rollingstone
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since July 2009
Posts: 236
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Post by rollingstone on Jan 11, 2005 3:40:43 GMT -5
Pup, I'm curious about that sludge buildup. Have you checked it to see what particle size it is made of? I've only encountered that problem twice, both times when I was tumbling some semi-soft materials (Mohs 5-6) by themselves. And, yes, a real nasty mudcake built up on the bottom of the barrel. As best I could tell, it was mostly a mix of rock sludge and partly broken down silicon carbide, probably about 100/150 size. That seemed a real waste, so now I throw the softer materials in with mainly harder stones. That can be a brute too -- darn near wore my sodalite away to nothing! But with mostly hard materials and only 20% or less soft stones, I haven't had the mudcake problem. BTW, I gave you a preview of some local petrified wood I was tumbling awhile back. I'm still no further along with that. I'm waiting until I get enough to move past coarse grind, and right now I've only got about a half-barrel. It's tricky stuff to work with because it is very brittle, but you know all about tricky to work with from your vuggy-agates . So I will persevere with patience, and eventually I'll have some finished pics to post.
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Post by puppie96 on Jan 12, 2005 0:41:17 GMT -5
I haven't seen the sludgecake problem for a while, which probably means I'm doing something better than I used to...dumping out water, maybe? Perhaps in the past I tried to remedy the watery-slurry thingie by adding more stuff, which simply dropped into the dregs with the rest that wasn't working? As far as the texture of the stuff goes, it would have tons and tons of nice sharp seemingly unchanged grit, which frosted me bunches.
sigh. Waste not, want not.
sigh. The rocks are taking over the house. I tried some organizing. While doing this I decided that many (most?) need to be more perfect. Once this obsessiveness gets going, it's trouble city in the puppiehouse. The end result was that a lot of the rock clutter was consigned to returning to the basement. On the positive side, there are now less rocks taking over the house.
sigh. It's an ill wind, I guess.
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