Post by ejs on Jan 16, 2009 14:27:10 GMT -5
About 6 months ago, when I was buying a bunch of rough rock for myself (from eBay), I asked my wife what she liked in a tumbled rock. She said that she really likes shiny black rocks. So I purchased a large hunk of black jasper from eBay:
pic1:
I paid $9.99 (+shipping) for an 8+ lb. piece. Over the summer, I broke it up with a hammer into tumbling sized pieces:
pic2:
pic3:
(I tumbled the black jasper with some Noreena jasper since I figured they were the same hardness - more on the Noreena in a future thread.) I like my tumbled rocks to be very smooth and rounded, so I ran many round of rough. Each round was 5 days in a 3 lb. Lortone with 60/90 SC. I added more rough at every round and pulled out the ones that I like. I probably ran about 10 rounds all together, but I would guess that no individual rock went through more than 5 rounds. Once I had enough to run a batch of medium, I ran that for 7 days with 120/200 SC. Here is how they looked after the medium:
pic4:
pic9:
I then ran a 500 SC pre-polish for 10 days, then a 1000 AO for 10 days, and then 14 days in cerium oxide polish. I ran these last 3 stages with lots of plastic pellets, and ran it for a few hours with Borax after each round. Here are the final results (keeping in mind that I am not good at photographing rocks!):
pic5:
pic6:
pic7:
pic10:
pic11:
I think they came out great. They are the most glassy/mirrored/shiny batch I've ever produced. One rock in particular is the largest I've made so far, and probably my favorite tumbled rock to date (the photo makes it appear like it has flecks of white, when actually it is pure, deep black):
pic8:
pic12:
I think the wife will be pleased, assuming she and I can agree on which of these are actually "hers". Thanks for looking!
pic1:
I paid $9.99 (+shipping) for an 8+ lb. piece. Over the summer, I broke it up with a hammer into tumbling sized pieces:
pic2:
pic3:
(I tumbled the black jasper with some Noreena jasper since I figured they were the same hardness - more on the Noreena in a future thread.) I like my tumbled rocks to be very smooth and rounded, so I ran many round of rough. Each round was 5 days in a 3 lb. Lortone with 60/90 SC. I added more rough at every round and pulled out the ones that I like. I probably ran about 10 rounds all together, but I would guess that no individual rock went through more than 5 rounds. Once I had enough to run a batch of medium, I ran that for 7 days with 120/200 SC. Here is how they looked after the medium:
pic4:
pic9:
I then ran a 500 SC pre-polish for 10 days, then a 1000 AO for 10 days, and then 14 days in cerium oxide polish. I ran these last 3 stages with lots of plastic pellets, and ran it for a few hours with Borax after each round. Here are the final results (keeping in mind that I am not good at photographing rocks!):
pic5:
pic6:
pic7:
pic10:
pic11:
I think they came out great. They are the most glassy/mirrored/shiny batch I've ever produced. One rock in particular is the largest I've made so far, and probably my favorite tumbled rock to date (the photo makes it appear like it has flecks of white, when actually it is pure, deep black):
pic8:
pic12:
I think the wife will be pleased, assuming she and I can agree on which of these are actually "hers". Thanks for looking!