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Post by sandsman1 on Mar 29, 2004 14:57:41 GMT -5
hahahaha ron i felt the same way i said hell wit these and put in a big baggie dont care if i ever start them again hahahaha maybe someday ill start useing them for fill hahaha seeya john
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Post by puppie96 on Mar 30, 2004 2:50:54 GMT -5
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- <i>Cleaned and checked my rubies(?) and my emeralds today. 9 pounds of ruby and 1 pound of emerald is now 3.8 pounds. It's been 45 days now in 60/90 for the rubies and 10 days for the emeralds. About 70% of the emerald are small enough to make a pretty green emerald sand. Resisted an overwhelming urge to pitch the whole batch in the trash and recharged and started more roughing. Only thing this corundum is going to be good for is breaking up and using it for sand paper!</i>
Wow, Michigan, I'm sorry you are having such a bad experience. Are you tumbling the emerald and ruby together? I separated mine a while back and tumbled the emeralds alone. How big were yours starting out? I haven't kept track, but I agree, you lose a lot of bulk in this process. In my case, I started out with a very small amount -- months before I bought the first tumbler, I'd bought a lb. of ruby on ebay and picked up a few pieces at shows. Later started out with a similar amount of emerald. In successive purchases I got stuff that was advertised differently, checking out different dealers/descriptions, 3lbs at a time, at most. These purchases were very much driven by the loss of bulk occurring -- it's amazing how much stuff it was at the beginning to come down to just a couple of loads. That's terrible about your emeralds. Mine did break down a good bit, but the pieces that came out tended to be really pretty stuff although sometimes small, but certainly not all sand. There's some really tiny gemstones in there, but mostly pea gravel or so, although the big pieces generally stayed together once the matrix was off and finished really well. I have actually been doing an experiment of taking stones that were already beautifully polished and pretty but with some matrix still on or noticeable imperfections -- so I'm trying to see how much better I can get it without losing stone. I'd say that I've been handling it gently throughout. I also only kept ruby and emerald running together at the beginning and watched it closely. I think the ruby thing just takes enormous patience and perseverance! I showed some of the vendors my emeralds at a local show this weekend and they were impressed! And for sure I've got some decent stone in the ruby/sapphire lot, but you just can't see what it will look like until it gets polished. One guy giving lap demos said that it was really hard to polish ruby, that he hand polished, and found that if you polished it in one direction it would polish, but if you changed directions it would un-polish itself. Interesting, but this supports my own experience, I had what looked like a beginning polish trash itself for no apparent reason and I've been switching back and forth between barrel and vibe, so I've made it confusing. Anyhow, as the man said, his one-direction experience would clearly contraindicate a tumbler!
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tjmax
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since March 2004
Posts: 79
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Post by tjmax on Mar 30, 2004 7:40:54 GMT -5
A lot of my emerald turned into fancy gravel for my aquarium LOL. I have a good mind to Bag is up and sell it as genuine gemstone aquarium gravel at 49.95 a pound and market it for high society tropical fish enthusiasts. LOL.
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MichiganRocks
starting to spend too much on rocks
"I wasn't born to follow."
Member since April 2007
Posts: 154
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Post by MichiganRocks on Mar 30, 2004 8:40:11 GMT -5
My pseudorubies had been roughing for 35 days before I added my emerald. My quantity of rock keeps dropping and I have to add something to keep the level up. When they are done with the cycle that they are in now, they will have 50 and 15 days respectively. At that time I am pulling them for sure as I need that barrel for some real rocks. I'll separate my pseudorubies and my emerald dust then and put them someplace where hopefully I'll forget where they are. Probably throw them in at some point as filler with some other load. Ron
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Post by puppie96 on Mar 31, 2004 4:12:06 GMT -5
Michigan -- That is such a bummer! I wonder whether this was due to material or technique. In throwing all my emerald together, I lost track of what it looked like starting out. Whether sand-sized or whatever, I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do with mine, either! I do not think you have pseudo ruby.
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tjmax
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since March 2004
Posts: 79
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Post by tjmax on Apr 1, 2004 19:45:58 GMT -5
I won't mix rubies and emeralds. rubies are a 9 hardness, emeralds are a 7.5-8 and the matrix can be all different kinds of hardness giving your emeralds a hard ride in the tumbler.
One thing i noticed abount the emeralds is that many times what looks like one crystal can actually be several or even many that formed together, they have a tendency to break away from one another making the pebble like emerald stones you are seeing.
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MichiganRocks
starting to spend too much on rocks
"I wasn't born to follow."
Member since April 2007
Posts: 154
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Post by MichiganRocks on Apr 4, 2004 6:52:39 GMT -5
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tjmax
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since March 2004
Posts: 79
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Post by tjmax on Apr 4, 2004 9:00:21 GMT -5
I took my rubies ouit again today for a recharge, they are starting to shape up rather nice, well some are and some arn't but they are starting to look more like star saphires or star rubies just by the way the lights refracting off them already. I didn't take any images this time around tho. I think another 7 days they may be ready for the next stage then i will take a image of them.
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Post by creativeminded on Apr 4, 2004 10:12:10 GMT -5
Just a suggestion, if the hardness of your next load is the same, mix some of the rubies in with your next load. That is what I did with some of the stones of my second batch, as the rock level went down I added some of the already tumbled stones in the level I thought they needed more work in.
Tami
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tjmax
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since March 2004
Posts: 79
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Post by tjmax on Apr 5, 2004 13:53:52 GMT -5
My tumbler sounded very odd today so i decided to open it and the rubies where floating around in what looked like a slurry bubblebath. it was bubbled up all the way top to bottom so i decided that something was not right there and cleaned the who thing out. During that i decided to take some images so i can show you what i mean about my rubies and maby they are not rubies at all after all what do i know 8) This is how the batch is starting to shape up but what i wanted to show is how the lights coming off the stone on the right side of this first image and the stone in the second image. this last image is the best way i can show what i am talking about. All i am doing is slighly moving the camera to pick up the reflected light off the stone.
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Post by cookie3rocks on Apr 5, 2004 19:09:05 GMT -5
I was told that this kind of irridesence meant that the stone has a natural "star". Once thoroughly polished, it should have a star that can be seen at any angle. This also means it is probably a star saphire, not a ruby. (Dang, I actualy knew something )
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tjmax
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since March 2004
Posts: 79
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Post by tjmax on Apr 5, 2004 21:34:20 GMT -5
well ruby and saphire are actually the same thing. Ruby is the red variety of corundum. All other colors are known as sapphire.
Either way we'll see what they are when they are done 8) still a lot of grinding to do on them.
What i found odd about it is that it's like layors like mica would be. one layor on top of another to form the stone.
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Post by cookie3rocks on Apr 5, 2004 23:03:56 GMT -5
I think thats the difference in the quality of the stone. The more layering the ,the lower the quality. But a star will be a beautiful thing to produce, you think? cookie
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Post by cookie3rocks on Apr 5, 2004 23:08:47 GMT -5
I mention this because I have a simalar stone that I am grinding. I'm very excited about it. It must be very dense so ti msy take a whie to grind. A star! how cool! Let me know how yours turns out. K?
cookie
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Post by cookie3rocks on Apr 5, 2004 23:13:45 GMT -5
clarification: "it must take a while to grind" I'm not drunk Really
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