RedWingTumbler
having dreams about rocks
Member since April 2021
Posts: 65
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Post by RedWingTumbler on Aug 17, 2021 9:25:37 GMT -5
Here is some sodalite that I did in my National Geographic tumbler. This batch had lots of tiny pieces (1/2-inch and less), which actually helped in the tumbling process. Since sodalite is fairly soft, all of the tiny pieces (plus a lot of ceramic media) kept the larger pieces from knocking together. I made one mistake, however. My initial polish stage was 7 days in cerium oxide, after which the batch looked pretty good. Unfortunately, I thought I'd try to get a bit more shine by running an additional three days. Some time during that period, a few of the stones fractured, ruining about a third of the batch. I thought it was a disaster, but after sorting, I found enough decent stones that hadn't been chipped & put them in to burnish. I'm pretty satisfied with the end result.
These stones turned out to be translucent:
Many of the stones are also fluorescent under UV light:
Some detail shots of my favorites:
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Post by hummingbirdstones on Aug 17, 2021 10:37:12 GMT -5
Really nice job on those hard to tumble stones!
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Tommy
Administrator
Member since January 2013
Posts: 12,915
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Post by Tommy on Aug 17, 2021 10:41:16 GMT -5
Very nice!
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Post by fernwood on Aug 17, 2021 10:50:34 GMT -5
Those look great. Thanks for sharing the video.
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Post by perkins17 on Aug 17, 2021 11:06:54 GMT -5
Wow! The UV light really makes things interesting! I've gotta get my hands on one.
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RedWingTumbler
having dreams about rocks
Member since April 2021
Posts: 65
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Post by RedWingTumbler on Aug 17, 2021 11:49:05 GMT -5
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slowblade
off to a rocking start
Member since June 2021
Posts: 7
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Post by slowblade on Aug 17, 2021 12:06:14 GMT -5
great job RedWingTumbler!! shame about the fracturing, but the rest look amazing!
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Brian
fully equipped rock polisher
Member since July 2020
Posts: 1,512
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Post by Brian on Aug 17, 2021 12:37:04 GMT -5
Nicely done! The UV video was fun to see.
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Post by jasoninsd on Aug 17, 2021 19:45:41 GMT -5
Really nice job on those RW! It was cool to see the fluorescence on some of those!
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beehappy4ever
off to a rocking start
Member since June 2021
Posts: 7
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Post by beehappy4ever on Aug 19, 2021 14:41:40 GMT -5
Great job! My last batch of sodalite I only ended up with one or two pieces that didn’t fracture during polish and took a shine. I did stage 1 in rotary tumbler, 2 and 3 in vibratory with a lot of media and then 1000 AO as prepolish in vibe and polish in serium oxide in vibe but was not happy with the results. Maybe next time I will run all stages through rotary and skip vibe.
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