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Post by Alice on Apr 29, 2005 10:24:42 GMT -5
These are being sold as "Seam Garnets" at minerungems.comGarnets are 6.5 - 7.5 on the MOH scale. And like most gem stones they come in different grades, clarities, and come in all sorts of different of colors, except for blue. Here's what they ran for: 3 weeks - 4 Tablespoons Thumler's Coarse grit - Recharging with 4 TBSP every week 6 days - 4 Tablespoons 60/90 Silicone Carbide 6 days - 4 Tablespoons 120/220 Silicone Carbide + Filler 7 days - 3 Tablespoons 600 Silicone Carbide + Filler 5 days - 3 Tablespoons 1200 Aluminium Oxide + Filler This is how the Garnets looked on the day I got them
This is how AWFUL they looked after 1 week in coarse
3 weeks in Thumler's coarse grit. Rocks are wet 
7 days of 60/90 These garnets pictured below are wet, and taken in direct sunlight. The grey / silvery spots that you see are just dry spots. And the internal fractures that you see, are hardly noticeable in regular light. 
6 days in 120/220These garnets are in direct sunlight and sitting in a bowl of water. I had a very hard time keeping them wet for the picture. All the orange and brown spots that you see are fractures and bruises. 
7 days of 600Not a good photo day. Rain, Rain, Rain!!! No sunny spells, and no good pictures at any angle or camera setting (either too shiny from the water or blurry. This is the best picture I could get. 
5 days of 1200 I peeked in the barrel at 1 day of 1200. The garnets just looked horrible! Scratches, massive chips, pits, and gouges! Several of them broke right in half! I emptied the barrel and found about 1 teaspoon of garnet the size of sand at the bottom of the barrel(and they were sharp!). The crumbling garnets ruined most of the load, including the emeralds that were tumbling with them. I was NOT a happy camper and nearly threw the entire batch out! But I started thinking "I had gone this far... what will be the harm of continuing with the batch just to see what comes out?". So I removed the rocks which had sharp edges, took the "sand" out, and reloaded my barrel with salvageable stones and 1200 AO, and continued to tumble for the remaining 5 days. Rocks are dry.  I'm not going to bother with polish. They all have some sort of pit, scratch, gouge, etc... Not worth the effort because they're still falling appart. I hope this was as educational for you as it was for me. Thanks for looking Alice |
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Post by Cher on Apr 29, 2005 11:05:10 GMT -5
I'm sorry Alice, that's just sad to put all that effort in and have them turn out bad.
Cher
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Post by gaetzchamp on Apr 29, 2005 12:35:11 GMT -5
That's awful. Sorry to hear about this. I know what you're going thru. My pet wood had some issue too, but it was salvagable.
The 2nd to last pict looked pretty dang good though. They look nice and shiny. Are you gonna give it another try???
Sorry again,
Gaetz
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stefan
Cave Dweller 
Member since January 2005
Posts: 14,113
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Post by stefan on Apr 29, 2005 12:39:14 GMT -5
Alice were they in with the emeralds? They seemed to go well up to the end- I smell a rat here- and I think something beat them up!
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Post by Alice on Apr 29, 2005 12:49:19 GMT -5
Thanks Cher 
Thanks Gaetz, They looked absolutely beautiful out of 600, then 1200 came along. Not really sure what happened. Thought I did everything right. For the time being I won't be doing gem stones. I'm doing agates in one barrel, and I just started some Golden & Blue Tiger eye this morning (the same barrel the garnets were in). They both should be ready sometime in June. My son isn't going to be happy about me not tumbling gem stones in at least one of the barrels, but will be thrilled to hear that I loaded the barrel up with tiger eye. |
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Post by Alice on Apr 29, 2005 12:57:34 GMT -5
Stefan
the emeralds were in with the garnets from start to finish.
My emeralds look just as bad as the garnets (if not worse).
If the emeralds were the problem, then why didn't they attack way before? Just seems odd that they'd start beating up on them on the very first day of prepolish, they both were very smooth and rounded.
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stefan
Cave Dweller
Member since January 2005
Posts: 14,113
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Post by stefan on Apr 29, 2005 13:08:02 GMT -5
Just a guess here- but in the other stages you are attempting to REMOVE rock (rounding off ect.) in pre polish you are removing past scratches and are not targeting material removal as much- I think the thickness of slurry may have helped cushion the garnets a bit- but once you got to prepolish- they finally just gave up? remember garnets (mohs 7-7.5) Emeralds (7.5 to 8) I think it may have been enough of a difference to kill the garnets- As for the emeralds getting beat up- well I'm thinking that Emeralds are pretty fractured anyway- and after the long tumble they finally gave in also. Any way you look at it it still sucks! Hope you can salvage something!
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Post by Alice on Apr 29, 2005 13:28:38 GMT -5
there's a few small emeralds which are ok (about 1cm in diameter). Not many though.
Think I could throw those emeralds into polish with a batch that is softer? (Agates or Tiger eye)
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Post by americanbulldogsnj on Apr 29, 2005 18:24:46 GMT -5
Your's are similar to the garnets I bought on Ebay: auction1.inetu.net/member/palenque/g64.jpg Mine look exactly the same, seams and all, I havent put them in pre-polish yet. I'm afraid to! In fact it's been awhile since I looked in on them. They looked better before I tumbled them! Lesson learned... Sorry again Alice  Marian |
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Post by Alice on Apr 29, 2005 20:03:34 GMT -5
Thanks Marian You're right, they do look similar. I'd stuff a pillow in before you put them into polish  Show us pictures when you finish them. Hopefully yours will have turned out better then mine. |
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Post by americanbulldogsnj on Apr 29, 2005 20:15:18 GMT -5
I took a look at them tonigh, they look like yours did at 120/220, but they are in 500 right now with alot of pellets. I'll pack the barrel half garnets half pellets and 5-8 TBs of granulated sugar for the final polish. They do have pits in them though  not all yet but a few. They seemed to have dwindled down to about half thier original size. Phew! I swear if I wasnt so cool I'd be breaking a sweat over these  Marian |
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Post by Alice on Apr 29, 2005 20:22:09 GMT -5
Mine shrank quite a bit also (about 1/2 their size, just like yours).
I blamed it on the emeralds that were in the barrel along for the ride. Guess that wasn't it.
Alice
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Post by americanbulldogsnj on Apr 29, 2005 20:28:13 GMT -5
I'm thinkin that these little garnet balls are softer than other types of garnet. I have some hessonite garnet in with them and they are still about the same size as they were when I started them and they don't seem to have as many faults and not near as many pits as those little round devils...
Marian
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Post by puppie96 on Apr 30, 2005 0:06:15 GMT -5
My theory is totally different.
This is how I developed this theory. I was picking up rocks a couple summers ago before I had the tumblers in a creek which reputedly had garnets in its headwaters (which I was nowhere near.) But undaunted, I just picked up pretty rocks like always. One of them was a bean shaped fairly rounded dull looking brownish rock, but it had a crack in it that seemed to show some red. I started tumbling it and eventually the cracked piece broke off. Once it did, the remainder of the dull stuff ground off of the little piece and I had a red transparent little stone. On the larger stone, it looked glassy where this had fractured away. So, I kept after that little sucker until the rest of this dull rind ground off and ended up with a really awesome dark red glassy shiny stone. Like yours, earlier it had the various cracks and stuff. Since then, I have had this happen a number of times. I've done a lot of reading and now and then I've read others describing the same thing. In fact, Doc may have discussed this once in reference to rubies.
Conclusion: you are still working on the matrix. In other words, back to 60/90 and hold until you get a glassy, gem like surface. You aren't there yet. Throw them in with other rocks as dunnage or whatever. What do you have to lose?
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Post by puppie96 on Apr 30, 2005 0:08:57 GMT -5
I believe the last 2 pictures show this process in action. On the second to last, can you see how a few in the middle seem to have almost like an orange peel coming off, with a finer stone showing where the peel is off? Then in the last one, it looks like the peel is cracking on most of them, which actually more likely means you are making progress.
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Post by Alice on May 1, 2005 7:29:14 GMT -5
It's possible that it's a peel, but in some cases I don't think it is. Here's a picture of a garnet I smashed. It's dark all the way through.  |
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Post by connrock on May 1, 2005 9:54:25 GMT -5
Alice,
Rather then saying "I'm sorry" I'd like to say Congratulations!!
You've learned a valuable lesson here and are still learning!
Some "rough" is very difficult to "judge" when we first see it,as with your garnets.The only to tell what's inside is to either rough it or break it.In your case you roughed it.Looking at the 2nd photo will tell you that there is nothing but trouble down the line.You can see all the cracks and crevices and theyseem to go right through the entire garnet.At this point a hammer is in order.By breaking a few you can tell if you should go on with them or toss them.
I "think" the reason they look so bad after the pre-polish is because you're actually seeing what you really have.I'll have to use an example here because that doesn't even sound right to me!!
Lets say you have a piece of copper and it's got a shine to it but it's not a mirror finish.You take some copper polish and rub away.Now you have areas that are looking great but where there are scratches it looks lousy.TYhese scratches didn't show up when you first looked at the copper but now they stand right out.
Also as Puppie mentioned these garnets have layers of material that are removed a little at a time revealing what's in the "core".I may be wrong but I doubt that any amount of tumbling will produce a glassy garnet.Instead I would break a few and see what's inside.It's a lot faster and less painful.
We have garnets here inCT very much like yours and i've tumbled them.I had just as much "fun" as you're having and after 7-8 months of what started out as 6 lbs I ended up with about 1/4 lb of so so garnets about the size of tiny peas.
My 2 cents worth.
Tom
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Post by connrock on May 1, 2005 10:00:23 GMT -5
I tried the quote thing.I'd better do it the old fassion way.
Alice wrote:
"It's possible that it's a peel, but in some cases I don't think it is.
Here's a picture of a garnet I smashed. It's dark all the way through."
I didn't see that photo before I wrote my last reply.
If that's what they look inside ,,,,go for it!!
Tom
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Post by puppie96 on May 1, 2005 21:52:49 GMT -5
I tried the quote thing.I'd better do it the old fassion way. Alice wrote: "It's possible that it's a peel, but in some cases I don't think it is. Here's a picture of a garnet I smashed. It's dark all the way through." I didn't see that photo before I wrote my last reply. If that's what they look inside ,,,,go for it!! Tom Yeah! I just saw that photo too, and wow, definitely go for it. |
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Post by puppie96 on Jun 30, 2005 4:43:08 GMT -5
Hey, Alice, since we linked back to this thread, I still think that you should toss those garnets back into a 60/90 barrel with other rocks. I don't know why, but the matrix on these stones, including emerald, can smooth out really well and sometimes even polish, but you still haven't gotten down to the glassy core (see the garnet photos I just posted). I think there's a fair chance that there's gemstone underneath. Besides that, what do you have to lose? Some wise one on this board (Doc maybe?) once said they used pea size almandine garnets for filler, that's where I got the idea, the only problem being that the garnets finish so quickly and can be ground down to nothing.
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not all yet but a few. They seemed to have dwindled down to about half thier original size. Phew! I swear if I wasnt so cool I'd be breaking a sweat over these 
