Newbie from Marietta, GA

Hello All!

I'm new-ish to rockhounding, as in going out intentionally to find rocks - I've been randomly picking up neat looking rocks my whole life, lol! I'm positively obsessed with both geodes and opals, and going hunting for both is on my life's bucketlist!

I'm currently using a Pro-series Double Barrel (6lbs capacity) Rock Tumbler from WireJewelry. The batches I did with the grit that came with it turned out fantastic, but the recent 2 batches I've done, I used a Nat Geo grit set and the results have been very... underwhelming. I'm not sure why, as it's the same kinds of stones as my first 2 batches, but nothing has come out with the high gloss smoothness as before. Any suggestions for where to get some good, reliable grit (at a reasonable hobbyist-level price) would be greatly appreciated!

I also hope to get into making my own custom dice (cast resin) and hopefully (fingers crossed) my tumbler might be able to save me a bunch of time during the clean-up/polishing stage.

I'm excited to be here and eager to learn as much as I can about this awesome hobby!