irlcjrohr
starting to spend too much on rocks
If it does not melt, polish it.
Member since April 2020
Posts: 123
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Post by irlcjrohr on Mar 21, 2021 10:04:47 GMT -5
Great work! Thank you for tracking and charting the results. I am also glad you did not tumble out all the natural features of the rock.
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USMC15
Cave Dweller
I feel like I just came out of the tumbler ...
Member since March 2021
Posts: 273
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Post by USMC15 on Mar 21, 2021 11:57:37 GMT -5
I swear.... tumblers are the most patient people!!! Have you met me? I'm very impatient.
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Benathema
has rocks in the head
God chased me down and made sure I knew He was real June 20, 2022. I've been on a Divine Mission.
Member since November 2019
Posts: 703
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Post by Benathema on Mar 21, 2021 16:40:03 GMT -5
I came to the conclusion that a small 6 pound barrel did just as well as a 15 pound barrel when tumbling large rocks. Instead of having 12 pounds of smalls and a 2-3 pound rock I used a 6-7 pound barrel with 3-4 pounds of smalls and a 2-3 pond rock. Replaced the 15 pound barrel with several small barrels with a large rock in each barrel. And used way less abrasives if the large rock was the only target. Pre-polish and polish steps were faster to achieve and had a higher shine when using (in my case) small pre-polished quartz pea gravel. With only one large rock in the barrel bruises became near impossible and the step 1 speeds could be doubled and almost tripled if someone was interested in speeding the shaping. What you're saying makes a lot of sense. The big rock isn't the only thing that's grinding. Grit going towards the filler rock isn't doing the big rock much good. Targeted barrel sizes would he nice. Currently I'm thinking about this with respect to stages 2-4, where my barrel is effectively locked out for a few weeks as the big rock is the only target. Filling that 12 lb barrel with quartz is a bit intense because it takes so much. There's several hundred rocks in that photo. They're grinding down too, so I have to keep chucking a few new pieces of quartz in with stage 1 to keep the supply topped up. I have a 3/8" classifier I run them through after polish, and keep the smalls in a coffee can. That supply continues to increase, and I only add them right at the polishing step. I think ideally I'll bolster up a supply of quartz filler that I can select from, maybe some for stage 2 only, then polished sub 3/8" for stages 3&4. It's definitely evident the smaller of the filler material doesn't see as much bruising as the bigger filler. Big rock doesn't seem to care though, but that could be from material surrounding the contact point being supportive and better at dispersing the energy instead of chipping out. When I did my pics and video of this, that was right after it came out of the barrel. At first glance it looked great, nice and shiny. I've been looking at the finish on this one a little more closely since it came out, and yea I can see reflections of objects in the room, but there's still something off about the texture of that shine. Since I add sugar to thicken the slurry, I'm also cutting down on tumbling action and the forces between the stones. I took to running my 3 lb barrels for 2 weeks in polish, figuring they needed extra time to make up for my cushioning effects. It does make a noticable difference. Recently found that I need to do the same with the 4 lb tumbler. It's got me thinking that I should just go ahead and extend this idea to the 12 lb barrels. I figured the forces were higher and it wasn't necessary, but maybe it is. I mean, I've obviously decided I want to do big stones, partly because not a lot of people do, but also because I don't know what to do with 10,000 small stones. I gift them away, but I still have a bunch. Some are super cool but I'm hitting a point where I'm tempted to put some up on etsy just to see if they could pay the tumbling electric bill. Increasing efficiency/throughput on these big ones would be good. I've been collecting mass loss data for over a year now, and have about 10 stones of data. I've been fiddling with it for a couple weeks now, trying to make heads or tails out of it, but haven't come up with a convincing answer. It's not exactly like I started this with a lot of forethought into experimental design. Taking pictures and weighing the stones was a niche I tried to fill, now I'm sitting on a pile of data, tossing my hands in the air wondering if anything I've tried actually makes a difference... The only things held constant are barrel size and grit volume. I may fiddle with it a bit and post it. It may be informative, but with some caveat grains of salt.
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Benathema
has rocks in the head
God chased me down and made sure I knew He was real June 20, 2022. I've been on a Divine Mission.
Member since November 2019
Posts: 703
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Post by Benathema on Mar 21, 2021 17:37:27 GMT -5
In your 12th photo the Hertzian cones are obvious, especially in the lower left. These are often not visible until the first week of rough grind to get the weather rind off, but sometimes they are obvious when you pick up a stream rock. These shallow conical surface fractures are associated with quality and usually desirable tumbling material of Mohs 7 or higher, so watch for them. They do take a while to grind out. Some will be only 1mm deep but sometimes 3mm and rarely more. Some of my fav polished rocks were located by actually purposefully watching for Hertzian cones. I've started to become a little more selective on which jaspers come home. There's some that look somewhat neat, but are full of pores. I've taken to chucking them into the deep part of the river to eliminate the temptation of bringing them home. Sometimes patterns and intrusions outweigh surface flaws though - should have an example of that in a week or two. It is nice to find a real solid chunk of jasper though. You can tell as soon as you pick it up. It's not just that it has those cones, but the contiguous waxy luster, and it just feels heavy for it's size. Those are fewer and farther between. This one here was the biggest any of us here have found, so there was a bit of sentimental value in keeping it big, despite the flaws. I get where you're coming from with it, as I too strive for an ideal perfect stone, free of surface flaws. It is not easy, and mostly requires starting with a stone free of defects to begin with, or spending the time to cut or grind the defects out. I can finally do the latter now, so that should help up my game. That said, there are a lot of people who don't even see the flaws. They see big shiny rock and gasp with their eyes bulging. If I don't point out the chips and cracks they don't notice. Or maybe it's not that they don't notice, but rather they don't see them as flaws. To that end there's some cost-benefit analysis that I consider for myself. Another month spent in the tumbler is another month of grit, electricity, the rock getting smaller, and the barrel tied up not working on another one. I know you've ran rocks for years at a time to get them perfect. I'm patient enough to wait 10-14 weeks on a rock, but I'm not sure if I'm thaaaaaat patient.
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Post by HankRocks on Mar 21, 2021 18:20:16 GMT -5
In your 12th photo the Hertzian cones are obvious, especially in the lower left. These are often not visible until the first week of rough grind to get the weather rind off, but sometimes they are obvious when you pick up a stream rock. These shallow conical surface fractures are associated with quality and usually desirable tumbling material of Mohs 7 or higher, so watch for them. They do take a while to grind out. Some will be only 1mm deep but sometimes 3mm and rarely more. Some of my fav polished rocks were located by actually purposefully watching for Hertzian cones. I've started to become a little more selective on which jaspers come home. There's some that look somewhat neat, but are full of pores. I've taken to chucking them into the deep part of the river to eliminate the temptation of bringing them home. Sometimes patterns and intrusions outweigh surface flaws though - should have an example of that in a week or two. It is nice to find a real solid chunk of jasper though. You can tell as soon as you pick it up. It's not just that it has those cones, but the contiguous waxy luster, and it just feels heavy for it's size. Those are fewer and farther between. This one here was the biggest any of us here have found, so there was a bit of sentimental value in keeping it big, despite the flaws. I get where you're coming from with it, as I too strive for an ideal perfect stone, free of surface flaws. It is not easy, and mostly requires starting with a stone free of defects to begin with, or spending the time to cut or grind the defects out. I can finally do the latter now, so that should help up my game. That said, there are a lot of people who don't even see the flaws. They see big shiny rock and gasp with their eyes bulging. If I don't point out the chips and cracks they don't notice. Or maybe it's not that they don't notice, but rather they don't see them as flaws. To that end there's some cost-benefit analysis that I consider for myself. Another month spent in the tumbler is another month of grit, electricity, the rock getting smaller, and the barrel tied up not working on another one. I know you've ran rocks for years at a time to get them perfect. I'm patient enough to wait 10-14 weeks on a rock, but I'm not sure if I'm thaaaaaat patient. For large tumbles it really comes down to selecting the right rock. Prepping by trimming or grinding can improve the rock. Fractures cannot be fixed . I have several candidates for a Big Tumble run. I don't care to do a lot of grinding or trimming as I have enough that are ready without any prep. The other rule I have is I will not tumble a rock for an extended period. If I don't think I can get it through coarse stage in 2 months or less I have picked the wrong rock. Too many better pieces to work on. Good luck
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jamesp
Cave Dweller
Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,158
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Post by jamesp on Mar 22, 2021 3:59:40 GMT -5
I came to the conclusion that a small 6 pound barrel did just as well as a 15 pound barrel when tumbling large rocks. Instead of having 12 pounds of smalls and a 2-3 pound rock I used a 6-7 pound barrel with 3-4 pounds of smalls and a 2-3 pond rock. Replaced the 15 pound barrel with several small barrels with a large rock in each barrel. And used way less abrasives if the large rock was the only target. Pre-polish and polish steps were faster to achieve and had a higher shine when using (in my case) small pre-polished quartz pea gravel. With only one large rock in the barrel bruises became near impossible and the step 1 speeds could be doubled and almost tripled if someone was interested in speeding the shaping. What you're saying makes a lot of sense. The big rock isn't the only thing that's grinding. Grit going towards the filler rock isn't doing the big rock much good. Targeted barrel sizes would he nice. Currently I'm thinking about this with respect to stages 2-4, where my barrel is effectively locked out for a few weeks as the big rock is the only target. Filling that 12 lb barrel with quartz is a bit intense because it takes so much. There's several hundred rocks in that photo. They're grinding down too, so I have to keep chucking a few new pieces of quartz in with stage 1 to keep the supply topped up. I have a 3/8" classifier I run them through after polish, and keep the smalls in a coffee can. That supply continues to increase, and I only add them right at the polishing step. I think ideally I'll bolster up a supply of quartz filler that I can select from, maybe some for stage 2 only, then polished sub 3/8" for stages 3&4. It's definitely evident the smaller of the filler material doesn't see as much bruising as the bigger filler. Big rock doesn't seem to care though, but that could be from material surrounding the contact point being supportive and better at dispersing the energy instead of chipping out. When I did my pics and video of this, that was right after it came out of the barrel. At first glance it looked great, nice and shiny. I've been looking at the finish on this one a little more closely since it came out, and yea I can see reflections of objects in the room, but there's still something off about the texture of that shine. Since I add sugar to thicken the slurry, I'm also cutting down on tumbling action and the forces between the stones. I took to running my 3 lb barrels for 2 weeks in polish, figuring they needed extra time to make up for my cushioning effects. It does make a noticable difference. Recently found that I need to do the same with the 4 lb tumbler. It's got me thinking that I should just go ahead and extend this idea to the 12 lb barrels. I figured the forces were higher and it wasn't necessary, but maybe it is. I mean, I've obviously decided I want to do big stones, partly because not a lot of people do, but also because I don't know what to do with 10,000 small stones. I gift them away, but I still have a bunch. Some are super cool but I'm hitting a point where I'm tempted to put some up on etsy just to see if they could pay the tumbling electric bill. Increasing efficiency/throughput on these big ones would be good. I've been collecting mass loss data for over a year now, and have about 10 stones of data. I've been fiddling with it for a couple weeks now, trying to make heads or tails out of it, but haven't come up with a convincing answer. It's not exactly like I started this with a lot of forethought into experimental design. Taking pictures and weighing the stones was a niche I tried to fill, now I'm sitting on a pile of data, tossing my hands in the air wondering if anything I've tried actually makes a difference... The only things held constant are barrel size and grit volume. I may fiddle with it a bit and post it. It may be informative, but with some caveat grains of salt. An RTH member had tumbled a beautiful ~3 pound canyon jasper in a 6 pound Lortone using small garnets Benathema. He used the normal grit cycles for a rotary. The small garnets must have put the super shine on the canyon. He gave me the idea of using a small barrel on a big rock and smaller smalls in stage 3 and 4 to avoid using sugar as a thickener to achieve high polish. For step 1 larger agate smalls about 1 inch in size or the quartz pebbles you used seemed to speed things up instead of the tiny garnets. If smalls are too small in step one it retards the shaping process. Consider separating the pea sized finished white quartz to use on the large rock for steps 3 and 4 to help with polish. The SiC 30 steps were sure enough dead linear.
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Post by Bob on Mar 22, 2021 15:47:36 GMT -5
I've started to become a little more selective on which jaspers come home. There's some that look somewhat neat, but are full of pores. I've taken to chucking them into the deep part of the river to eliminate the temptation of bringing them home. Sometimes patterns and intrusions outweigh surface flaws though - should have an example of that in a week or two. It is nice to find a real solid chunk of jasper though. You can tell as soon as you pick it up. It's not just that it has those cones, but the contiguous waxy luster, and it just feels heavy for it's size. Those are fewer and farther between. This one here was the biggest any of us here have found, so there was a bit of sentimental value in keeping it big, despite the flaws. I get where you're coming from with it, as I too strive for an ideal perfect stone, free of surface flaws. It is not easy, and mostly requires starting with a stone free of defects to begin with, or spending the time to cut or grind the defects out. I can finally do the latter now, so that should help up my game. That said, there are a lot of people who don't even see the flaws. They see big shiny rock and gasp with their eyes bulging. If I don't point out the chips and cracks they don't notice. Or maybe it's not that they don't notice, but rather they don't see them as flaws. To that end there's some cost-benefit analysis that I consider for myself. Another month spent in the tumbler is another month of grit, electricity, the rock getting smaller, and the barrel tied up not working on another one. I know you've ran rocks for years at a time to get them perfect. I'm patient enough to wait 10-14 weeks on a rock, but I'm not sure if I'm thaaaaaat patient. You may be being too hard on yourself and overanalyzing it. Have fun! I see you are in WA, which I regard as a land of amazing jaspers. I explored the Rogue River basin a few years ago and got some great material. One had a horrible weather rind but I felt I could see a tiny tinge of green. It ended up being my first piece of Vesuvianite and gorgeous. Took a long time (over a year) and several experts to help me ID it. Don't be afraid to take that questionable rock and go a week in coarse grind to see what you have. Even if pitted when you find it, sometimes those go away. I think there are two treasure hunts. The first is finding them in the field. The second is seeing what you've got after 1 week of coarse grind. Here I am with 7 years of doing this, and although I get ever more picky in the field and better able to pick the best, I still discard 1/3 probably of all that I do after the first week in coarse grind. One thing to pass on though. If the surface is rather fractured after cleaning it up for a week, I don't look for an excuse to keep it, but look for an excuse to discard it. I used to err on keeping and continuing to grind, but that ended up being futile. Now when I throw a rock away, I am no longer depressed, but kind of excited because I have plenty in storage to fill its place. Unfortunately, about 5,000lbs now, double what I had only a year ago. When you get some in storage, you won't fall so much in love with each rock.
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Post by Bob on Mar 24, 2021 10:33:13 GMT -5
Here's an example of what I'm talking about. I'm tumbling a lot of rocks this year in the 5-10lb range. This is a 10 lber after completing its first week in rough grind. The weather rind is off, I can see the surface. I did the Mohs test and it's at least 7 = good. However, this rock is an example of how sometimes I can't make a decision as to keep or discard after only 1 week, so I need another. I need to take the surface down a little bit more to be sure. It's a rock unlike any other I've ever found in terms of pattern and color, so I like it and hope it works. But it's hard to tell so far if the fractures on the surface are very superficial or go in a bit more than I like. Sometimes fractures are just lines being really silicified fractures. If you lick one and the line remains darker longer than the adjacent surface, it's almost always a true fracture, not just a line. This one has both on the surface which makes early decisions difficult. This rock is not small. It was tumbled with only rocks smaller than a lemon, and not a single one suffered any damage, even those with lower Mohs such as Healerite and some Amazonite. However, if this rock was not sort of rounded to begin with, and had some very sharp edges, I would have only tumbled it with tough Mohs 7 like agates and jaspers. I find one large rock in a barrel really accelerates the tumbling action on all the other material very efficiently. However, I have slowed down my large tumblers after much experimentation over several years. I'm not looking it up right now, but I think they are 15 to 18 RPM.
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Post by HankRocks on Mar 24, 2021 10:50:58 GMT -5
Here's an example of what I'm talking about. I'm tumbling a lot of rocks this year in the 5-10lb range. This is a 10 lber after completing its first week in rough grind. The weather rind is off, I can see the surface. I did the Mohs test and it's at least 7 = good. However, this rock is an example of how sometimes I can't make a decision as to keep or discard after only 1 week, so I need another. I need to take the surface down a little bit more to be sure. It's a rock unlike any other I've ever found in terms of pattern and color, so I like it and hope it works. But it's hard to tell so far if the fractures on the surface are very superficial or go in a bit more than I like. Sometimes fractures are just lines being really silicified fractures. If you lick one and the line remains darker longer than the adjacent surface, it's almost always a true fracture, not just a line. This one has both on the surface which makes early decisions difficult. This rock is not small. It was tumbled with only rocks smaller than a lemon, and not a single one suffered any damage, even those with lower Mohs such as Healerite and some Amazonite. However, if this rock was not sort of rounded to begin with, and had some very sharp edges, I would have only tumbled it with tough Mohs 7 like agates and jaspers. I find one large rock in a barrel really accelerates the tumbling action on all the other material very efficiently. However, I have slowed down my large tumblers after much experimentation over several years. I'm not looking it up right now, but I think they are 15 to 18 RPM. As you have already mentioned, it's all about the fractures. Are they surface superficial or do they have depth. For my purposes fractures showing and it's most likely a no-go. Anyway good luck.
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Post by Bob on Mar 25, 2021 10:49:02 GMT -5
HankRocks, my thoughts also. However, I took a good look at it under a bright light and was rather surprised to learn that most of the fractures are silicified, not open. And the new material in them is a pretty green even though it looks white not green in my first photo. This same green is in flecks throughout the rock. I wonder if it is epidote. A rock like this one is totally unknown to me before.
I'm certainly now excited about this rock and hope it processes okay. Potential surprises like this is one of the reasons I haul things back arduously in my daypack at times. I'm developing a whole collection of larger rocks including many colors and mixtures of granite too which I really like.
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Post by Bob on Mar 25, 2021 13:12:53 GMT -5
If anyone knows what this material is, please tell me. I'm pretty sure it came from either 1) a glacial esker between Lake Nipigon and Lake Superior, 2) the Fraser River in BC or 3) the Arkansas River between Leadville and Canon City.
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