christianswest
having dreams about rocks
Member since June 2023
Posts: 54
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Post by christianswest on Jan 3, 2024 16:31:00 GMT -5
I run three 3lb rotary tumblers and a Mini Sonic vibe. Tha majority of rocks I tumble anre 6.5 to 7 Mohs. After Stage 1, I triage rocks to retumble for another week, go to Stage 2, set aside to trim or discard. The discards are ones that will only be ordinary or I’ll never get pits/cracks out of. I take my discard with me on walks and toss them on playgrounds a few at a time. I hope that some kid will find a treasure and this might spark an interest in rockhounding. I don’t want to tie up my vibe with rocks I’ll ultimately discard, so my question to you is there a way to skip stages 2 and 3 and go directly to Stage 4 polish to add some shine to imperfect rocks?
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Post by manofglass on Jan 3, 2024 16:51:37 GMT -5
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pebblesky
fully equipped rock polisher
Purchased another UV mini bowl for tumbling
Member since September 2022
Posts: 1,422
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Post by pebblesky on Jan 3, 2024 16:54:49 GMT -5
Not answering your exact question, but I have tumbled hard rocks with only stage 1, 2 and polish and they look very acceptable. I could feel and see that some of them, especially those not so fine grained ones, are not as glossy as those that went through stage 1,2,3 and polish. For non-collector grade tumbles, I think I can absolutely accept the difference - glossy or not, they are not worth taking macro scale pictures anyway, except for the educational purposes.
For stage 1 and polish, I think it is worth trying, especially if you tumble the rocks in stage 1 longer than normal, so that the 80 grit will naturally break down to finer grits and continue to do some grinding.
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