only hassle for me is the dry-cake process is a lot quicker in the Summer, much slower this time of year and I can end up with 5 or 6 buckets, less than half filled waiting to dry out.
|
|
|
Post by Drummond Island Rocks on Feb 4, 2019 8:04:40 GMT -5
Drummond Island Rocks Hi Chuck, wow, that's some set-up you have going, congratulation. How I envy you after I spent over an hour cleaning out my debacle with the Covington and the Rock Miser, err, "Accident". You are indeed fortunate to have a basement area where you can store the buckets and BTW its a great idea you have with the sequencing process. Thanks for sharing. So with all the rocks you process what do you do with the finished products? Cheers, johnw Thanks John. If I had to guess I would say I have completed about 700 pounds. I do sell them but I don't try very hard. I prefer to sell my tumbles at shows where I can interact with the customers but I only do a couple shows a year. If I had to guess I would say I probably have 200 pounds of finished tumbles stored in ziploc containers. I do pull out the best of the best from each batch to keep for my own collection. I have a single wicker basket that is displayed upstairs with about 30 pounds of my keepers. Chuck
|
|
|
Post by johnw on Feb 4, 2019 12:59:00 GMT -5
Thanks John. If I had to guess I would say I have completed about 700 pounds. I do sell them but I don't try very hard. I prefer to sell my tumbles at shows where I can interact with the customers but I only do a couple shows a year. If I had to guess I would say I probably have 200 pounds of finished tumbles stored in ziploc containers. I do pull out the best of the best from each batch to keep for my own collection. I have a single wicker basket that is displayed upstairs with about 30 pounds of my keepers. Chuck Drummond Island Rocks HI Chuck, I really appreciate you sharing that piece of information since I too will have a bit of a dilemma with what to do with all the Bahia's I accumulate now that I switched to the Big Diamond Pacific's and processing Big Crazy's and using Bahia's as fill. I don't do shows, kinda just stick with Shawn at the Rock Shed and Ebay for the Big Crazy's and Eye Candy. What I accumulated in the past i pretty much just give em' to friends who like the look of the Bahia's but moving forward I can see I will have an issue to deal with. The Chairman of the Board has definitively stated one small glass bowl in my own personal area along with the all the Zoo residents is all the space I get for my Bahia's....... Cheers, johnw rockjunquie
|
|
ontherocks
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since May 2017
Posts: 76
|
Post by ontherocks on Feb 4, 2019 21:05:42 GMT -5
I totally agree about the slurry thickener. I used cat litter for awhile, but it is very hard to wash the rocks for clean-out. I was using kitty litter in the summers only and not in the winter, but I don’t use it at all anymore. Not worth all the mess during clean-outs.
|
|
|
Post by pauls on Feb 4, 2019 22:13:38 GMT -5
Drummond Island Rocks Hi Chuck, wow, that's some set-up you have going, congratulation. How I envy you after I spent over an hour cleaning out my debacle with the Covington and the Rock Miser, err, "Accident". You are indeed fortunate to have a basement area where you can store the buckets and BTW its a great idea you have with the sequencing process. Thanks for sharing. So with all the rocks you process what do you do with the finished products? Cheers, johnw Thanks John. If I had to guess I would say I have completed about 700 pounds. I do sell them but I don't try very hard. I prefer to sell my tumbles at shows where I can interact with the customers but I only do a couple shows a year. If I had to guess I would say I probably have 200 pounds of finished tumbles stored in ziploc containers. I do pull out the best of the best from each batch to keep for my own collection. I have a single wicker basket that is displayed upstairs with about 30 pounds of my keepers. Chuck For displaying tumbled stones I have some large cheap glass vases from the discount store, $10 or so gets you a vase that holds close to two gallons of stones, they have a small footprint and display the stones really well.
|
|
RWA3006
Cave Dweller
Member since March 2009
Posts: 4,175
|
Post by RWA3006 on Feb 5, 2019 0:29:30 GMT -5
Thanks John. If I had to guess I would say I have completed about 700 pounds. I do sell them but I don't try very hard. I prefer to sell my tumbles at shows where I can interact with the customers but I only do a couple shows a year. If I had to guess I would say I probably have 200 pounds of finished tumbles stored in ziploc containers. I do pull out the best of the best from each batch to keep for my own collection. I have a single wicker basket that is displayed upstairs with about 30 pounds of my keepers. Chuck For displaying tumbled stones I have some large cheap glass vases from the discount store, $10 or so gets you a vase that holds close to two gallons of stones, they have a small footprint and display the stones really well. Ornate glass candy and desert dishes from the thrift store work well also, but have a larger footprint.
|
|