milto
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since January 2010
Posts: 162
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Post by milto on Dec 27, 2012 10:27:16 GMT -5
Has anyone used this from Diamond-Pacific.If you have what was your results?
Was it worth the extra expense? Thanks Milto
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jspencer
freely admits to licking rocks
Member since March 2011
Posts: 929
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Post by jspencer on Dec 27, 2012 22:35:56 GMT -5
My friend gave me some to try out on a load. I used it on some ocean jasper that I had just polished but decided to try and improve on the shine and sample the product she talked about. It totally took out all of the shine. I had a few harder stones mixed in that it didn`t harm but also didn`t help. I had used Raybrite A polish on them before the vibra-dri and they looked fine. Maybe I did something wrong. I did a fairly small load compared to my usual stuffed bowls.
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Tousled Owl
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since August 2011
Posts: 130
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Post by Tousled Owl on Dec 28, 2012 10:13:29 GMT -5
I have a little bit of experience with this product (disclaimer as usual: I have no financial or other interest in this product or its parent company). I am using it to polish pieces of slabs and cab pre-forms that I don't want to do individually (so many cabs, so little time....). I started out with three grades of product (3000, 8000, 25,000 as I recall) and used rocks I had rotary-tumbled in coarse (60-90) and medium (220) in the usual fashion as the input.
That was too big a leap (220->3000), so I've added 600 and 1700 in Vibra-Dry and 400 for an additional stage of the rotary. This is in pretty close alignment to their instruction sheet, which more or less proves you can't beat city hall.
This batch is still in progress, so I can't give you a final result yet, but it looks good so far. In my earlier experiments, I got pretty good results on most of the pieces, given that they were a random selection of hardnesses and shapes and probably not an optimum sized load. This is all happening in a Harbor Freight vibe (see my comments on this in another recent thread) and I cycle the batch for a few days per grade (after 2-3 weeks per stage in the rotary).
The outcome I get is somewhere between a matte and a gloss shine and anything that looks like it might be a good candidate for wrapping or otherwise selling can be further polished using AO or CO individually. I will be adding the next finest grade of Vibra-Dry to the run (50,000, I think) this pass to see if further shine will result.
I do get some odd shape changes on a few pieces in a batch where it looks like a couple of pieces stick together and grind on each other or something. It may be that I don't have either enough product or load in these bowls. I'm using a two-pound canister of Vibra-dry and a pound or more of rocks per the four or five pound Harbor Freight bowls. This results in the bowls being a little more than half full at the outset. Over time, I will probably get some more of each grade of Vibra-Dry I'm using and get the bowls up to about two-thirds full. May help, may not. Someone with a 'real' vibe tumbler may be able to add a comment here; Harbor Freight's instructions are, shall we say, 'minimalistic'.
Subjectively, the results seem to have a more 'organic' appearance and feel a little bit more 'alive' to the touch. This may well be my imagination trying to help rationalize the cost of the material.
I haven't tried using their extender fluid to re-invigorate 'used' Vibra-Dry yet, as I have only done a few batches per grade so far. Hopefully that will keep it in good shape, because I'd hate to think about having to replace this stuff very often. I haven't seen any comments about this aspect of the product from other users.
At one point on either this or the Taogems forum I ran across someone's 'home brew' recipe for a Vibra-Dry-type dry abrasive mix made up of more or less common ingredients. I don't have the link handy at the moment. If that is something you want to look into and can't find the link, let me know and I'll rummage around for it.
Oh - I use a wok wire basket ladle and a plastic slotted kitchen spoon to retrieve rocks from the abrasive. I have a different bowl for each grade and I try to wash the rocks thoroughly and let them dry completely between grades.
When I get a complete run done from coarse rotary all the way to very fine Vibra-dry, I intend to post some pics and summarize the steps of the process. That's probably still some weeks away, but stay tuned.
Happy holidays, Jack
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Post by johnjsgems on Dec 28, 2012 20:57:25 GMT -5
I've had very good results with 25000 for final polish. It will polish soft stones that .3 micron aluminum won't. "High cost" is misleading since you reuse it. I know a lady that sands cabs to 400 and then goes Vibra Dry from 600 through 50000. All her cabs are fantastic.
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