Post by raider30 on Jan 17, 2010 18:30:13 GMT -5
Greetings all,
Well I finally had time to get round 2 going this morning at 10am. Quick recap: Tony sent me some tumble ready rocks along with a grit pack to get me started. I had it running pretty good using plastic pellets, but learned I really should use ceramic pellets. I then messed with success and sprayed too much water into the vibe causing things to slow down significantly. So I pulled it all out after 18 hours and washed things off. Separated the plastic pellets out. Ordered ceramic pellets from rockshed. They arrived a couple of days ago.
So today I decided to go about things a bit slower. I put in the rocks and turned on the tumbler. Then after observing the motion and listening to the noise I slowly added in the ceramic pellets and watched how the motion changed, which it did. It also slightly lowered the noise level. Then I sprayed a few sprays and again watched and listened. The water definitely helped drop the noise level down. After it looked like the rocks/pellets had a very light coat of water I slowly added in 2 tsp of the 220 grit while the machine was running(thanks for that tip!).
Right now its been about 7 hours and it appears to be moving along nicely. However, I did stop it once and noticed the rocks have a fine gray coating to them, but its not very 'gritty'. So I spritzed them down(just a little bit this time, don't want to make that mistake again) and added in 1 more tsp of the 220 grit. I had planned to let this run for a full 24 hours. That is why I added in more grit.
So question: How quickly does grit break down? It really seemed to break down fast, after about 5 hours. Did I not have enough in or is that just what happens? As there were several rocks that still needed some work I decided to add in another tsp of grit. If they were more towards the 'done' end of this stage I think I would have just let them run in the grit that was mostly broken down. I worried that if I put in new grit on my smoother rocks that I would scratch them or somehow mark them up a bit. Is that a valid worry? But since I was planning on running it for another 17 hours or so I figured it wouldn't hurt.
Thanks in advance for any answers/tips you can provide!
- Beau aka Raider30
Well I finally had time to get round 2 going this morning at 10am. Quick recap: Tony sent me some tumble ready rocks along with a grit pack to get me started. I had it running pretty good using plastic pellets, but learned I really should use ceramic pellets. I then messed with success and sprayed too much water into the vibe causing things to slow down significantly. So I pulled it all out after 18 hours and washed things off. Separated the plastic pellets out. Ordered ceramic pellets from rockshed. They arrived a couple of days ago.
So today I decided to go about things a bit slower. I put in the rocks and turned on the tumbler. Then after observing the motion and listening to the noise I slowly added in the ceramic pellets and watched how the motion changed, which it did. It also slightly lowered the noise level. Then I sprayed a few sprays and again watched and listened. The water definitely helped drop the noise level down. After it looked like the rocks/pellets had a very light coat of water I slowly added in 2 tsp of the 220 grit while the machine was running(thanks for that tip!).
Right now its been about 7 hours and it appears to be moving along nicely. However, I did stop it once and noticed the rocks have a fine gray coating to them, but its not very 'gritty'. So I spritzed them down(just a little bit this time, don't want to make that mistake again) and added in 1 more tsp of the 220 grit. I had planned to let this run for a full 24 hours. That is why I added in more grit.
So question: How quickly does grit break down? It really seemed to break down fast, after about 5 hours. Did I not have enough in or is that just what happens? As there were several rocks that still needed some work I decided to add in another tsp of grit. If they were more towards the 'done' end of this stage I think I would have just let them run in the grit that was mostly broken down. I worried that if I put in new grit on my smoother rocks that I would scratch them or somehow mark them up a bit. Is that a valid worry? But since I was planning on running it for another 17 hours or so I figured it wouldn't hurt.
Thanks in advance for any answers/tips you can provide!
- Beau aka Raider30
