dottyt
spending too much on rocks
Member since July 2016
Posts: 305
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Post by dottyt on Aug 24, 2016 23:56:59 GMT -5
That 4th one is certainly an agate, so I am at a loss. Could it be that you got a "lemon" with your polishing compound? Have you had a successful polish with it? I think ubermenehune is right that going back to stage one or two won't help as the rocks have nice shapes and look smooth. Maybe just try another polishing compound or a buy a different batch of the one you have? I am guessing you are washing the barrel and rocks well and also know a teaspoon from a tablespoon (some guys don't as they don't cook), but it seems you really investigate things and are careful. BTW I think the orange-red one is very nice as is. Not every rock needs a mirror shine, IMHO.
Isn't borax for cleaning more than polishing? I know people use sugar, but I am not sure why. Doesn't make sense to me in terms of either chemistry or physics. But if it works for you, practice beats theory!
Also, I do not know what all your rocks are. Could some be very challenging with rotary polishing?
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bcgal
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since March 2016
Posts: 94
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Post by bcgal on Aug 25, 2016 11:09:54 GMT -5
perhaps you need to do steps 3 and 4 again, this time dont burnish the rocks in between those two steps. they are prepolish and polish. i dont ever burnish between steps 3 and 4 and my last batch came out nice and shiny. actually i only use the ivory soap after all my steps are done and i'm happy with the rocks.
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huskeric
spending too much on rocks
Member since May 2016
Posts: 353
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Post by huskeric on Aug 25, 2016 11:54:24 GMT -5
I don't know what to tell you man. I don't believe running stage 1 & 2 again is the answer b/c your rocks already look nicely rounded and fairly smooth. Maybe it's time to add some dog food, baking soda, lawn clippings, and a can of Mountain Dew to your barrel. DANG IT! Trash day was yesterday and they took my yard waste. Can you substitute dandelions or crabgrass for the lawn clippings? I was thinking it might actually be time for chicken blood and eye of newt. bcgal, I appreciate the suggestion, truly, but that's pretty much what I just did. The only thing I could do differently is run them for more than 10 days each. I even used separate barrels and tumbling media for each stage. The only thing I can think is that I put too much water in with stage 3, and the grit wasn't able to do its job effectively enough, but I followed the "recipe" to the letter on both grit (I weighed it on a postal scale) and water (measured it out to the ounce). I'm obviously not doing something correctly, though, I guess I'll go back to the drawing board one more time with stage 3. My problem with that (and it is MY problem) is that I have continued to tumble other rocks, and I am creating a HUGE backlog for myself. I guess it's either figure out the problem now, or continue to make the same mistakes over and over expecting a different outcome. Maybe my new tagline should read, "No, it's not rocket science, it's ROCK science...WAY harder." =)
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ubermenehune
spending too much on rocks
Member since March 2016
Posts: 293
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Post by ubermenehune on Aug 25, 2016 19:05:22 GMT -5
Since we're still brainstorming ideas, maybe try pea gravel or agate/stone media instead of plastic pellets in stage 4. I realize that plenty of folks have good luck with plastic, but pea gravel was my filler of choice and i felt that my shine was pretty decent. Not sure why it would work better than plastic, but I'll take a shot at applying some speculative "broscience." Perhaps stone has greater mass and density which would in turn result in greater force. Greater force carrying grit = better abrasion?
I don't know what the hell i'm talking about. Try carrying a double-terminated quartz crystal in your pocket, do the hokey pokey, and wait till the moon is full before opening your barrel.
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richardh
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 391
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Post by richardh on Aug 25, 2016 23:07:26 GMT -5
I had similar problems with my first batch and tried a bunch of different things and the only thing that worked was going back to the 120-220 grit stage. Now my success was limited, a few rocks got a wicked nice shine and several still looked dull. What I observed was that the ones that came out really smooth at the end of the 120-220 grit stage ended up taking a good shine at the end. The ones that weren't nice and smooth at the end of the 120-220 stage didn't. At the end of the 500 grit stage the ones that went on to take a nice shine already looked somewhat shiny. The polish just took them from somewhat shiny to glossy.
I'm not sure why some came out smooth at the end of the 120-220 stage and some didn't but my guess is that the ones that failed were softer but that is just a guess.
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huskeric
spending too much on rocks
Member since May 2016
Posts: 353
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Post by huskeric on Aug 26, 2016 7:45:26 GMT -5
richardh, I might just throw them back in stage 2. That does make sense. If you don't have them at their "best" point at the end of stage 2, then those imperfections will still be there in stage 3 and so on. Heck, I might throw them in Stage 1 for 4-5 days just to do a complete reset. This is a learning experience, and if you're afraid to try things, you won't get anywhere.
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huskeric
spending too much on rocks
Member since May 2016
Posts: 353
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Post by huskeric on Aug 26, 2016 10:34:39 GMT -5
I think I may have had an epiphany on at least part of my problem. I have read over and over, garbage in, garbage out, and I have continued to say that I'm doing everything right, and in looking at ALL of my rocks out of polish, I'm finding that's not entirely true. I have been using handfulls of pea gravel as filler along with plastic beads, and when I have done all of my sorting, I get through the bigger pieces, and then when I get down to anything below 1/2" or so, I get tired of picking them out of the wet plastic beads, and just kinda dump them into the next cycle.
Well... I looked at all of them, and I have a pretty significant number of stones in there that are small and still have at least some rough texture on them. The fact that they're small has likely enabled them to circulate freely around all of the other rocks and leave little scratches on them as they are supposed to be polishing.
I am a car nut, and detailing my car, I try to make sure I don't allow any contaminants to scratch the paint when I wash it, I do clay bar, etc. and then polish the car. If I had ONE grain of sand on my polishing pad when I started on my car, I would cause SO much damage that it would take hours and hours and days to fix.
I think that's just translating to my rock polishing. So, I have filtered down my rocks by quite a bit, and I'm going to try this ONE more time starting with stage 3. If this doesn't fix the problem, then I will have some rock tumbling equipment for sale in about three weeks. It may be slightly damaged from being thrown across the room, I'll just caution you now. ;-)
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Post by captbob on Aug 26, 2016 10:42:31 GMT -5
this rock needs to go back (at least) to "stage two" - wish you all would say what grit all these stages are...
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huskeric
spending too much on rocks
Member since May 2016
Posts: 353
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Post by huskeric on Aug 26, 2016 16:22:20 GMT -5
this rock needs to go back (at least) to "stage two" - wish you all would say what grit all these stages are... captbob, why do you say that? I don't challenge you, I am genuinely curious. I had actually planned to do a little dremel grinding on it and put it into stage 3 again. The sparkles in there are not grit, they are in the pet wood itself. I wanted to leave some of the shape/character of the pet wood. This was after polish/burnishing. After typing the above, I went pulled that one out and looked at it again, and I think you're right. I still need to take the grinder to it, but I will knock it back to stage 2 after that. I'm still curious what from this crummy photo led you to that. Thanks!
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charliework
starting to shine!
Member since May 2016
Posts: 29
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Post by charliework on Aug 26, 2016 23:09:39 GMT -5
Well, tumbling anything but glass with obsidian will cause this problem. Nothing will change that. See, you just dropped some knowledge on me. Now all I have to do is learn to distinguish obsidian from other stuff. =) I have read up on some of the hardness testing on the boards here, which are fantastic. Now I just need to take said knowledge and put it to practice. Thanks! rough obsidian is one the easiest to ID. ^^^ from the rock key. www.rockhounds.com/rockshop/rockkey/
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huskeric
spending too much on rocks
Member since May 2016
Posts: 353
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Post by huskeric on Sept 6, 2016 8:02:54 GMT -5
OK, I have been running my polish for 10 days, and I was about to clean it out, but about three days or so ago I noticed that my "slurry" wasn't really slurry, but more of a creamy liquid. I thought that maybe it was supposed to be thin like that for polish, but I pulled a few stones out and they showed little sign of shine, so I put 2 TBSP of Borax in there (3lb barrel), and the next day I noticed that it was MUCH thicker. So that begs the question, should your polish slurry be thick or thin? I haven't had good luck with thin yet, but that doesn't mean it isn't correct. Thanks!
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huskeric
spending too much on rocks
Member since May 2016
Posts: 353
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Post by huskeric on Sept 20, 2016 19:54:57 GMT -5
I think I FINALLY got it!!! Still not "perfect," but I am very pleased with how these came out. Is there a polish beyond AO1000 that might improve these even more? This is two three-pound barrels that both came out at the same time. I noticed on one, I got a little nicer polish on some of the rocks, so I'm going to pull some of these out and re-do them. These are some of the rocks I brought back from Wyoming. I have lots more pics, but I won't put them all up. I was so happy, I was dancing like a fool.
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dottyt
spending too much on rocks
Member since July 2016
Posts: 305
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Post by dottyt on Sept 20, 2016 23:09:09 GMT -5
Those are great! It looks like you even got a decent polish on some I would have thought were too "granitey" to polish at all! What are the pink ones?
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richardh
spending too much on rocks
Member since June 2016
Posts: 391
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Post by richardh on Sept 21, 2016 0:22:07 GMT -5
Glad to see your success! Nicely done.
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huskeric
spending too much on rocks
Member since May 2016
Posts: 353
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Post by huskeric on Sept 21, 2016 7:56:09 GMT -5
Those are great! It looks like you even got a decent polish on some I would have thought were too "granitey" to polish at all! What are the pink ones? I'm fairly certain the pink ones to be Pike's Peak granite. It has various shades from really pale to peachy to really pink. I think my favorite of those is the one with the quartz in it. Some of the granite is going to go back in, probably with 500 grit and then I might just tumble them a few at a time to see if that keeps them from undercutting. They are some of the most beautiful stones I found in terms of color variation, so I want to try to get them to polish. I did get a lot of bruising as well, but I had my barrels pretty full and used ceramic/plastics in all of the stages.
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dottyt
spending too much on rocks
Member since July 2016
Posts: 305
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Post by dottyt on Sept 21, 2016 11:05:31 GMT -5
Wow it was granite! I am not sure I would re-tumble anything that looks pretty good, you could just get *more* undercutting (and smaller rocks). Since granite is a blend of materials (often of different hardness) it is tricky to tumble. You could have reached a "sweet spot layer" where it takes a shine, but with more tumbling it would lose it. When granite is successfully polished (like counter-tops) it is because a tool that takes off a certain amount more reliably (having a flat surface) was used. In tumbling it is more like the rocks just do their thing.
But this is based more on theory than much practice so I am willing to be corrected by more knowledgeable people. Just don't be surprised if your polished granite turns into dull granite even though you are doing the same thing. Maybe experiment with the less colorful rocks or the rocks you really don't like now instead of the ones you are happy with?
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bcgal
noticing nice landscape pebbles
Member since March 2016
Posts: 94
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Post by bcgal on Sept 21, 2016 13:06:47 GMT -5
those look great! well done!
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huskeric
spending too much on rocks
Member since May 2016
Posts: 353
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Post by huskeric on Sept 22, 2016 9:45:51 GMT -5
Wow it was granite! I am not sure I would re-tumble anything that looks pretty good, you could just get *more* undercutting (and smaller rocks). Since granite is a blend of materials (often of different hardness) it is tricky to tumble. You could have reached a "sweet spot layer" where it takes a shine, but with more tumbling it would lose it. When granite is successfully polished (like counter-tops) it is because a tool that takes off a certain amount more reliably (having a flat surface) was used. In tumbling it is more like the rocks just do their thing. But this is based more on theory than much practice so I am willing to be corrected by more knowledgeable people. Just don't be surprised if your polished granite turns into dull granite even though you are doing the same thing. Maybe experiment with the less colorful rocks or the rocks you really don't like now instead of the ones you are happy with? I have a LOT of this material, so I can experiment with a few of the less-beautiful pieces and see, but I absolutely get what you're saying. It would be just as likely to take a rock that's a "7" and make it a "3" as it would to make it a "10" by screwing with it. I think they call that throwing good money after bad... =) I may try a little hand-finishing on some of them with wet-sanding just to see if I can take out some of the rough spots. It's funny, one of the barrels didn't have a problem with it, the other did. I kept all of the rocks in the same batches from stage 3 onward, so it could have gotten off-track at that point. There are a few of them that weren't "perfect," but they are rocks that I don't want to completely screw up, so I'll just accept them as they are.
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