electrocutus
spending too much on rocks
Member since October 2020
Posts: 333
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Post by electrocutus on Jun 17, 2021 14:13:29 GMT -5
Hi all, is it normal to have a very thick slurry at the end of my step 3 in a rotatry tumbler with 500-grit silicon carbide? I expect thick slurry in the first 2 stages because of the amount of grinding, but my 500-grit step is usually still prett liquid by the end. The rocks I am polishing are a mix of beach rocks I picked up last summer so they are not the hardest, but I still did not expect this level of thickness.
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Post by rockpickerforever on Jun 17, 2021 17:12:57 GMT -5
Hi all, is it normal to have a very thick slurry at the end of my step 3 in a rotatry tumbler with 500-grit silicon carbide? I expect thick slurry in the first 2 stages because of the amount of grinding, but my 500-grit step is usually still prett liquid by the end. The rocks I am polishing are a mix of beach rocks I picked up last summer so they are not the hardest, but I still did not expect this level of thickness.
I tumbled some beach rocks a few years back. The slurry at about that stage looked just like that!
Edit to add - here's a photo of the slurry
Here's a link to the rest of the post and tumbled rocks. Don't have finished pics on that thread.
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Post by Rockindad on Jun 18, 2021 7:35:56 GMT -5
We tumble a fair amount of softer rocks and 500SiC will still remove a good amount of material from them and ones of mixed hardness.
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electrocutus
spending too much on rocks
Member since October 2020
Posts: 333
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Post by electrocutus on Jun 18, 2021 10:09:34 GMT -5
Thanks! It looks like my slurry is normal. It feels really good in the hand :-) :-)
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Post by greig on Jun 18, 2021 14:34:34 GMT -5
In my humble opinion, the rocks are soft and probably in this stage for too long. In fact, with results like that you could have started with this stage. I got the same results tumbling apatite.
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Post by Bob on Jun 18, 2021 16:58:09 GMT -5
That's a little too thick agreed, but nothing to stress about. Needed a bit more water that's all. Happens to me too perhaps once per month. I have about 35 barrel recharges per month.
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Post by Starguy on Jun 22, 2021 14:42:28 GMT -5
I’ve never seen slurry like that in stage 3. What kind of rocks are you tumbling?
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Post by Bob on Jun 22, 2021 15:05:45 GMT -5
You know, us old timers might have missed something here at first look. I just noticed that size mix is problematic. That's too many large rocks for that barrel w/o smaller stuff mixed in. I would have expected bruising and poor results overall. I also see that the slurry looks foamy with perhaps bubbles in it. So I wonder now if what happened is there was no normal cascade face form but just a bunch of rocks banging around and the slurry got mixed up like a milkshake? The way that slurry hangs on the lid tells me it's foamy and not normal heavy slurry.
So something wasn't right.
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