Tumbling large stoned

I also have a 15 gal plastic drum , but it might be harder for me to line the inside

Thanks , I’ll try and search it .

I'm tumbling quite a bit of it right now, lemon to apple size. And a few years back, I tumbled some pieces that were softball and slightly larger, though not as large as football.

What happened on the larger pieces is I got tired of grinding out cracks to make the rocks as perfect as possible. This has also happened with large pieces of lapis for me, though not near that large as that would be very expensive. But I've not been able to figure out if these cracks are in the rock to begin with, or some develop during tumbling, or both.

I have 40lb, 20lb, 12lb, and 6lb barrels.

Based upon my successes and failures with this material, these are my suggestions which are worth no more than you paid for them.

Take your smallest piece first, and only work it and save the rest to do only after you have developed experience and success. Tumble it with whatever- quartz, jaspers, agates, but not freshly broken ones with sharp edges. Also, I would attempt to have no other rock in the batch more than 1/2 the size of the rhod. Usually we spend a lot of time in coarse grind getting the imperfections out, and then only one week in the next finer grit which is often 220, then going finer each week after that. But with rhod, I've had best luck with going to 220 before the imperfections are all gone. I might have it in 220 for 2, 3 or even 4 or 5 weeks if that's what it takes to get it looking perfect. I also would tumble it in 220 only with other rocks that are well rounded and no more than 1/2 its size.

The dark manganese oxide part of rhod is frustrating especially if it is half the rock or more. It tends to damage in those places easily. The more pink the better.

Good luck, I think at least a year of tumbling experience with non-special material would be a good thing to do if you are new to tumbling.