Post by stevek216 on Sept 2, 2020 19:45:11 GMT -5
Hey all, my name's Stephen. My parents got me a Lortone QT6 when I was 10 or 11 and was interested in rocks. I was thrilled until I learned the timelines - more than a month is a very long time, especially to a 10 year old! Moreover I was mostly collecting Petoskey stones and, being a noob and not really internet literate yet, I just threw them in the tumbler and they mostly all dissolved.
Cut to 17 years later and I've finally gotten over the bitterness of failure and busted out the old tumbler. Credit where credit is due, the thing still works like a champ. So far I'm mostly tumbling some quartz and jasper I've found in the northern lower peninsula. Of course, I've been trying my hand at some Petoskey and Charlevoix stones too. So far so good, but the timelines still bug me and the results, while beautiful, are still a little too irregular for my OCD. In a pivot probably familiar to many of you I started reading/watching everything I could find on cabbing. A couple of days ago I got my first cabbing machine, an Ameritech 8 inch flat lap. So far I'm pretty excited about it, I've cut a few cabs that are decent looking. I am a bit concerned at the rate of wear on one of the pads but I already made a post on that in the relevant section.
I'm also working on wire-wrapping the end results. That'll take quite a bit more practice but I think I'll treasure my first attempt for quite some time, even if in the future it just induces cringes.
Glad to join the forum, from what I've seen it's a very supportive community so I'm looking forward to being a member!
Cut to 17 years later and I've finally gotten over the bitterness of failure and busted out the old tumbler. Credit where credit is due, the thing still works like a champ. So far I'm mostly tumbling some quartz and jasper I've found in the northern lower peninsula. Of course, I've been trying my hand at some Petoskey and Charlevoix stones too. So far so good, but the timelines still bug me and the results, while beautiful, are still a little too irregular for my OCD. In a pivot probably familiar to many of you I started reading/watching everything I could find on cabbing. A couple of days ago I got my first cabbing machine, an Ameritech 8 inch flat lap. So far I'm pretty excited about it, I've cut a few cabs that are decent looking. I am a bit concerned at the rate of wear on one of the pads but I already made a post on that in the relevant section.
I'm also working on wire-wrapping the end results. That'll take quite a bit more practice but I think I'll treasure my first attempt for quite some time, even if in the future it just induces cringes.
Glad to join the forum, from what I've seen it's a very supportive community so I'm looking forward to being a member!
