Tumbler will not polish at last stage

I can only guess contamination since fire agagte and quartz should polish beautifully.

Are you burnishing between each grit stage and especially bewteen the pre-polish and polish stage? After a thorough wash and scub of everything, run the rocks overnight in water and borax. Even when you think the rocks are clean, the burnish water will be quite dirty the next day.

If you are using a rotary, you can't move plastic pellets between the stages. There are soft and embed with grit. If you are using a vibe, you can move ceramic pellets between the stages, but I don't take the chance. Have separate media for each grit stage.

Hope this helps.

Darryl.

Burnish bewteen your pre-polish and polish stages. I know you think your rocks and barrels are clean, but you will see how much additional residue is in the water after you try the burnish.

I don't know much about cerium oxide other than it costs about twice as much as aluminium oxide. Aluminium oxide is probably your most affordable general use polish. You may want to try a that. There are a few RTH verterans that can advise you more on the cerium oxide.

Burnish, burnish, burnish! Borax is cheap and it's time well spent.

Darryl.

Johnjsgems asked the same question I was going to ask--are you leaving them in polish, etc. long enough? Find yourself a piece of leather, get it just a bit damp, put a bit of polish on the leather, then *rub*your rock over it for awhile. It should polish--if not, your rock is not smooth enough yet to polish. It's difficult to tell you how far to back up in stages; can you tell us how long they were in each previous stage?

It is not essential to have a different barrel for each stage. I had only one barrel for many years and got great batches. You have to be super careful about cleaning, though, buy yourself a new toothbrush and use the old one to thoroughly scrub. That being said, I finally did buy a barrel just for polishing, but I only occasionally messed a group up before I had a separate barrel.

Do you have any pits or cracks in any of your rocks? They can hold little bits of leftover grit and mess up a batch. I don't think this is the problem, though, if you are getting no polish at all.

Do you have the right amount of rocks/polish/water? The barrel should be 1/2 to 3/4ths full, water should touch the bottom of the top layer of rocks, and for aluminum oxide, I would usually use 3 TB. Cerium oxide you can use about half that.

Please tell us more about the progression before the polish and perhaps we can tell you more.

A final thought--I have awful water here. It leaves a film on rocks oftentimes and they don't look real good unless I burnish a day or two *after* the polish. They get a bit of shine, though, just not a whole lot, before the burnish.

Susan

P.S. I agree with the burnishing, but I only do it between pre-polish and polish. Every step may be better but I am lazy.

You'll find a lot of discrepancies with various formulas and times - and the truth is, what you read on here is from experience, personal preference or what works for them. More polish/grit won't hurt, but it won't necessarily help you either. The Lortone Professional book has a lot of great info - but it also says you need a week for the rough stage, and in reality, you'll be lucky if you can take them out after three! So, part of this is a learning process to determine what works for you and also how to work with different materials. I'm grateful for these forums because they've provided me information that have significantly improved the quality I can achieve.

The cracks/pits thing is a biggie - a rock shouldn't be brought out of rough stage until it's truly ready. That means that some rocks may never make it out of rough! It's sad, sure, to see an awesome rock whittled away to nothing...but it's better than spending another several weeks with poor results. If a rock chips in a future stage, back it goes into rough...or maybe even tossed!

The burnish step is also important, like others have said. The water level in each step is also critical. I also added a fifth step, 1000 aluminum oxide, just prior to polish, and saw an improvement. I keep my rocks in the last two stages for TWO weeks...a little tidbit I picked up on here! I struggled with duller, pitted looking rocks until I started doing those things. Once I could afford to do so, I dedicated barrels to each stage...but I did so to try & reduce the cleaning effort involved and also to increase my capacity. Like others have said, dedicating barrels isn't necessary, but extremely good cleaning between the steps is. Even with dedicated barrels, I still burnish between steps for 2-4 hours once the rocks leave 120/220. I also found that excessive burnish times (like more than a day) can actually lead to more problems from chipping.

Plastic BB's should be fine - pellets/BB's fill the role of transporting grit/polish and also help with cushioning the rocks from detrimental impacts. I tend to liberally use them because they're cheap and help with chipping problems, which destroys a polish job. It's very important not to use the same pellets/BB's from one stage to the next. I clean them as much as possible and keep them separate in little plastic baggies for re-use in their initially purposed stage.

In the end, I've seen my own quality improve...and that of others on here...by following the advice that people here so graciously provide. Patience cannot be understated with this hobby. I wish you the best of luck and keep reading here! Much knowledge can be had by spending a few hours reading through the forums.

I agree with all that has been said, and it all differs. Actually, that is the problem with the Lortone book. Each type of rock is different, even rocks that are the "same" but from different locations can differ the shape of the rough differs, I think what's in the water causes a difference (although others disagree with me--that's okay, we all find what works for us). Lortone simply can't write a book that covers every rock in every situation, nor can we. Most important, Lortone can't see your rocks as you progress and give you advice as to each one. The best they can do is write a "general" guide, and that is what they have done.

The key is to understand what you are looking for, and observe your rocks, rather than apply a specific formula. I, for example, never use plastic pellets (I use ceramics and add soap to thicken on softer rocks and sometimes in the polishing stage). I rarely use 120/220 grit, I skip it and go straight to 500. I read what others are doing because eventually what I do won't work on a particular rock, so I add the experience of others to my arsenal.

Your agates are tough little buggers--Revco is correct that three weeks is if you are lucky. I have left harder rocks two months or more in the first stage many times.

Another reality that Lortone doesn't tell you is that all of your rocks will not be ready to come out of first stage or any stage all at one time. After each stage, take your rocks out, let them dry off and carefully inspect them. I use an opti-visor here. If it is not the shape you want, if there is a crack that you can feel with your fingernail, if there is a pit, put it back in the first stage. At first, you will only have maybe one fourth that are ready for the next stage. This is partly personal preference on how rounded you want them, and partly necessary so a sharp edge, etc. can't scratch or hold grit that messes up the next stage.

Eventually, you will have enough rocks out of stage one that you feel good going to stage 2. As you have different quantities in each stage, use your plastic pellets to get your tumbler up to at least 1/2 full. After Stage 1, there will be more uniformity in the rocks completing each stage. If one chips, or you notice a flaw that you overlooked before, kick it back. Frustrating, yes, but the alternative is risking messing up the whole batch.

Please don't let this discourage you--it's actually rather the fun of it. There is enough skill and learning in the process that it remains interesting. I don't know how many of us would remain interested (I wouldn't) if all you did was throw them in and take out a perfect batch each time.

You only have one tumbler at this time. As you get progressively addicted, you will likely have one running nonstop in stage 1, then each week you will stop, clean and simply take out the ones ready for Step 2, and replace the ones you removed from the barrel with more rough rock. This lessens the frustration.

Susan

P.S. The best book around (IMHO) is Modern Rock Tumbling by I think Steve Hart. You may want to invest in a copy; it's about $20.

I have never tried this but have read that it is not safe with rocks with high water content. Agates don't have high water content, though.

Susan

This si just not working for me, i have burnished my rocks out of stage 3 and they look great, but i left them in polish for 4 days and i just checked them and they are not taking on a shine whatsoever, all of them are perfectly smooth with no apparent surface blemishes.
I am about ready to scream, i really think the cerium oxide i bought is bunk.

my stones look like they have a slight white haze and when they are wet they are awesome but when they dry they look white hazy again

thx very much ill try it out