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Post by parfive on Oct 29, 2020 14:35:53 GMT -5
Polish gets recycled around here too. Crack the lid and empty into a coffee filter over a 16oz deli container. Just in case any rock chips or whatever. Easy job w/3lb Thumler’s barrels. YMMV.
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Post by Bob on Oct 29, 2020 16:06:54 GMT -5
Parfive do you polish obsidian successfully with used pol? Cerium ox?
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Post by HankRocks on Oct 29, 2020 16:17:24 GMT -5
I re-cycle polish, both AlO and Tin Oxide. Do not track what polished what material as after dry-caking it goes in the same container for use on the next batch. With the exception of a couple of bigs, everything has been polished in the UV-18 vibe. One old rock guy told me he thought that polish gets better after multiple uses.
There has been obsidian in some of the used polish batches and it has polished just fine.
Note that my used polish slurry dry cakes in a dedicated bucket, but open to the air in the garage to aid evaporation and drying. The buckets get moved outdoors on sunny days to speed the process. Never been worried about contamination from dust. Maybe I should but it does not seem to have affected my polish. I have trapped a few insects in the sticky slurry. I figure they add to the slurry during polish!!
Good luck
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Post by Bob on Oct 29, 2020 17:46:09 GMT -5
I put used polish slurry in stainless steel pan about 12x20x3", turn oven on to get hot. Then turn off and put this on top rack. Do once per day after get home until dry cracked cake. Then dump out and into container. Have always wondered if polish could burn by leaving oven on but have not tested.
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Post by parfive on Oct 29, 2020 19:52:53 GMT -5
I haven’t tumbled a load of obsidian, just slabbed and cabbed some mahogany. Saw scraps probably got tossed in with the usual load of agates and jaspers and I don’t remember anything good or bad about it. Rock Shed AlOx exclusively since Thumler’s TiO2 "samples" ran out.
What’s gained by drying out the polish slurry?
I just put the lid on that deli container after it’s filtered through. Next polish batch, give it a shake and dump it in.
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Post by Bob on Oct 30, 2020 11:25:17 GMT -5
parfive, the reason I have been drying the polish slurry (for 5 years now!) is I felt it would be necessary in order to properly measure the amount of dry polish to start the batch with.
I'll give you what happened last week as an example. I had a 12lb load of something complete polish. I put the strainer over a bowl, poured some water into the barrel, and poured out what slurry loosened up to separate the plastic beads. Then I add water to barrel, and do this several times slightly jostling the barrel to bring more plastic beads to float and also stir up more polish. This takes usually 3-4 pour outs. Then I set the strainer aside because I've got all the plastic beads, and then if still much polish clinging to rocks, I jostle them once more with some clean water and pour this out into same bowl. More or less, I'll bet I have slightly over 1 gal of polish water now.
Then I gently place rocks on the strainer, or maybe not but just put under sink faucet to rinse very thoroughly because there is not enough polish in there at this point to bother with recovering.
So the polish water is now maybe double the volume of what it was in the barrel approx. I let it settle overnight and by that time maybe 1/2 can be poured out as water. Another day and maybe 1/2 of what is left poured out again. Now I have what I guess you would call polish slurry that could be reused w/o drying out first. However, I have no idea if dried out if I have the proper amount or not, because of that loss I mentioned. So I've been drying out. So I do that pour off the top maybe 2-3 more days as it settles even more. Then I pour that into the dring pan before it gets too thick to even pour out.
What do you do? Polish slurry can't be poured out from a finished load, it is too sticky and thick. So at what point do you do it your way w/o drying out and also knowing you have correct polish amount for next use?
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Post by Bob on Oct 30, 2020 11:32:02 GMT -5
Eric and others, I think that test 7 day burnish run ends on Sun and I want to ask something now.
When I'm tumbling non-obsidian rocks which is almost all of my tumbling, and something isn't quite right for some rocks or an entire batch in polish, I don't just redo the polish run, I just put them in pre-polish again (1,000 SC) to get them ready for another start at polish. I do this to make sure I have few variables to deal with and not having to figure out later if it's tricky to redo a bad polish run with another polish run on badly polished rocks.
Would you also do this with obsidian? In other words, if this burnish run doesn't go well and the glass/obs still doesn't have an good shine, which is the result of 1 week polish 1 + 1 week polish 2 + 8 days burnish, would you put the obs/glass back into pre-polish to get it ready for another fresh attempt?
In my case, the fresh attempt will be w/o those two small pieces of amethyst in there!
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EricD
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Post by EricD on Oct 30, 2020 12:33:16 GMT -5
I personally would re-do AO500 and AO polish steps, or in your case, SiC 1000 and polish. I doubt any scratches would be so great that SiC 1000 could not remove them. If the scratches (rub marks really, in my case with the little quartz pebble) are too deep for SiC 1000 to remove, I would suspect something else being the problem.
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EricD
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Post by EricD on Oct 30, 2020 16:51:32 GMT -5
I just re-read the thread for the second time... You're running glass with the obsidian? I've never had very good luck with the two together, so I run one or the other. Same basic results as the quartz pebble episode. In my vibe, of course. Rotary may work fine, I don't know.
Harder stuff really doesn't care what rocks are around it, but the glassy stuff seems to take any reason it can get to make you run it again.
I wouldn't even be surprised if the plastic media you are using is embedding (maybe even just a few) pieces of grit (even polish, since I doubt with your methods you would consider using SiC filler in a polish run) and then letting it loose near the end of your run. It could also have particles of an abrasive or metal from the manufacturing facility embedded in a few of them.
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Post by Bob on Oct 30, 2020 18:27:21 GMT -5
Wow, and I thought I was anal with polish! I need to go farther...
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EricD
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Post by EricD on Oct 30, 2020 20:29:11 GMT -5
Wow, and I thought I was anal with polish! I need to go farther... Whatever gets you to your end goal. I guess.
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Post by Bob on Nov 2, 2020 10:52:09 GMT -5
Maybe you do a lot of glass and obsidian. I haven't. But since I want to tumble a little bit of everything, and have some of it around, I want to do some of it at least.
Last night I had a 6lb barrel of amethyst and smoky quartz finish pre-polish. In there was one piece of glass and 3 Apache tears. Guess I had thrown them in there just to see what happened. So, this is exactly the opposite of the other batch which was all obs and glass except for a couple of pieces of amethyst. I'm going to go ahead and let this batch go into polish in a week and see what happens. I guess if your predictions that two pieces of amethyst could ruin a whole batch of glass and obs, I guess no way a tiny amount of glass and obs could get shiny in a batch that is 99% amethyst.
All this doesn't bode well for my big polish test of all those different kinds of rocks in the 4 different polishes. Mixing them up like that may assure that nothing gets shiny and meaningless results overall.
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Post by Starguy on Nov 2, 2020 12:02:58 GMT -5
I’ve had mixed results with glass and obsidian. It seems like it’s critical to get the ratio of sizes correct. Everything in the barrel needs to slide not roll across the face. Rolling will leave micro-chips on all of the rocks. Plastic pellets help.
One thing I can warn you about. Glass and obsidian tend to pressurize rotary barrels. The only times I’ve had lids pop off barrels was with glass/obsidian. I think there are tiny bubbles of pressurized gas in this type of material. The pressure may be released as the material is shaped by the grit.
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Post by Bob on Nov 2, 2020 14:48:40 GMT -5
Boy have I learned the hard way about the gas! Each cleanup is a minimum of 1 hour and sometimes much worse.
I have a container of baking soda on my worktable now and use it. Sometimes I forgot. But I watch for those bulging rubber barrel bottoms! I even have taken to pressing the barrel onto a small rock to dent it inward before sealing it up to get a head start on any pressure that might form which has helped.
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EricD
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Post by EricD on Nov 2, 2020 15:30:48 GMT -5
Boy have I learned the hard way about the gas! Each cleanup is a minimum of 1 hour and sometimes much worse. I have a container of baking soda on my worktable now and use it. Sometimes I forgot. But I watch for those bulging rubber barrel bottoms! I even have taken to pressing the barrel onto a small rock to dent it inward before sealing it up to get a head start on any pressure that might form which has helped. RocksInNJ uses hot water in the barrel so that when it cools it creates a vacuum in the barrel. I thought that was a pretty darn cool idea
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Post by Bob on Nov 2, 2020 15:57:53 GMT -5
Yes, I think I will try that!
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Post by Bob on Nov 3, 2020 10:45:12 GMT -5
Well, the 1 week burnish is done and mostly a disaster. I will post photos first. Then explain what happened. The photos are not high quality as all I had to use this morning was a cellphone but I wanted to give you an idea of the mix of glass/obsidian/amethyst and the sizes.
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Post by Bob on Nov 3, 2020 10:46:48 GMT -5
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Post by Bob on Nov 3, 2020 10:55:48 GMT -5
Some of the photos make the rocks look better than they really are. The mahog obs came close to being okay, but not quite. The amethyst same. The black obs and Apache tears same. But, all of those do not have the shine I'm able to make on agates/jaspers/cherts. The glass is a mixed bag. Some came close to those, others horribly sandy. All the glass pieces almost have frosted and some pitted edges. Some very bad.
So, Eric, I'm going to go with your advice. I'm going to get these ready again in pre-polish. I'm then going to tumble obsidian by itself. Glass by itself. And not mix any amethyst in again.
I have enough obsidian to create about a 12lb load once I get the rest of it processed all the way. Some is still in rough grind.
With glass, I just run into interesting pieces now and then which I break up and keep. I started a new load of it in rough grind last night, and when all ready also will have a 12lb load to polish. I suspect I have a wide variety of glass. Some from junk piles, some from telephone insulators I find and break up, some from scientific instruments so probably a special type, some from fine crystal dinner ware.
With amethyst, smokey quartz, and rock quartz, I also have enough of all that to do a 12lb polish batch when all ready.
So I will I slow down and approach this differently. Some of the glass is rough on the edges enough that I may have to do 2 weeks, not 1, in pre-polish. As a reminder, this was cerium ox and a bit over half plastic pellets.
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EricD
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Post by EricD on Nov 3, 2020 11:03:16 GMT -5
I'm re-living the frustrations I experienced, through your camera lense...
I always thought those small ceramic balls would work really nicely in a rotary polish. Do you plan to use those instead of plastic pellets?
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