jasperfanatic
spending too much on rocks
Member since January 2019
Posts: 463
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Post by jasperfanatic on Apr 26, 2020 14:20:16 GMT -5
In the top pic, is that pitting at the bottom of the piece? If so, then maybe you've got a contamination challenge? Are you noticing chips? I'm far from an expert on this, but there are a few variables to this, such as the speed you have those rotating around at, the thickness of the slurry, and the ratio of ceramic media in relation to those Obisidian pieces. From my experience, if everything was as it should be up to that point, four days cooking in the AO1000 should have had you pretty close to a glassy finish, maybe a couple more days to finish, or be close to done. Where the water has receded on that top pic, it looks like the piece is still pretty frosted. You might want to try just running one pit/crack free piece in a clean AO1000 batch for the same amount of time, in case it has something to do with those pieces sticking together or vibrating against each other. Those mini-sonics were harder for me to dial in on Obsidian than was the UV-18, and in the end the winning recipe for me was making sure there were zero pits/cracks, keeping the mix around 70% ceramic/30% Obsidian and using sugar to thicken and slow the slurry. It definitely took more patience because the process took quite a bit longer to finish them than other harder material, but maybe that was the slowed action from the sugar causing the grit to break down at a slower rate.
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jasperfanatic
spending too much on rocks
Member since January 2019
Posts: 463
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Post by jasperfanatic on Apr 26, 2020 17:44:37 GMT -5
@jadedvision What's your slurry look like? As I was trying to figure things out I'd get frosted batches like that if I had too much water. Other than a visible pool at the bottom, it was hard for me to tell sometimes and I know that I ended up over-spritzing. Once I started keeping it just this side of bone dry I had better results. I'll share what I did to dial things in, for what it's worth. I used a couple of golfball sized pieces that were done through 500, and then I would just do one at a time in the UV-18 making adjustments to slurry until I came up with rough recipe for a glassy shine...that took a while. Once I had the recipe, then I started adding additional pieces until I had a ratio that had little to zero bruising/chipping (I wanted flawless stones at the end), until I came up with the roughly 70/30 ratio that I've been able to get consistent results with since. I probably use more of an 80/20 ratio with the MT-10 and run them at less than half speed if I'm not using sugar. I don't use the MT-10 for much other than specific specimens, and then they usually run solo at that. Hopefully, something here was helpful.
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jasperfanatic
spending too much on rocks
Member since January 2019
Posts: 463
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Post by jasperfanatic on Apr 26, 2020 21:28:07 GMT -5
You'll get it! It seems difficult to get flawless super glassy specimens tumbling Obsidian, but when it all finally comes together it sure is satisfying! Looking forward to seeing yours when you get them done.
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Post by manofglass on Apr 27, 2020 9:10:15 GMT -5
I tumble obsidian with pea gravel not ceramic I have bigger chunks in the rotary they will eventually Fit in the vibe
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