iamchris
has rocks in the head
Member since June 2023
Posts: 683
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Post by iamchris on Aug 16, 2023 11:52:39 GMT -5
Hello everyone! I thought I'd jump on board and start documenting things a bit better so I can be more accountable for my progress and hopefully get some feedback as to how I can do better for my next batches. I'd like to leave it open to all members to critique if you ever have any feedback to offer. You can be as polite as you like or you can throw in some fun insults for good measure; I welcome them both! I'm looking to learn and am always open to feedback. Teach me how to get my rocks as smooth as my brain! My current equipment: Dan & Darci cheapo 2 LB tumbler from Amazon, modded to run at 51 RPMs Lortone 45C Lortone 33B Lortone QT12 Diamond Pacific MT-04 Convenience links: 2023-08-16 - assorted CA beach rocks and Rochester, NY hiking finds
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iamchris
has rocks in the head
Member since June 2023
Posts: 683
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Post by iamchris on Aug 16, 2023 11:53:15 GMT -5
2023-08-16
For this batch, these are a combination of CA beach rocks and some random ones I found while hiking in the Rochester area. One is a filler rock that I moved through just for funsies. I ran a much larger batch through the rotaries with 60/90, and moved it over to the Mini-Sonic for 120/220 SiC, 500 AO, and Rock Shed AO polish, with a borax burnish. I wasn't at all happy with the results on a small part of this batch, and ended up putting these back through all but the course stage, adding in a Polly Plastics 1200 AO step before final polish. In the second set of rounds, I used 1 Tbsp of granulated white sugar and didn't touch the borax at all. No burnish. I'm much happier with these results, but given that I changed multiple variables, I can't attribute it to any one thing. I guess I have to keep doing all the steps, including the happy dance next to the bucket during final rinse. I have no idea what any of these are, (THEY'RE MINERALS, MARIE!), except for maybe #3 being quartz, but given the results on the two tone rock, as well as the super dull one, I'd venture to guess that they're of mixed hardness. These are the results I was speaking of, velodromed . Especially in rock #6, you can see half of the rock is harder than the other. And #7 is just plain dull. I guess it would help if I knew what they were, or what their hardness was. But I think this is the most sensible attribution (with my admittedly limited knowledge). Here's a YT playlist that runs through all of the following links, for anyone who wants to click just once. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. I've noticed that though these have a great shine, there are some flaws underneath. I think I need to do a better job at taking pictures and inspecting the rocks when I am evaluating if they need another round of coarse. I'm seeing some larger flaws underneath. In rocks 1 and 2, you can see that this must have happened earlier on, because it took a smooth polish in the end and I cannot feel these small chips with my fingers. However in rock 4, it looks like it happened towards the end since I can feel hints of that when I rub it. I'm not sure if these are flaws that were introduced in the Mini-Sonic, or if I just didn't do a good enough job inspecting them before moving them out of course. One thing I haven't been sure about is how much ceramic media I should be adding to my Mini-Sonic. Halfway through the final polish, I took one out to see how they were doing and saw the edges polished, but not the faces. I ended up scooping out a lot of the media to allow for some more meaningful contact. Whether this had any impact, who knows. They look much better at the end. I've tried to find videos of these in use on YT, but they are pretty sparse. Can someone let me know if I'm over/under-filling with media in either of these videos? Thank you for watching, and for any advice you may have!
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chris1956
fully equipped rock polisher
Member since July 2022
Posts: 1,320
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Post by chris1956 on Aug 16, 2023 12:10:44 GMT -5
Well, I don't know if I do it the "right" way or not but you have way more media than I usually do with the mini sonic. On the plus side, you are much less likely to get stones stuck as I sometimes do. I have tried to follow what their manual says just because I hadn't looked into doing it any way else. The 1/2 full of rocks and then add media to 2/3 full seems to have worked for me (other than getting too big of a rock in there).
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iamchris
has rocks in the head
Member since June 2023
Posts: 683
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Post by iamchris on Aug 16, 2023 12:20:35 GMT -5
Thanks for the data! I could probably cut back on the amount of polish used if I did that. I used 1 tsp for each round in the Mini-Sonic. I see stefan has success using half that. Curious how much ceramics he uses.
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Post by velodromed on Aug 16, 2023 15:49:20 GMT -5
iamchris #1 is a form of granite I think a pretty color at that. Did the darker parts (basalt I think) undercut or not polish as well? #3 I think is milky quartz or chalcedony. Could also be quartzite. Does it polish super shiny or is there a satin feel or micro cracking? The others look very much like the rock I collected in Washington state earlier this summer. I think they are a mix of Jasper and basalt mixed with quartz and/or chalcedony. The Jasper polishes shiny, the basalt, not so much. Basalt still feels slightly rough under my fingernail after polishing. You said you werenβt happy with the resultsβ¦what exactly bugged you and what were you hoping for? I learned with my other hobby (building RC Cars) to only change 1 variable at a time. So try to do that as itβs easier to figure out what youβre doing right vs wrong. Keep a diary if it helps. More course runs will help you I bet. On average my rocks spend 6-8 weeks in course. Some spend a few months and one I just started I expect to take about a year. I have the rebel 17, a double 3lb, a tall 3lb, a little 1lb and the vibe. The tumblers are mainly for breaking rocks down. They start in the rebel and if large, stay there, while the small and medium rocks get moved to the smaller tumblers for the it final course runs. I plan on building a 6 barrel tumbler some day. That monstrosity up on my work top with a green baseβ¦hasenβt everyone made a rock tumbling barrel out of an old plastic fiber jar lined with a can of bed liner? Donβt laugh, it works and I have 5lbs of Washington state beach rock tumbling away lol. Iβm not familiar with the mini sonic. I got a raytech 5 early this year and spent 2 months experimenting before I got the recipe and method down. So itβs okay if it takes awhile to figure out. Donβt get frustrated, enjoy the challenge! Ohβ¦My raytech works best when itβs loaded with ceramic and small round river rock. It only needs 1/2 a teaspoon of polish to work very well also. You really donβt need much in a vibe. It took me a good while to figure that out lol. During the polish stage is the only time I use borax. I use all small ceramics for the polish stage and really load it up. I like to keep rocks between tumbles in a jar of water, but when Iβm inspecting them to see if they are ready to move on I let them dry briefly. The flaws stand out if the rock is dry. I have an electric toothbrush that I use to scrub them as needed between tumbles and a small cheap sonic cleaner for stubborn pits etc.
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dillonf
fully equipped rock polisher
Hounding and tumbling
Member since February 2022
Posts: 1,604
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Post by dillonf on Aug 16, 2023 20:22:18 GMT -5
Hello everyone! I thought I'd jump on board and start documenting things a bit better so I can be more accountable for my progress and hopefully get some feedback as to how I can do better for my next batches. I'd like to leave it open to all members to critique if you ever have any feedback to offer. You can be as polite as you like or you can throw in some fun insults for good measure; I welcome them both! I'm looking to learn and am always open to feedback. Teach me how to get my rocks as smooth as my brain! My current equipment: Dan & Darci cheapo 2 LB tumbler from Amazon, modded to run at 51 RPMs Lortone 45C Lortone 33B Lortone QT12 Diamond Pacific MT-04 You got a real "rockin" set up! That's a nice suite of tumblers! Your rocks look great!! Keep on a rolling! Most of my rocks are in coarse grind for several months before I move them on to 220.
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Post by velodromed on Aug 16, 2023 21:58:49 GMT -5
Hello everyone! I thought I'd jump on board and start documenting things a bit better so I can be more accountable for my progress and hopefully get some feedback as to how I can do better for my next batches. I'd like to leave it open to all members to critique if you ever have any feedback to offer. You can be as polite as you like or you can throw in some fun insults for good measure; I welcome them both! I'm looking to learn and am always open to feedback. Teach me how to get my rocks as smooth as my brain! My current equipment: Dan & Darci cheapo 2 LB tumbler from Amazon, modded to run at 51 RPMs Lortone 45C Lortone 33B Lortone QT12 Diamond Pacific MT-04 You got a real "rockin" set up! That's a nice suite of tumblers! Your rocks look great!! Keep on a rolling! Most of my rocks are in coarse grind for several months before I move them on to 220. He does have a damn good set up! Cracks me up that we have the same Dan and Darcy Tumblr. I think itβs technically only made for 1 pound though, unless they had another size? I overload it with one and a half pounds typically anyway. His idea using a lower voltage power supply works great. Iβm now using a 6V, 1A power supply on mine and it tumbles at a very nice speed. I figure once the circuitboard goes out Iβll bypass it and direct wire to the power supply connection, as I did on another similar 3lb tumbler. It works great, but you wonβt have the multiple speeds or timer any more.
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Post by rockjunquie on Aug 16, 2023 22:09:49 GMT -5
I think your tumbles look great.
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rocknewb101
fully equipped rock polisher
Member since October 2022
Posts: 1,352
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Post by rocknewb101 on Aug 17, 2023 9:47:10 GMT -5
I also think your tumbles look great. They have a good shine on them, look rounded and smooth. I collected some rocks from Palos Verdes when I was there in January. They mostly turned out nice, but i experienced some undercutting with them - that may be what you're experiencing too. I have the mini sonic and just started my second ever batch in it - I don't use quite as much media, but I'm still experimenting myself, so i may be off base.
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iamchris
has rocks in the head
Member since June 2023
Posts: 683
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Post by iamchris on Aug 17, 2023 15:22:07 GMT -5
Thanks for help on the IDs, and for the kind words! Two months ago, I had only the Dan & Darci. It's been a quick ride. What about stuff like this? I think #2 has the best gloss (besides the milky quartz), but on one side, you can see chips like this: Is this normal and something I don't see in other people's images because of a "put your best foot forward" tendency to hide flaws? Or is this avoidable and can be remedied by better inspection and coarse grinding? I know there's some undercutting issues on other rocks in my batch which is to be expected since they're not ideal candidates. There were a handful of others that were terribly poor candidates due to being of mixed composition, like the red granite in #1, but with even more black content. I should be able to see if it's an issue with my process/QC once I start getting through my QT12 full of quartz. Right now it's a waiting game as I have nothing left for the Mini-Sonic.
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pebblesky
fully equipped rock polisher
Purchased another UV mini bowl for tumbling
Member since September 2022
Posts: 1,509
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Post by pebblesky on Aug 17, 2023 15:46:44 GMT -5
Thanks for help on the IDs, and for the kind words! Two months ago, I had only the Dan & Darci. It's been a quick ride. What about stuff like this? I think #2 has the best gloss (besides the milky quartz), but on one side, you can see chips like this: Is this normal and something I don't see in other people's images because of a "put your best foot forward" tendency to hide flaws? Or is this avoidable and can be remedied by better inspection and coarse grinding? I know there's some undercutting issues on other rocks in my batch which is to be expected since they're not ideal candidates. There were a handful of others that were terribly poor candidates due to being of mixed composition, like the red granite in #1, but with even more black content. I should be able to see if it's an issue with my process/QC once I start getting through my QT12 full of quartz. Right now it's a waiting game as I have nothing left for the Mini-Sonic. I am not able to see your picture in this post. From the videos in your first post, I think your tumbled beach rocks look very nice and shiny, much nicer than my self-collected beach rocks. There are soft areas on some rocks, that tumbling will not yield satisfactory results, no matter what we tried. I have heard that a rotary for pre-polishing and polishing will do more gentle on the soft areas compared to the vibes, but still nothing compared to hand-polishing them. And even with hand polishing, some soft/porous areas are never going to shine.
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iamchris
has rocks in the head
Member since June 2023
Posts: 683
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Post by iamchris on Aug 17, 2023 17:46:31 GMT -5
Thank you for the feedback and the hint about my image URL! I've corrected it above.
I'm happy with my mirror polish, but the reflection seems a bit distorted because the rock surface isn't smooth. Bits like this make me think I didn't inspect it good enough before moving into phase 2.
Good to know about the rotary tumbler! That's a bit surprising though. Seems to be much rougher motion in there than compared to the Mini-Sonic. Especially given how much I overloaded mine with ceramics!
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pebblesky
fully equipped rock polisher
Purchased another UV mini bowl for tumbling
Member since September 2022
Posts: 1,509
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Post by pebblesky on Aug 17, 2023 18:55:02 GMT -5
Thank you for the feedback and the hint about my image URL! I've corrected it above. I'm happy with my mirror polish, but the reflection seems a bit distorted because the rock surface isn't smooth. Bits like this make me think I didn't inspect it good enough before moving into phase 2. Good to know about the rotary tumbler! That's a bit surprising though. Seems to be much rougher motion in there than compared to the Mini-Sonic. Especially given how much I overloaded mine with ceramics! I also didn't notice some of the chips on some of my polished rocks until the rock is completely dry after the final stage. I think more thorough inspection would definitely help, but I also believe sometimes the polishing stages make the chips more visible than after stage 1. I also often see the cabbers here say that some of the fractures are only quite visible after the final polish when they worked on their cabs.
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dillonf
fully equipped rock polisher
Hounding and tumbling
Member since February 2022
Posts: 1,604
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Post by dillonf on Aug 17, 2023 19:24:26 GMT -5
Thanks for help on the IDs, and for the kind words! Two months ago, I had only the Dan & Darci. It's been a quick ride. What about stuff like this? I think #2 has the best gloss (besides the milky quartz), but on one side, you can see chips like this: Is this normal and something I don't see in other people's images because of a "put your best foot forward" tendency to hide flaws? Or is this avoidable and can be remedied by better inspection and coarse grinding? I know there's some undercutting issues on other rocks in my batch which is to be expected since they're not ideal candidates. There were a handful of others that were terribly poor candidates due to being of mixed composition, like the red granite in #1, but with even more black content. I should be able to see if it's an issue with my process/QC once I start getting through my QT12 full of quartz. Right now it's a waiting game as I have nothing left for the Mini-Sonic. I usually have some with these "defects" slip through. I usually just throw them into a coarse tumble with something similar stuff and start the process over again. I had 3 like this in my last batch I pulled out of polish. I do sometimes get what I call "shock fractures" in the Lot-O during the polish stage that definitely weren't there after pre-polish. I can usually get them out by cycling them back through 220-polish. Not sure if the mini-sonic has that problem?
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iamchris
has rocks in the head
Member since June 2023
Posts: 683
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Post by iamchris on Aug 17, 2023 21:41:05 GMT -5
Not sure. This is only the second run through it. With the exception of of 120/220, I try and turn the speed down. It's nice to have fine-grained control. Doesn't mean I know what's best, but I'm turning that knob anyway.
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dshanpnw
freely admits to licking rocks
Member since December 2020
Posts: 907
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Post by dshanpnw on Aug 20, 2023 10:57:41 GMT -5
I agree three that your videos show some very nice polished gems. Unfortunately, I get plenty of very nicely rounded and polished rocks with bruises and chips after going all the way through months without any problems, frustrating.
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iamchris
has rocks in the head
Member since June 2023
Posts: 683
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Post by iamchris on Aug 21, 2023 10:28:53 GMT -5
I'd like to seek the collective wisdom of RTH for some more difficult crazy lace that I got from The Rock Shed.
Any advice/recommendations are welcome! For once I decided to be more deliberate and not just throw them back in with new grit. Pay no mind to my dirty keyboard! π
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iamchris
has rocks in the head
Member since June 2023
Posts: 683
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Post by iamchris on Sept 1, 2023 11:09:50 GMT -5
As requested by dillonf and velodromed in the Cloudinary test thread, here's some rocks that I'm currently working on. FYI velodromed, these were uploaded to Imgur on my phone. I'm just copying and pasting the link to the album, which you can see here. IMO it's nice to do this because embedding them into the page forces people to consume bandwidth (may or may not be a concern if you're on mobile data), and also have to scroll past a bunch of images that they may or may not want to see. Linking out to an album gives people the option, but requires another click. I think Imgur also does a better job of scaling them to the browser width than ProBoards does. Note the size difference if you click the link above, versus the images I'll embed below. And hey, I don't have to worry about resizing or cropping - infinite bandwidth. Here's my RGB rhyolite that I purchased from a vendor on here. I was a bit peeved when I received it because it was enormous, despite having e-mailed them asking for tumbling sized rough. They made a lame excuse for not doing so, that made it sound more like they didn't try, so I'm not going to give them a shout-out. It's made it through a couple weeks of coarse grind, but is still in for more punishment. Here are some pictures of it rough first. velodromed here I am on my PC after uploading the pics with my phone. I load up the album link above, right-click on the photo, and choose "copy image address" (it may be "copy image URL" on other browsers). Then I paste the link in the RTH comment like this: i.imgur.com/biqnW8R.pngAnd then add IMG tags around it so that it will embed the image. I do this for each image in the album. Tommy I see there is a ProBoards plugin that allows forum users to just paste an image link like at the end of the preceding paragraph, and ProBoards will automatically encapsulate it with IMG tags. It's a nice quality of life feature if it's something you'd be open to, so that way I don't have to do the IMG tag thing. Alternatively, you can click the 3 dots in the top right, choose "get share links" and then click the "get BBcode" copy link button. Anyway, here are some rocks: And one more which is ready for stage 2. Also came in the RGB rhyolite bag, but looks completely different.
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Tommy
Administrator
Member since January 2013
Posts: 12,685
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Post by Tommy on Sept 1, 2023 11:36:38 GMT -5
Tommy I see there is a ProBoards plugin that allows forum users to just paste an image link like at the end of the preceding paragraph, and ProBoards will automatically encapsulate it with IMG tags. It's a nice quality of life feature if it's something you'd be open to, so that way I don't have to do the IMG tag thing. I will look into it, thanks Chris. I installed the similar MOD that automatically plays videos so I'm not opposed to it. As a side note, please be careful of using and recommending photo hosting on Imgur because unless something has changed in the last year or two, they have a VERY strongly worded ban on hot linking in their TOS. This cheerful advice comes from the position of those of us who were here and lived through the Photobucket disaster which wiped out decades of priceless photos in the blink of an eye. Many long time members deleted their PB accounts but I was able to save others through a lot of copying and saving, and some of it came back via PB themselves but what did come back is marred by a big water mark.
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iamchris
has rocks in the head
Member since June 2023
Posts: 683
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Post by iamchris on Sept 1, 2023 13:55:53 GMT -5
Tommy I see there is a ProBoards plugin that allows forum users to just paste an image link like at the end of the preceding paragraph, and ProBoards will automatically encapsulate it with IMG tags. It's a nice quality of life feature if it's something you'd be open to, so that way I don't have to do the IMG tag thing. I will look into it, thanks Chris. I installed the similar MOD that automatically plays videos so I'm not opposed to it. As a side note, please be careful of using and recommending photo hosting on Imgur because unless something has changed in the last year or two, they have a VERY strongly worded ban on hot linking in their TOS. This cheerful advice comes from the position of those of us who were here and lived through the Photobucket disaster which wiped out decades of priceless photos in the blink of an eye. Many long time members deleted their PB accounts but I was able to save others through a lot of copying and saving, and some of it came back via PB themselves but what did come back is marred by a big water mark. I do understand that it comes with a risk. However, given that they have functionality on their website to expose the BBcode IMG tags, they are expressly looking to serve communities like ours. If forum image embedding wasn't something they were wanting to do, I don't think we'd see that button. From their current TOS: They're just saying don't host your website's static image files on our site as a de-facto CDN. As far as I can tell from this Reddit post from 7 years ago, that was always the case. Uploading pics of rocks to embed in the forum is fine. Using Imgur to store your website banner images and all media, and that's another story. Also I'm realizing I forgot to include the link to the plugin in question: www.proboards.com/library/plugins/item/576Would also be handy if .mp4 was added to the list of file extensions as I don't think that's included by default.
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