braat
spending too much on rocks
Member since December 2016
Posts: 350
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Post by braat on Mar 21, 2020 14:21:06 GMT -5
More of the same as previous batches...I think I'm done in general with clear glass and will be on the lookout for multi color stuff. Having said that I haven't seen much clear red glass around and I'll try that if I come across any. From what I'm reading gold is the "ingredient" that makes glass red which makes it more expensive and less available? I've seen red art glass for sale fairly cheap but didn't buy cause I don't think I could bring myself to destroy it. You can't see it in the photo but about half of them have a slight "haze" (lacking better words) when held at the right angle in a strong light. I checked previous tumbles and they are the same so I'm thinking my recipe needs tweaking. The "haze" is most visible in the center of the flat parts (none on the edges that I can see) and even more likely on the inside of the concave ones. I'm going to try hand polishing a couple and if that works then think on how to tumble them better so if anyone's got ideas I'm all ears! I'll try to take a photo of the "haze" and if successful I'll put in here. Glass recipe as follows: stage 1 = weekly clean outs in 3 lb rotaries with 2/3 cup dried/used slurry, 1 teaspoon 46/70 grit, barrels 70-75% full and water about 50-60% full. I pull them out when they are smooth all over to touch and shaped to my liking. Stage 2 (220) is 2 days in UV10 vibe in a dedicated bowl, 60-65% quartz pea gravel media and vibe is pretty much full, 2 tbsp 220 grit and 6 tbsp borax to slow the action down, add water when action slows to near stop. Stage 3 and 4 (pre-polish and polish) are in another dedicated bowl. Pre-polish stage is 3 days, 2 tbsp pre-polish grit, and 6 tbsp borax, and add water when actions slows. Polish stage is 3 days, 2 tbsp polish grit and 6 tbsp borax, and add water when action slows. I reuse the same media in all vibe stages and after each stage I clean by filling bowl with water, adding 2 tbsp borax and running for an hour. After that I rinse/clean glass and media under running water. After final polish I hand rub/clean glass with a microfiber cloth to what is in the photo. IMG_5452111 by braat33, on Flickr
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EricD
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High in the Mountains
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Post by EricD on Mar 21, 2020 21:21:00 GMT -5
I see the haze and it results from chattering against the other glass and media. I battle it with a sugar slurry. jamesp has a few threads about it. I have never had luck with borax. Not even once
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EricD
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High in the Mountains
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Post by EricD on Mar 21, 2020 21:24:48 GMT -5
Also, thinning your slurry with water and borax after your run will increase the impact each piece has on the other. I would not recommend that. "after each stage I clean by filling bowl with water, adding 2 tbsp borax and running for an hour"
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braat
spending too much on rocks
Member since December 2016
Posts: 350
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Post by braat on Mar 22, 2020 0:06:15 GMT -5
EricD Thanks for your responses. I've been thinking of trying the sugar slurry for a while but now is an obvious time to give it a go...your response is the push I needed. I'm going to run the hazed glass through pre polish and polish stages again using the sugar slurry and ditch the in-vibe borax clean run as well. Any recommendations for how much sugar to start with? Will report here how it turns out. Tks again...
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Post by knave on Mar 22, 2020 2:21:08 GMT -5
From what I hear , frost in the middle = needs more time, frosting on the edge, is over baked.
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Mar 22, 2020 5:23:22 GMT -5
Consider re-running polish only braat. The haze you mention is usually a polish category defect. This way you can find out if the haze is a polish-only issue and eliminate pre-polish all together. The closer you get to polish the easier it is to have polish issues. Different doses of sugar can be used since it depends on the ratio of water to sugar to get the same viscosity. 8 tbls/8 pounds w/less water or 12/8 pounds w/more water or 16/8 pounds yet more water all works to the same viscosity. I usually use 12/8 on cold days(20F night/40F day). 16/8 in warm conditions. By far the best polished during 20/40 temps w/glass moving slow at 1 rev or cycle per 10 - 15 seconds. The haze may worse on certain glass. Most bottle glass is a crap load harder than blown or fused glass. Italian glass almost always polishes best of the hand blown materials. Compare your blue with your green with your pink, etc. Toss a few shards of Pyrex and obsidian in with each batch. Obsidian varies in hardness, mahogany usually takes the best polish. Grayish obsidians the softest. Pyrex is about always the hardest glass. Should polish best. Another good test - toss a couple of sharp un-tumbled glass shards in the vibe 220 step to make sure you are shaving plenty of material off to remove the 46 pits. I use SiC 500 after SiC 10(7 days rotary or 2 days vibe). The SiC 500 easily removes the pits from the SiC 10. Old red glass was almost exclusively colored with gold. Newer red glass is often colored with cadmium to save $$. Antique shops best source for red glass colored with gold. Many collect red glass colored with gold so hard to find. Gold makes the finest rich red color. The states shut down much cadmium glass production for a time till pollution devices were installed due to poisons generated. So it is rarer and more expensive. Easier to find cadmium from import glass probably due to lax pollution standards.
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Mar 22, 2020 5:37:07 GMT -5
From what I hear , frost in the middle = needs more time, frosting on the edge, is over baked. Look out for flat faces sticking together. It happens in rotary and vibe. Especially if the batch gets on the dry side. Any one step that sticks together reaps havoc.
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braat
spending too much on rocks
Member since December 2016
Posts: 350
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Post by braat on Mar 22, 2020 13:10:09 GMT -5
I separated the batch into hazed and unhazed piles. I weighed them and 62% are hazed anywhere from barely visible to worst case seen in the photo. I'm going to hand rub the two in the photo with polish on a wet denim cloth and if they shine up that will confirm to me what jamesp is saying about it being a polish stage issue. Not doubting you jamesp just confirming so it registers better in my aging brain IMG_5456 by braat33, on Flickr
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braat
spending too much on rocks
Member since December 2016
Posts: 350
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Post by braat on Mar 22, 2020 20:38:12 GMT -5
Success! Five minutes of polishing by hand and the one on the left is looking like it's supposed to. Now waiting vibe time to rerun the hazed ones with the revised recipe...will post results here.... IMG_5459 by braat33, on Flickr
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Mar 22, 2020 21:04:34 GMT -5
Did you find any broken pieces of glass in the polish run braat ? One common cause of the haze since glass scratches glass in most cases. In some cases small linear scratches. Usually all glass that is going to break has broken by the polish step.
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braat
spending too much on rocks
Member since December 2016
Posts: 350
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Post by braat on Mar 23, 2020 0:51:34 GMT -5
Did you find any broken pieces of glass in the polish run braat ? One common cause of the haze since glass scratches glass in most cases. In some cases small linear scratches. Usually all glass that is going to break has broken by the polish step. None in this run.. in the previous 3 glass runs only a couple broke (in all stages) that I recall and they weren't the ones I thought might break. I was half expecting the 1.3mm (I measured them) Heineken beer bottle pieces to break but they didn't. The bright green half moon in the 1st photo is from the bottom of the same bottle (but it's a little thicker). While I was cutting up the bottle I noted how thin the glass was compared to normal brown beer bottles, so I was watching them through all stages to see if they would survive and was surprised when they did. Maybe Heineken does something to make their glass a little stronger??? Anyways my trivia for the day
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Mar 23, 2020 5:15:15 GMT -5
Anxious to see how sugar method works. Glass is fickle about taking a polish and doesn't take much to mess up. It doesn't like to miss abrasive steps and is not forgiving if it is damaged in any step. Being a fast tumble it gives lots of tumbling experience. Glass is a surprisingly strong substance in certain situations. Not fond of high speed impacts but has incredible structural strength.
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EricD
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Post by EricD on Mar 23, 2020 8:16:08 GMT -5
EricD Thanks for your responses. I've been thinking of trying the sugar slurry for a while but now is an obvious time to give it a go...your response is the push I needed. I'm going to run the hazed glass through pre polish and polish stages again using the sugar slurry and ditch the in-vibe borax clean run as well. Any recommendations for how much sugar to start with? Will report here how it turns out. Tks again... Sorry for the delay in reply, had a busy weekend. I use 8T for my 9lb capacity Lot-o vibe in the polish stage added to wet and drained rocks. RocksInNJ may be able to weigh in with how much he uses in his UV-10, last time he got the action perfect
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braat
spending too much on rocks
Member since December 2016
Posts: 350
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Post by braat on Mar 23, 2020 11:31:01 GMT -5
EricD Thanks for your responses. I've been thinking of trying the sugar slurry for a while but now is an obvious time to give it a go...your response is the push I needed. I'm going to run the hazed glass through pre polish and polish stages again using the sugar slurry and ditch the in-vibe borax clean run as well. Any recommendations for how much sugar to start with? Will report here how it turns out. Tks again... Sorry for the delay in reply, had a busy weekend. I use 8T for my 9lb capacity Lot-o vibe in the polish stage added to wet and drained rocks. RocksInNJ may be able to weigh in with how much he uses in his UV-10, last time he got the action perfect Thanks EricD ... i got a 220 run of rocks in the UV10 that finished this AM and I started stage 3 with 10 Tbsp sugar. From what you and others are saying that seemed like a reasonable start point. Action was still pretty aggressive after a couple minutes so will check in an hour or so and go from there...I have a full load so I'm thinking it may need more...likely OK for the rock run I'm on but trying to dial in for the hazed glass run which will be the next...
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Post by RocksInNJ on Mar 23, 2020 12:33:54 GMT -5
EricD Thanks for your responses. I've been thinking of trying the sugar slurry for a while but now is an obvious time to give it a go...your response is the push I needed. I'm going to run the hazed glass through pre polish and polish stages again using the sugar slurry and ditch the in-vibe borax clean run as well. Any recommendations for how much sugar to start with? Will report here how it turns out. Tks again... Sorry for the delay in reply, had a busy weekend. I use 8T for my 9lb capacity Lot-o vibe in the polish stage added to wet and drained rocks. RocksInNJ may be able to weigh in with how much he uses in his UV-10, last time he got the action perfect The action on my UV-10 is REALLY fast and causes a lot of chipping and bruising, so I use about 3/4 of a cup of sugar or so to extremely slow the action down until the rocks are just wiggling around and are moving just enough to cycle around. I also just wet and then drain all the water from the rocks at the beginning. The great thing about the sugar slurry is that you hardly have to add any water during the 2-3 day run, but one thing that I’ve noticed with the UV-10 is that no matter what you add, be it ceramics, water, grit, or sugar it takes a few minutes for the action to change, so you may want to add these things slowly and wait a few minutes for the change. I can’t tell you how many times I added a few sprays or so of water from a squirt bottle to get things moving and then a few minutes later they were cycling around like a rapid cyclone and then would have to add more sugar again to slow things down. So now the only time I add water is if the rocks aren’t moving at all and cycling around and then I just add a spray and wait a few minutes and then another spray if needed. Best of luck and let me know how you make out. It’s a great machine, but takes quite a while to master. Especially when tumbling different material and rocks of different hardness.
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braat
spending too much on rocks
Member since December 2016
Posts: 350
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Post by braat on Mar 23, 2020 13:52:38 GMT -5
The action on my UV-10 is REALLY fast and causes a lot of chipping and bruising, so I use about 3/4 of a cup of sugar or so to extremely slow the action down until the rocks are just wiggling around and are moving just enough to cycle around. I also just wet and then drain all the water from the rocks at the beginning. The great thing about the sugar slurry is that you hardly have to add any water during the 2-3 day run, but one thing that I’ve noticed with the UV-10 is that no matter what you add, be it ceramics, water, grit, or sugar it takes a few minutes for the action to change, so you may want to add these things slowly and wait a few minutes for the change. I can’t tell you how many times I added a few sprays or so of water from a squirt bottle to get things moving and then a few minutes later they were cycling around like a rapid cyclone and then would have to add more sugar again to slow things down. So now the only time I add water is if the rocks aren’t moving at all and cycling around and then I just add a spray and wait a few minutes and then another spray if needed. Best of luck and let me know how you make out. It’s a great machine, but takes quite a while to master. Especially when tumbling different material and rocks of different hardness. RocksInNJ thanks! Really appreciate your UV10 info. I've topped up my initial 10 Tbsp sugar to 18 which is about the 3/4 C you said and the action is about what you said also so I'll check again in an hour and if the same then it's dialed in...kiss of death/famous last words if past experience is worth anything
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braat
spending too much on rocks
Member since December 2016
Posts: 350
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Post by braat on Mar 29, 2020 21:57:27 GMT -5
OK rock run just finished final polish using the sugar glass method. They turned out at least as good as anything I've done previous if not better. Also the usual suspects that didn't do so well in previous runs (not in the photo) fared the same using this more gentle sugar method (action barely moving, 3/4 cup sugar, 2 T Polish, rocks wet and drained), so now I can give up on them in future with confidence Left side are local finds, middle top banded rocks took a shine as good as the West Coast agates in the middle, top right is aventurine and bottom right black/gray stuff is petwood from a 73 lb monster I found last summer, a lot of under cutting on those guys compared to the local brown petwood just above middle right. I'm running the hazed glass through the polish stage so 3 days from now we'll see if the sugar method smartens up the haze...I learned a lot from this batch mostly from advice you guys gave above so thank you all! March Rocks Batch by braat33, on Flickr
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jamesp
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Post by jamesp on Mar 30, 2020 7:18:41 GMT -5
Bulls eye.
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EricD
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Post by EricD on Mar 30, 2020 11:10:53 GMT -5
What is the one in the center?
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braat
spending too much on rocks
Member since December 2016
Posts: 350
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Post by braat on Mar 30, 2020 12:18:14 GMT -5
Pretty sure it's quartz ...lots of quartz variety around here...
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