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Post by tortuga on May 14, 2010 19:52:33 GMT -5
Running a load of rocks on the vibe lap, nearing time for polish stage in a few hours. I have 3 polishes available, tin ox, cerium ox, and micro alumina. I figured either the tin or cerium will do excellent on the jade i'm running through. I'd like the best polish possible, so most advice says to run a cycle in each polish to get the best of both worlds. is there any reason that mixing them together to run once would be detrimental? I'm not sure there would be much of a difference in running a separate cycle with each polish separate would yield any different results than just mixing them together and running one cycle with both in the pan at the same time. Any reason that wouldn't work?
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snuffy
Cave Dweller 
Member since May 2009
Posts: 4,319
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Post by snuffy on May 14, 2010 20:05:22 GMT -5
Thats a good question tortuga. I ran a batch of geode halves and some thunderegg halves the one time I've used my lap. I combined the 3 polishes together on the one batch I've done. I'm interested to see if I did right or wrong.The Brazilian and los choyos geodes came out shiny,the thundereggs not so good.
snuffy
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Post by tortuga on May 14, 2010 20:30:50 GMT -5
the only thing i could think that would make a difference, is if the particle sizes, miniscule as they are, may cause a problem. If the tin oxide is microscopically smaller than the cerium, you'll have the cerium undoing anything the tin does. If microscopic grain size difference matters on that scale, you'd have to know the particle size for each of your polishes and go in order from largest to smallest. However, I don't know if polish works like that, or if the .0001 micron size difference* would really matter in the end.
* this figure of .0001 micron particle size is a wild guess, and not based on anything remotely resembling researched fact. I just know it will be an exponentially smaller size difference than say from 60/90 -> 120/220 and may not result in any difference to the human and maybe even 10x "eye".
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Post by johnjsgems on May 14, 2010 22:10:05 GMT -5
Tin oxide by itself. Save the others for tumbling or something else.
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scottyh
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since November 2007
Posts: 181
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Post by scottyh on May 15, 2010 21:23:50 GMT -5
I agree with John, don't mix the polishes its a waste of time and money. Use the tin oxide and save the other polishes for something else.
Cheers Scott
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rallyrocks
fully equipped rock polisher
Member since November 2005
Posts: 1,507
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Post by rallyrocks on May 15, 2010 21:58:57 GMT -5
you naysayers are welcome to your opinions, but I've run my last couple rotary tumbler batches using a slurry of recycled polishes that is probably about 20% Tin Oxide, 30% cerium oxide and 50% aluminum and I'm getting the best results I've ever seen, not saying anyone else should do it, just that I'm quite pleased with my results.
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Post by johnjsgems on May 16, 2010 8:42:54 GMT -5
I tried cerium on a vibe lap a long time ago with very mixed results. The consensus I've heard is tin oxide is the best for vibe laps. When I started I polished cabs with cerium first and then tin if the cerium didn't work. That tells me tin is better than cerium for most applications. To cut it with other polishes does not make sense to me. I've heard of many examples of polish blends that work very well in tumblers though.
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MikeS
fully equipped rock polisher
Member since January 2009
Posts: 1,081
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Post by MikeS on May 18, 2010 18:07:31 GMT -5
every time I've mixed polishes I've gotten poor results compared to using them individually.
If you have any, Crome Oxide works well for jade, but it's slow and super messy...if not, I'd go with the tin or the aluminium
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