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Post by youp50 on Jul 16, 2023 12:06:46 GMT -5
Time has a thread about catching a mouse in a tumbler.
What vermin do you remove and what vermin do you deal with?
Every mouse that steps foot into my garage/shop is invited to help themselves to a nice peanut butter/chocolate delight. I don't think mice have a spirit or soul, but if they do it is a heavenly delight. The local crows and ravens check the road in front of my home for their corpse, a completion of the Lion King's circle of life. Of a note; I seldom catch a mature male mouse inside, just Mama and offspring.
Northern Jumping Mice. I haven't figured out a good way to send them to a possible after-life. They will be bad again this year, a riparian species that eats the bottom of tomatoes. I feel bad for them, they are terribly thirsty. The tomatoes are still my guarded property...
Chipmunks are not welcome either, the addition of brush piles has perfected the weasel habitat. I haven't seen nor heard a chipmunk this summer. Another circle of life thing, I guess.
Ever wonder why a circle of life involves a death?
Red squirrels. I live rural. Reds are shot on sight.
Racoons are removed from the gene pool also.
Skunks are tolerated. We use an electric fencer to discourage racoons from entering out buildings etc, and deer from the vegetable garden. The garden also has a lower wire for the wild turkeys, its a dry year here and they want to make a dust bowl in the cabbage patch. Works well for the deer and turkeys, skunks spray upon contact with the wire.
Black bears are an enigmatic pain. They are responsible for two actions here. The first, bird feeders are brought in at dusk. The second, use cheap feeders, bear may come by in the daylight hours. Bear are very hard on the structual integrity of any feeder they can reach.
Mosquitoes and ticks are grudgingly fed, and killed on discovery.
No sharks here... fish are cool.
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Post by youp50 on Jul 16, 2023 11:36:28 GMT -5
On injesting diatomacius earth,
Learning every day, all I thought it was good for was filtration systems, insecticides, and packing the hollow center of a ship's propeller shaft. I did learn that food grade DE is 2% or less silica. I think I will pass on injesting any more of that than I already do.
I prefer animal collagen, with its potential for mad cow disease, in the form of Knox gelatin. I can see a very real improvement in my finger nails, in a very short time. My assumption is it will improve connective tissue as well. Hair? I am a guy that asks the barber to take a little off the sides, 'cause there ain't none on the top!
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Post by youp50 on Jul 15, 2023 12:24:11 GMT -5
To quote an old aquaintance of mine, Mr Jinx, "I hate meeses to pieces!"
Sorry for your misadventure.
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Post by youp50 on Jul 13, 2023 3:34:47 GMT -5
Don't be concerned about drinking RO water.
The point was drinking only ro water would hurt you over time. Make coffee? No longer pure. The same with any other fluid you drink. Eat a balanced diet? Your body chemistry is fine, plenty of minerals.
Over time and only RO water is harmful to your body. Same to your stones, over time and only RO water... As posted it will rinse your stones well. If you wanted to take it to the next level, you could use non-ionic soap and then RO water to rinse.
Hey rockbrain; it's MISTER Squid to you grunts, and thanks for yours as well.
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Post by youp50 on Jul 12, 2023 12:00:29 GMT -5
Water I can tell you about...
A long time ago I was a young sailor aboard a nuclear powered submarine. I was a mechanical operator with a minor in primary and secondary water.
Pure water for us came from a resin bed demineralizer. Mechanically filtered out the big chunks and chemically removed the ions and replaced them with hydronium or hydroxyl ions. Pure water without the waste associated with an RO unit. Fast forward 45 years and we built a water treatment plant for the only primarily nickel mine in the US. Because of the location and the river the waste water went into, the EPA/DNR required an RO treatment system.
Water from a properly functioning RO system is not healthy for you to drink. Water is the great solvent, so great that pure water will attack a glass container. Water is designed to dissolve things, even glass. If all you were to drink was RO water, it would dissolve minerals from your body. If you shop household RO units you will find the newer models have a final calcium carbonate or similar 'filter' adding minerals to your drinking water.
(A side note, before the mine was producing the water treatment plant was operating, working out bugs etc. I observed the water tech taking a sample, respirator, face shield, rubber gloves, and tyvek suit. I had a connection with the factory tech, we both sailed subs, although he was on the pig boats and I was Nuke. I asked him what was with the water, I never had to wear half that safety gear when pulling a primary water sample. He informed me the gear was there to protect the sample from the tech! If you had a amalgam filling and breathed on the sample it would give a false positive for mercury.
So using RO water to tumble rocks is not ecologically sound, it takes energy to produce the water and upwards of 50% of water produced is wasted. Meaning for every gallon of good water, over a gallon of waste water is produced. And it will dissolve your rocks, not likely measureable, but it will attack the stones. There will be plenty of minerals in the slurry to sate the need to dissolve inherent in water.
If I had really hard water, and was concerned about affecting my stones finish, I would use rain water. A rare commodity in the SW I know. My tap water has a rather spendy water treatment system to remove iron and turbidity. It injects a flocculent when the pump runs and filters it out through a regenerating filter bed system. Or I could go down to The Gitch and bring some water home.
After a brief inspection of the slurry from the tumbling process.... wet works just fine.
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Post by youp50 on Jul 11, 2023 20:35:24 GMT -5
I have never tried to add anything to deal with pressure build up, just burp the barrel. If you watch the bottom of the barrel, most of the time it caves in a little, negative pressure. I just ignore that. I did have a Thumlers lid squirt out slurry, when on a shelf, all over stuff I did not want muddy. Burp em.
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Post by youp50 on Jul 11, 2023 15:15:39 GMT -5
The AH Seaman Mineral Museum has a great UV reactive section. It contains a specimum from Pennsylvania that has hydrocarbon inclusions. It is the hydrocarbons doing the fluoresce. I do not recall if its a long or short wave reaction.
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Post by youp50 on Jul 11, 2023 13:33:32 GMT -5
1) Motor turns and the drive shaft doesn't. Adjust belt tension, replace belt are good options. Do not oil the belt, ever.
2) Motor and drive shaft turns, barrel doesn't. I have found that removing the drive shaft and slipping a piece of shrink tubing onto the shaft and heating (shrinking) the tube will solve this for a long time. When things slick up and start to slip again, cut the old off and put on new.
3) Motor does not turn. See above for brush repair, motor maintenance, get a new motor.
4) Unplug your tumbler and let it sit. A couple of hours. Turn it back on and listen and watch as the rocks start to tumble again. What you are seeing is the conglomerate busting up. It may be so hard you need to smack the barrel to bust it up. Any rate as posted, it will be seriously off balance until it is properly tumbling again
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Post by youp50 on Jul 11, 2023 13:16:48 GMT -5
The problem with saw cuts is the cut surface becomes concave during the tumbling.
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Post by youp50 on Jul 11, 2023 12:28:24 GMT -5
If the bottom of any of my barrels, and the tops of some that are fernco caps, bulge. Burp them. The barrel bulge is telling you the pressure is increasing, let the pressure out. I would highly recommend burping Lortone style barrels away from your face. A little mud may not hurt, a chunk of large grit SiC in your eye may cause some pain.
Lots of gas in glass...
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Post by youp50 on Jun 26, 2023 6:40:38 GMT -5
Jaspergate. Sorry NOT jaspergate, but Jasperlite. Kingsleys has some for sale.
3rd edit...jaspilite. I am going to the garden, not so complicated and no rocks either.
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Post by youp50 on Jun 20, 2023 21:11:45 GMT -5
I sure wish I had read this earlier or paid more attention today. We made an annual visit to the Mineral Museum. (Grandkids can do that for you)
There are some interesting pieces in the Seaman Museum on the campus of Michigan Technological University, one of which is big as a large Ottoman and you are encouraged to touch it. It is iron ore oxide that was dissolved in water and dripped onto the floor of a cavern. Much like stalagmites of limestone in other caverns. As I recall, it was difficult to process, being an oxide. The mineralogical name was never close to being filed and the miners had an interesting colloquial name for it, not filed either.
I would highly recommend a weekend trip to Houghton to visit the mineral museum. $8 for a two day pass, can't beat that. And way too much information for a single day.
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Post by youp50 on Jun 12, 2023 15:23:26 GMT -5
Different amygdaloids were copper bearing in the Keeweenaw to Ontonagon mines. I coveted a find that had a banded blue/red agate in an amygdaloid pocket. A friend found/sold it to a deep pocket collector.
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Post by youp50 on Apr 12, 2023 15:56:09 GMT -5
For What Its Worth; the bowls are interchangeable. I have both bowls, don't recall if I bought the 10 or 18, I do interchange them as needed. The 10 gets much more use.
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Post by youp50 on Apr 5, 2023 17:16:38 GMT -5
Did you use 'counter top cement'?
If I can figure how to get pics posted off my wife's phone, I will start another thread on the last cement counter top I did. I had some low grade blackskin agate I set into the counter. I also ground the top to expose the aggregate.
This year will find new counter tops here. Complete with geometric intarsia mooseblood kona dolomite. I expect the dolomite to be easier to grind. It is closer to new cement hardness than agate.
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Post by youp50 on Apr 5, 2023 6:29:57 GMT -5
Very nice. There used to be quite a bit on Lake Superior beaches. It is UV reactive and has become a rare find. Maybe when the ice goes, I will go looking, I am inspired by your results.
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Post by youp50 on Mar 25, 2023 7:19:34 GMT -5
Is the orbicular jasper rhyolite? There were some larger pieces, without the abundance of orbs in the pic, near the vegetation line at Morro Strand beach. I may have incorrectly identified as rhyolite.
We did find some brecciated red and yellow jaspers, now I know are Cayucus Jasper. We went to a beach north of San Simeon and I did not bring a pack. Tried to stash a 25 pounder of the jasper, too many tracks left, it was gone the next day. My better half has an eye for the local moonstone, not a clue what we will do with it.
I think the most overlooked is mushroom jasper. That seemed to be the better finds this past winter. It is way too ugly for most folks to pick up.
There are some beautiful calcites around San Simeon. Reds and oranges. Some place around here I have a piece of beach find uranium ore,I think, really cool bright green spider web pattern. Reminds me of the stuff from Jersey. Calcites, uranium and moonstone were UV night finds. Our local calcites have too much copper or iron to be UV reactive.
I missed out on desert hounding on the return trip. I was dealing with a bad case of diverticulitis. Looking forward to early spring on the shores of the Gitch.
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Post by youp50 on Mar 13, 2023 16:25:26 GMT -5
I am pretty sure its stromalite, although most have green. I find it occasionally on the shores of the Gitch. A very interesting stone. By others, one of the oldest fossils known to man, that's still being made in Australia.
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Post by youp50 on Aug 28, 2021 19:51:19 GMT -5
Seems to me that 50 pounds of grit will fit in a large flat rate box.
Trust me on this one, its far cheaper to have your order shipped than pick it up in person. If you do go, stay out of rock rooms. Or go and buy that chunk of sea jasper or serape jasper or.......both and a little extra.
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Post by youp50 on Aug 28, 2021 13:45:13 GMT -5
Last one resembles favosite
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