Running Dual Polish Barrels using Normal 4 stage and AO 80

Good way to see if this way is better than that way .

Awesome. Mad scientist Rock here. Aprentice to jamesp.

You might get sucked into the vortex that you're circling here.

Be careful, and gather no moss.

Colin

I don't think the ao-80 is a time saver as much as cutting out the need to stock an extra grit.

I'm getting just as good results with the unscreened in the homemade rotary, ao-80, to ao polish in the vibe as I did with the 4 step process (actually 5 cause I was running sic30, then into the 2 hf units using the grit stages I bought as a kit. 60/90, 150/220, 500, ao polish).  the only difference is I'm not running all mohs 7 stuff. the hardest stuff comes out great. 85 to 90 percent of the load on average comes out of polish looking finished. the other 10 to 15 percent Ive been setting aside till I get enough to fill my ar-12 barrel. mostly slag glass which I found polishes better in the rotary than the vibe, but unfortunately is about the only thing I find locally which is even hard enough to take a  polish.

thanks for the offer james but I don't really need the sic 500. like you I'm cutting out the excessive cleanouts. 

I'm not sure if my unscreened sic is cutting faster or not than the 30 grit (never loaded a barrel with each with new rough to do a head to head compairison). but its free grit and seems to be working well.  when I went from the sic 30ish stuff to the unscreened I also went to the vibe and using more broken rough  and doing less rounding and more just passing it through when the edges were knocked off and pit free for a different look.  at the same time I added 2 more coarse barrels and am pulling 10 lbs out of coarse a week compared to the 3lbs I was sending through to the small rotaries. I changed to many variables at once to get a good comparison.

I have successfully transitioned to a slightly different 3 step tumbling process; 1) Rotary- 46/70 SiC with recharges every 2 days for as long as it takes, 2) Rotary - 220 SiC with a re-charge at about 2 days, then 10 to 11 days, 3) Vib - 14,000 AO for about 72 hours.

There is a Ivory soap & Borax run at the end of the 220 and the polish stages. I also extend the from 2 to 3 days for the 220 recharge if I am running preforms with lots of pea gravel added. Will also use 80 SiC instead of 46/70 for the Preforms. Every time I think about dropping the after 220 soap run, the gray color after the soap run convinces me it's washing out some very fine SiC.

Run this for about 4 or 5 months and everything coming out with a very nice polish.

Still using the 600 SiC for the Vib Lap, so the selection of grit sizes has not decreased.

Henry

the unscreened sic is just that crushed and unscreened. some chunks are much larger than 30 grit some much smaller. think of it like this take a boulder and crush it your gonna end up with big chunks med chunks small chunks super small right down to dust. now set up a series of screens oversize, usually oversized would be sent back through the crusher or say to a smaller crusher if your goal is more smaller sized rocks. say 4 inch holes in screen. next is 2 inch holes then 1 inch on down in size to basically dust. the size of actual grain in that boulder isn't what your sorting its the size of the nugget. put sic under microscope and lets just use random numbers say a sic 30 fits through a certain size hole in a screen and has 100 grains. now lets say 500 grit is a much smaller nugget only containing 10 grains. get what I'm saying?

whats more interesting is the big chunks are still there after a week of grinding there are still chunks wayyy bigger than 30 grit still cutting. think time release like your doing with your broken up grinding wheels.

now heres where It gets trippy and this is all theoretical at this point. don't sort it out and you have fine stuff in there that is taking the deep scratches out while it wont polish because the whole time your getting big scratches from the bigger stuff. your getting a big scratch plus a bunch of little ones. is it cutting faster or slower? is it going to be rougher or smoother? the only way to tell is to do head to head experiments. 


looking in bucket as is swept and shoveled right up off the floor.




I just grabbed a handful and let my fingers sort out some of the bigger stuff.



pm me your addy james and ill just send you 10 lbs or so to try. you like experimenting so you can try a head to head.

That looks like the way to go. I'd tumble with that in a heart beat.
Betcha it can be had for 20 cents a pound.
They are in fused clods. The important part is the size of the grains.
Hopefully the grains are 30-50 grit. it's going to have dust and small grains.
Probably is around 10-50 grit. Has to be crushed and screened to be graded to different sizes to be called graded.
Should grind your rocks just fine.

I have been tumbling for years with 30 grit and grinding wheels. I can tell you how effective it is. I'll PM and give it a go.

thanks a bunch.

different as in?

btw sorry about hijacking your thread.

Since you asked I decided to go out for a good listen and pop them open and get a look at what's going on . . .
These 6 pound barrels have been rolling for 5 days now.

The AO barrel originally got a Cup of AO-80 and right now it sounds like it's rolling in Plain water. It is much louder with glassy high frequency sounds. The AO-80 was not like grit at all and much more like a powder now. The Quartz I checked was extremely smooth but didn't shine when cleaned and dry. Planning to run this barrel for 5 more days before going to CO polish.

The SiC 220 barrel got a little more than 1/2 a cup. It sounded much more normal and subdued a lot like my Stage 1 Tumbles without the glassy sound. The 220 grit was not detectable at all on the rocks or settled to the bottom, so I recharged with 1/4 cup more while I was in there. I did not look at the stones because I know they will be dull and lifeless in this grit. Planning to run this barrel 2 more days and cleanout to 600 grit for another week.