Post by chilerock on Oct 31, 2022 20:18:18 GMT -5
Hello to everyone: I`m sure this is a sort of silly questions for a lot of you experienced tumblers out there. So please bare with me. We have experience with lapidary and jewelery for producing a few products for our own retail operation in Santiago Chile. But we are new to tumbling. But from about 5 months ago, we started with a Thumler Rotary Model B and a Lot o Tumbler twin barrel vibe. Have have some decent results so far with the vibe and frustrarion with the Thumler rotary. From previous posts about tumbling, I have understood that the the only real way to produce a decently rounded tumbled stone on a rotary is to preform the stones before tumbling. So, we've been doing this recently with a 60 grit diamond wheel on a Genie, which allows us to grind more quickly. BUT, this is still obviously quite time consuming and therefore has a significant cost involved.
For our own retailing and some limited wholesaling in Chile, we are trying to gradually move towards smaller scale commercial production of a few different tumbled stones, stones which are getting more expensive in recent years and in some cases simply not available, even internationally, such as rhodocrosite from Argentina and green aragonite and lapis lazuli from Chile. We carry over 150 different tumbled stones, with most all being imported. So we are simply trying to suppliment the imported tumbled stones with a few of our own tumbled, that we can't get anywhere else OR are cheaper to produce ourselves. I think we are the only guys actually tumbling commercially in Chile. (Hmmmm) At the same time, IF we can get tumbling figured out better, we can potentially tumble certain stones in larger volumes such as Chilean lapis, even possiblly for export at some point. As an example, we have hundreds of kgs. of rough Chilean lapis that we can turn into tumbled and sell in Tucson for a good profit. I bought tumbled lapis (Afghan) in Tucson twice and ours is competitive in price and quality. I have even priced larger semi industrial tumblers from Diamond Pacific and some large vibes from China. But it`s one step at a time for now, until we can figure out better how to tumble.
ANYWAY, the main question here is this. IF the only way to get decently rounded stones from a rotary tumbler is to preform each stone, why should we even bother to them put these preformed stones in slow and high grit use rotary tumblers, instead of going directly to the vibratory tumblers, which of course are much faster and use much less grit, grit that we have to import? But with this said I cannot believe that the very large commercial tumbled stone producers like Top Stone in South Africa preform the stones that they tumble in their 6000 lb. capacity rotary tumblers. At the same time, maybe for large indistrial tumbling, they are able to decently round off rough material with these very large tumblers and a lot of time, like 6 to 8 weeks or more. From our experience importing and selling a lot of different industrially tumbled stones from all over the world (Brazil, South Africa, Madagascar, India, China and others), they are mostly fairly well rounded, with maybe 15% or 20% being somewhat angular. In general, I think the worldwide market prefers a more rounded tumbled stone as opposed to angular. For me anyway, rounded is generally a prettier, more attractive and more saleable tumbled stone
Anyway, my second question is this. Do any of you have experienece producing decently rounded stones from start to finis in a rotary tumbler without preforming the stones?
Sorry for the overly long message here but any advise would be greatly appreciated.
Best to you all.
For our own retailing and some limited wholesaling in Chile, we are trying to gradually move towards smaller scale commercial production of a few different tumbled stones, stones which are getting more expensive in recent years and in some cases simply not available, even internationally, such as rhodocrosite from Argentina and green aragonite and lapis lazuli from Chile. We carry over 150 different tumbled stones, with most all being imported. So we are simply trying to suppliment the imported tumbled stones with a few of our own tumbled, that we can't get anywhere else OR are cheaper to produce ourselves. I think we are the only guys actually tumbling commercially in Chile. (Hmmmm) At the same time, IF we can get tumbling figured out better, we can potentially tumble certain stones in larger volumes such as Chilean lapis, even possiblly for export at some point. As an example, we have hundreds of kgs. of rough Chilean lapis that we can turn into tumbled and sell in Tucson for a good profit. I bought tumbled lapis (Afghan) in Tucson twice and ours is competitive in price and quality. I have even priced larger semi industrial tumblers from Diamond Pacific and some large vibes from China. But it`s one step at a time for now, until we can figure out better how to tumble.
ANYWAY, the main question here is this. IF the only way to get decently rounded stones from a rotary tumbler is to preform each stone, why should we even bother to them put these preformed stones in slow and high grit use rotary tumblers, instead of going directly to the vibratory tumblers, which of course are much faster and use much less grit, grit that we have to import? But with this said I cannot believe that the very large commercial tumbled stone producers like Top Stone in South Africa preform the stones that they tumble in their 6000 lb. capacity rotary tumblers. At the same time, maybe for large indistrial tumbling, they are able to decently round off rough material with these very large tumblers and a lot of time, like 6 to 8 weeks or more. From our experience importing and selling a lot of different industrially tumbled stones from all over the world (Brazil, South Africa, Madagascar, India, China and others), they are mostly fairly well rounded, with maybe 15% or 20% being somewhat angular. In general, I think the worldwide market prefers a more rounded tumbled stone as opposed to angular. For me anyway, rounded is generally a prettier, more attractive and more saleable tumbled stone
Anyway, my second question is this. Do any of you have experienece producing decently rounded stones from start to finis in a rotary tumbler without preforming the stones?
Sorry for the overly long message here but any advise would be greatly appreciated.
Best to you all.