Post by michaelr on Apr 22, 2015 0:22:55 GMT -5
Hi Folks
Thought I'd share some of my newbie experiences so far, by way of further introducing myself... hope this post's not too long for the protocol's here..
I got a 33B for xmas & started tumbling right away.. lol. I bought it from a local old-timer who is a lortone dealer near me. He has a full lapidary, she makes jewelry, very nice ppl. He sold me some agate of some kind.. i didn't know enough to ask what kind, at the time. It was his first batch of tumbling rough for sale that he'd crushed up and sorted with his new rock crusher set up. it was a perfect mix, sized for a 3# barrel, so i bought 12 lbs... 4 barrels' worth, i figured. Started them right up, xmas day... lol. After 6 wks of grinding (recharged every week), and reading commercial sites' instructions online, i knew enough to look for major cracks & pitting.
But virtually every rock, after 6 wks, was full of fissures & cracks. Frustrated, i took them back to show him & get some advice and first thing he said was 'this isn't right'. Upon further questioning, he decided it was nothing i was doing, that it was his rock crusher! It is an old (like 60+ yrs) gold-mining rock crusher he had bought at an estate sale & refurbished. Two thick steel plates in a 'V' angle, driven by an electric motor. He set up screens underneath to sort sizes. He said the crusher had created the cracks... that it was way too strong, sending cracks thruout the rocks... which made sense to me. He looked at the rocks and said i would 'never run those cracks out'... so he gave me the last of his Botswana agate rough... about 6-7 lbs in 2-2.5" pieces. He said just bust them up with a hammer... that that's how he'd always done it before getting his 'new' antique crusher. And so I did, and started tumbling them. After 3 or so 7/9-day cycles, I noticed that most of THEM had lots of cracks too!
I realized I was going to need more input on the whole deal, so i started searching online for better info. I leaned that, unfortunately, i'd ruined most all of my Botswanas with the claw hammer i was using. Of the remaining ones, there was so much outer matrix-like material that i could see by the time i got rid of it by tumbling, i'd have nothing left! Frustrated again... and these were really pretty too!
At this point, i wanted to try river rocks, or anything i did not have to break up! I found a site that was selling Lake Superior & Montana Moss agates here in Wash. state. Talked to him by phone & he suggested i save some time on rough grind and buy his pre-tumbled rocks, so I did... bought 6 lbs of each. Now his method, as he described to me, was to run in 8grit (!) or 24grit i think he said... whichever he had on hand... for 3 months straight.. no opening, no recharge... he has a homemade array of large tumblers. I thought "ok, these will finally be smooth AND rounded, and a single run maybe in 60/90 should get them ready for stage 2, right? So I got them, ran them for 3 wks or so, w/recharges...
By this time, i'd been reading here for a couple of wks, and knew better what to look for, so i bought a 7x optivisor & started inspecting closer. I was surprised that there were so many little shards on the lakers (and at how much i had NOT seen before!), and there were lots of inward cracks, tho not deep. Also, there were often multiple cracks on the high points. I thought maybe i'd done that in my tumbling so at this point i inspected the remaining 9 lbs and they were FULL of cracks.. small ones, but inward facing ones. I have no idea how one could say these were viable tumbling stones, so again i was frustrated... argh* Of these, I'm still running about 2 out of 12 lbs which aren't fractured...
OK... Last Chance!!:::::the annual local rock and gem club show was 3 or so weeks ago (city of only 90K or so here). I went, joined the club & signed up for a lapidary class in Sept.. they have a full lapidary setup... all tools avail... can't wait! In the meantime, I bought some more rough there from 2 different semi-local dealers at the show. I'll try to post pics of this rough if i can figure out how to do it.. lol.
By this time, I had read enough to know that I would do better to clean up any rough before tumbling, so i bought a harbor freight 7" wet tile saw. Also bought sm & med cold chisel for splitting and proceeded to prep the rough from the gem show. Here are the results: (pics when i can)...
5 lbs of Morrisonite... i was really excited about this stuff... looks so beautiful 'on paper'.. lol. Turned out totally useless... all matrix & junk... just nothing worth saving from four 4-5" chunks.
3 chunks of Carnelian... a 3, 4 & 5" chunk... yellowish, no red... no country of origin given. from these chunks, i got about ten 1" little squares (which corners i rounded a little)... no cracks at all.. but most of this stuff was not useable... as i carefully kerfed and split it, it shattered into small pieces and what was left was full of fissures.
5 lbs of Laguna Lace agate, tumbling-sized rough. It was in a pink colored stapled baggie, and he wouldn't let me open & inspect, but I bought it anyway. When I got home i saw it was obviously the shards left from his cutting, not crushed rock, plus it was full of holes, which i knew to look for from these boards. On this, i will run about 1/3 of it that appears to have no cracks, but it's so rough and small and lots of matrix... I'll just have to run if first for a week or so to see what's salvageable.
5 lbs of Polychrome Jasper.. Australian, he said. This stuff, I could see in the bag clearly, and it was smaller chunks (2-3") that looked clear, so I knew I could cut/trim w/my tile saw. Of this group, I'm still not done cutting it all, and am still getting viable pieces to tumble. So far I've gotten about 2/3 barrel of little flats (w/try to post pic)... this is about half of what i got of this material. Just started it in rough 3 days ago, so we'll see how that goes... this was by far the only really viable rough i got from the show other than a little carnelian.
So I've been thru numerous rookie mistakes along the way too, mostly around water.. too much. But I've got that down now: only use a measured 1/2 c. in 3/4 barrel. Also learned here the crucial importance of smalls.. which i now make sure is 20-25% of a 3/4 full barrel. Was going to buy ceramic pellets, but from here on, i think i'll stick to smalls for rough at least... long as i have them... and right now i have plenty from all previous rough that i can crush up smaller still, with a CLAW hammer, willy-nilly, to make up rough smalls. ha! I also discarded the use of plastic pellets.. I tried them.. but then discovered that most folks here don't think much of their effectiveness, esp in rough grind, compared to rock smalls.
Also, this first trimmed batch provided me w/about a cup of rock 'paste' from my saw's drip tray. I've been keeping it in its' original wet state, in a baggie. I added about 3 tbs to my barrels this time, along w/the usual 4 tbs of 60/90 & 1/2 c. water... I tested it first and it breaks right down to slurry with water, so we'll see how that helps...
At this point, still on grit 1, I've got one barrel 2/3 full of the lakers/moss'rs that don't have cracks, to which i added the 10-12 small Botswanas i have left that are solid. In the 2nd barrel, i'm running the fresh cut polychrome and the bit of carnelian i got. By the way... thru all this, I've only gotten 6-7 lakers/moss's ready for grit 2, along w/6-8 sm botswanas.
So! The good news is, I know how to charge a barrel ... AND... I have a tile saw & know what to do w/it... LOL. But the real challenge so far has been finding or creating viable tumbling rough... and here i thought that was the easy part... you just 'buy it', right? hah! No stage 2 yet, but i'm not discouraged! I'm going to buy some rough from rockshed.com and see how that goes, as many of you have positive things to say about them...
And there ya go! That's ma'h story ya'll, and ah'm stickin' to it!
Thanks for listening
Thought I'd share some of my newbie experiences so far, by way of further introducing myself... hope this post's not too long for the protocol's here..
I got a 33B for xmas & started tumbling right away.. lol. I bought it from a local old-timer who is a lortone dealer near me. He has a full lapidary, she makes jewelry, very nice ppl. He sold me some agate of some kind.. i didn't know enough to ask what kind, at the time. It was his first batch of tumbling rough for sale that he'd crushed up and sorted with his new rock crusher set up. it was a perfect mix, sized for a 3# barrel, so i bought 12 lbs... 4 barrels' worth, i figured. Started them right up, xmas day... lol. After 6 wks of grinding (recharged every week), and reading commercial sites' instructions online, i knew enough to look for major cracks & pitting.
But virtually every rock, after 6 wks, was full of fissures & cracks. Frustrated, i took them back to show him & get some advice and first thing he said was 'this isn't right'. Upon further questioning, he decided it was nothing i was doing, that it was his rock crusher! It is an old (like 60+ yrs) gold-mining rock crusher he had bought at an estate sale & refurbished. Two thick steel plates in a 'V' angle, driven by an electric motor. He set up screens underneath to sort sizes. He said the crusher had created the cracks... that it was way too strong, sending cracks thruout the rocks... which made sense to me. He looked at the rocks and said i would 'never run those cracks out'... so he gave me the last of his Botswana agate rough... about 6-7 lbs in 2-2.5" pieces. He said just bust them up with a hammer... that that's how he'd always done it before getting his 'new' antique crusher. And so I did, and started tumbling them. After 3 or so 7/9-day cycles, I noticed that most of THEM had lots of cracks too!
I realized I was going to need more input on the whole deal, so i started searching online for better info. I leaned that, unfortunately, i'd ruined most all of my Botswanas with the claw hammer i was using. Of the remaining ones, there was so much outer matrix-like material that i could see by the time i got rid of it by tumbling, i'd have nothing left! Frustrated again... and these were really pretty too!
At this point, i wanted to try river rocks, or anything i did not have to break up! I found a site that was selling Lake Superior & Montana Moss agates here in Wash. state. Talked to him by phone & he suggested i save some time on rough grind and buy his pre-tumbled rocks, so I did... bought 6 lbs of each. Now his method, as he described to me, was to run in 8grit (!) or 24grit i think he said... whichever he had on hand... for 3 months straight.. no opening, no recharge... he has a homemade array of large tumblers. I thought "ok, these will finally be smooth AND rounded, and a single run maybe in 60/90 should get them ready for stage 2, right? So I got them, ran them for 3 wks or so, w/recharges...
By this time, i'd been reading here for a couple of wks, and knew better what to look for, so i bought a 7x optivisor & started inspecting closer. I was surprised that there were so many little shards on the lakers (and at how much i had NOT seen before!), and there were lots of inward cracks, tho not deep. Also, there were often multiple cracks on the high points. I thought maybe i'd done that in my tumbling so at this point i inspected the remaining 9 lbs and they were FULL of cracks.. small ones, but inward facing ones. I have no idea how one could say these were viable tumbling stones, so again i was frustrated... argh* Of these, I'm still running about 2 out of 12 lbs which aren't fractured...
OK... Last Chance!!:::::the annual local rock and gem club show was 3 or so weeks ago (city of only 90K or so here). I went, joined the club & signed up for a lapidary class in Sept.. they have a full lapidary setup... all tools avail... can't wait! In the meantime, I bought some more rough there from 2 different semi-local dealers at the show. I'll try to post pics of this rough if i can figure out how to do it.. lol.
By this time, I had read enough to know that I would do better to clean up any rough before tumbling, so i bought a harbor freight 7" wet tile saw. Also bought sm & med cold chisel for splitting and proceeded to prep the rough from the gem show. Here are the results: (pics when i can)...
5 lbs of Morrisonite... i was really excited about this stuff... looks so beautiful 'on paper'.. lol. Turned out totally useless... all matrix & junk... just nothing worth saving from four 4-5" chunks.
3 chunks of Carnelian... a 3, 4 & 5" chunk... yellowish, no red... no country of origin given. from these chunks, i got about ten 1" little squares (which corners i rounded a little)... no cracks at all.. but most of this stuff was not useable... as i carefully kerfed and split it, it shattered into small pieces and what was left was full of fissures.
5 lbs of Laguna Lace agate, tumbling-sized rough. It was in a pink colored stapled baggie, and he wouldn't let me open & inspect, but I bought it anyway. When I got home i saw it was obviously the shards left from his cutting, not crushed rock, plus it was full of holes, which i knew to look for from these boards. On this, i will run about 1/3 of it that appears to have no cracks, but it's so rough and small and lots of matrix... I'll just have to run if first for a week or so to see what's salvageable.
5 lbs of Polychrome Jasper.. Australian, he said. This stuff, I could see in the bag clearly, and it was smaller chunks (2-3") that looked clear, so I knew I could cut/trim w/my tile saw. Of this group, I'm still not done cutting it all, and am still getting viable pieces to tumble. So far I've gotten about 2/3 barrel of little flats (w/try to post pic)... this is about half of what i got of this material. Just started it in rough 3 days ago, so we'll see how that goes... this was by far the only really viable rough i got from the show other than a little carnelian.
So I've been thru numerous rookie mistakes along the way too, mostly around water.. too much. But I've got that down now: only use a measured 1/2 c. in 3/4 barrel. Also learned here the crucial importance of smalls.. which i now make sure is 20-25% of a 3/4 full barrel. Was going to buy ceramic pellets, but from here on, i think i'll stick to smalls for rough at least... long as i have them... and right now i have plenty from all previous rough that i can crush up smaller still, with a CLAW hammer, willy-nilly, to make up rough smalls. ha! I also discarded the use of plastic pellets.. I tried them.. but then discovered that most folks here don't think much of their effectiveness, esp in rough grind, compared to rock smalls.
Also, this first trimmed batch provided me w/about a cup of rock 'paste' from my saw's drip tray. I've been keeping it in its' original wet state, in a baggie. I added about 3 tbs to my barrels this time, along w/the usual 4 tbs of 60/90 & 1/2 c. water... I tested it first and it breaks right down to slurry with water, so we'll see how that helps...
At this point, still on grit 1, I've got one barrel 2/3 full of the lakers/moss'rs that don't have cracks, to which i added the 10-12 small Botswanas i have left that are solid. In the 2nd barrel, i'm running the fresh cut polychrome and the bit of carnelian i got. By the way... thru all this, I've only gotten 6-7 lakers/moss's ready for grit 2, along w/6-8 sm botswanas.
So! The good news is, I know how to charge a barrel ... AND... I have a tile saw & know what to do w/it... LOL. But the real challenge so far has been finding or creating viable tumbling rough... and here i thought that was the easy part... you just 'buy it', right? hah! No stage 2 yet, but i'm not discouraged! I'm going to buy some rough from rockshed.com and see how that goes, as many of you have positive things to say about them...
And there ya go! That's ma'h story ya'll, and ah'm stickin' to it!
p.s. hmm... well i've tried to post some picks here... didn't seem to work.. seems the very first pic was too big when i used the 'add attachment' button (less than 2 MB's tho)... and when i just dragged the file here, it showed the url in the post, but not highlighted so that you could click on it... may need some input to help get them on here..
Thanks for listening