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Post by paulshiroma on Aug 15, 2011 12:08:16 GMT -5
Well, after seven or eight weeks at 45-70 stage, three weeks at 120-200, two weeks of AO and a day with some detergent, I have pretty much resigned myself to the fact that the agates (and some of the jasper) at these two locations have too many vugs and fracture lines for good tumbling efforts. I think someone mentioned to me that the original volcanic nature of the area tends to create a lot of vugs in the materials that can be found there making tumbling somewhat of a challenge. Here's the final results. Field Road agates: Lavic Jasper: About the only piece that came out okay: The more typical (read: representative) piece. The longer the tumble, the more fractures and vugs showed up. This piece uncovered the fracture lines right at the last stage. That was irritating: I'll probably end up cutting / slabbing / grinding the rest as practice materials. Don't know if any of you all have ideas on getting around this type of problem but suggestions would be appreciated. Guess I could leave them tumbling until they look like jellybeans ! In the mean time, some materials purchased from The Rock Shed will be in the barrels. Thanks Paul
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Sabre52
Cave Dweller
Me and my gal, Rosie
Member since August 2005
Posts: 20,487
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Post by Sabre52 on Aug 15, 2011 17:11:07 GMT -5
Paul: You definitely have to pick and choose the Lavic material you want to tumble. It takes a few tries before you know which stuff to pick up to get the most highly agatized pieces. Vugs are always an issue as are hematite inclusions but in many cases they can even add character to a piece. Your stones do not appear to be very rounded for seven to eight weeks in rough grind. ( My own rotary does that much shaping in one week before recharge. After four to six they are usually quite rounded unless I take them out sooner.) Did you clean up the batch and recharge every week. If you fail to recharge you won't get a lot of grinding action. Or, are you using a vibe for rough grind? Vibes don't change shape or round off your stones very well. It's the coarse grind that's the single most important step to doing good tumbles. If the stones are not properly rounded and smoothed, the rest of the steps aren't worth doing. I just chuck out or break heavily fractured stones along fracture lines. No sense wasting time with a stone with a big fracture. These are also grit catchers which can contaminate and spoil a whole load if not properly cleaned before moving forward.....Mel
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Post by paulshiroma on Aug 16, 2011 8:49:34 GMT -5
Hey, Mel: Thanks for doing some brainstorming with me on this.
I use rotary's and do recharge the batch each week. After reading your post, I'm beginning to wonder if my problem might be something really (and I mean REALLY) basic, such as the total load. Part of the reason I'm thinking I might have been over-loading the barrel (3/4 full) is that I've been following a lot of the advice from other threads regarding the "more technical" (if that's the right wording) aspects of tumbling around clean/recharge, adding a bit of soap, time in stages, etc. but, in retrospect, haven't been paying a whole lot of attention to the total load in the barrel.
So, last night I started a coarse stage barrel with only half a load. We'll see if it was that basic. If that was the problem, I'm going to be kicking myself for not paying better attention! HA!
Thanks again. Paul
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