I So Suck At Tumbling ... WOOF!!!

Julie - I feel your pain! I'm guessing the citrine and quartzite (Moh's 7) beat the snot out of the spectralite (Moh's 6). But that's just my guess - we all know I'm way way far from an expert!

Were these in a rotary or in the vibe?

Tom

First .... the Spectralite was all by its lonesome in its own batch.

After I pulled the batch, I figured oh well, I needed more stuff to finish the citrine/quartzite. We'll see!!!

And .... I have rocks coming out of my ears!

I have some jaspers left. I have ooodles of agates, lakers, and so many other goodies.

I am running a twin Lortone (33B) rotary.

I did start one new batch. This batch is mostly purple and pale mauve goodies I got from MJ. I think mohs 6-7. I added a few pieces of mexican lace and some smaller pieces of split lakers. DAM .... I sound edumacated!!!!!! ;D

We'll see .... you know .... at some point everything will drop into place and I will be doing a snoopy dance.

I now know that no matter what, no matter how much softer than the Spectralite, it is not to be mixed with anything else. Except for lots of cushion.

I may suck at tumbling, but I learn something or two or three with every batch.

Thanks Guys!!!!

That looks like every last speck of Labradorite that I've tried to tumble. I never had enough to tumble by itself but I've tried to "save" it by tumbling it with Chryscolla and other softer stones. After a couple of months of trying different things the Labradorite still sucks but it's harder to tell how bad it sucks now because all the bits are so tiny. Like my momma used to say "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."

The only thing I can offer is that perhaps the rotary action is a bit tough for these beauties. You could try the vibe in 220 and see if the surface cracks clean up...

Thickening agents for the slurry like sugar, matches (without the heads), corn syrup, to name a few, might help cushion. Alot of old timers had their tricks.

Run with much softer stuff. I see some of my moonstone there which can be of a hardness in the range of 6-7.

These guys are right. Tumbling the softer stuff (under 7) can be so tricky. Hit or miss, if you ask me. Every once in a while, you have to tumble the harder stuff to keep your confidence up, LOL.

You are gonna learn so much from this Julie. Pretty soon you will be an expert on how to tumble this stuff and we'll all be asking you for advice.

Don't worry, whatever you have left, no matter what happens, you can always cut and cab the material by hand later.

Sorry, that's all I can offer. Jo

Hey Julie, I looked up Spectrolite and it said that it is a Mohs 6-6.5, like my moonstone. Citrine and Quartzite is a Mohs 7. I know when I mixed alot of my citrine in with my moonstone, I had similar issues (until I decided to always do them separately). Perhaps the Citrine and Quartz is beating up the Spectrolite, like Tom said. Maybe try it with moonstone and/or something else that is a a Mohs 6 or softer. Also, make sure you have plenty of cushion.

Hold on... I just went back up and looked at the pics again. The patterns that are showing up on your Spectrolite look very much like what my Peristerite (and some of my moonstone) does when I tumble it. It looks like your material is a conglomerate of chunks, with a smattering of bunches of tiny crystals (quartz or garnet in mine). This is gonna cause crevices, just because of the way the rock is. I tumble mine that are like that, and tumble, and tumble... and eventually do get a few that will smooth out... But, the majority just gets bigger and bigger crevices.

Your best bet may be to really look closely at each Spectrolite stone, sort them out according to which ones look most "solid", and which ones have those patches of quartz/garnet/whatever or look like a loose conglomerate of chunks, and then you have some options (and if anyone can think of others, please add to the list) ...

1) Set the worst aside for cabbing by hand some day.
2) Cut and shave them with the WF (into smaller chunks if necessary) until you have solid edges and sides.
3) You could try filling and stabilizing using some Opticon, Red Label Hot Stuff, or (if you don't want to buy anything more) and want to see if Super Glue will help, you could try it. Fill in the crevaces (might want to clean the grit out first) and go over all spots where the quartz/garnet/whatever crystals are and try to turn it into a solid surface.

Note: Not sure how well the stabilizing will work for a tumbler, but perhaps someone else might have experience or a suggestion about this.

This is all I can think of at the moment. I wanna see you get these babies polished... one way or the other!

how full are you filling your rotory? It's not so much softness of the material as it is how brittle it is. Take jade for example, it's only 6.5 hardness, but it is very tough, almost impossible to crack or fracture. Quartz is harder on the scale, but it fractures much more easily.

The key to a brittle material is to fill the rotory to the proper level...I run my rotory at least 80-85% full, sometimes more. That way, as the drum rotates, the rocks are not crashing, tumbling and falling on one another, they are instead "sliding" across one another. In addition to this being easier on the brittle material, they actually shape faster becasue of much more constant rock to rock contact.

Your post reminded me that I had a Labradorite chunk in the garage so I cut it up with the WF and started a tumble in a Lortone 33B barrel. No other rocks with a fist full of tile spacers. I filled the barrel to about 80% which is about 10% more than normal. I've surmised from the tips on this topic that I need to limit the crashing around in the barrel. This material is lousy with fractures and weak planes but here it goes. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.