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Post by Toad on Apr 19, 2012 21:19:34 GMT -5
Anyone ever tumble schorl? Any tips?
Thanks
Todd
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Post by johnjsgems on Apr 20, 2012 13:06:49 GMT -5
The schorl in my area was not gemmy enough to do anything with other than specimens. If you can grind a piece you should get a pretty good idea if it will polish and hold together. If it will tumble it would be pretty nice.
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Post by Toad on Apr 20, 2012 14:07:22 GMT -5
I think it is a pretty hard material, but maybe prone to fracture - so maybe treated like obsidian??
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thomtap
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since December 2007
Posts: 237
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Post by thomtap on Apr 20, 2012 14:17:46 GMT -5
I tried some once, and it took a beautiful polish, but I couldn't get the pits and valleys out of the stone. Where it was smooth, it was great, but the deeper I ground, the more pits were revealed. Maybe a better quality would have worked great...
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sweatpea
off to a rocking start
Member since October 2022
Posts: 4
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Post by sweatpea on Oct 27, 2022 10:50:56 GMT -5
I just tumbled a chunk of black tourmaline i found by the road. I have a habbit of stopping when conditions look right for a crystal release. There were several chunks that ran from crumbling to solid. As expected the crumbling ones did not survive but the solid one got a nice pearly almost velvet luster below the surface. This is my 1st run through the stages of tumbling and i know my impatience and inexperienced ignorance caused the crystal to be dull yet i can still see the luster inside. Now that i have read a little i will run it through pre polish and polish with like rocks. Basically i did a mix of rocks and ran them for a couple days at each stage. Without proper cleaning between stages. So lots of room for improvement but still it turned out well.
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quartzilla
Cave Dweller
Member since April 2020
Posts: 1,218
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Post by quartzilla on Oct 27, 2022 16:47:32 GMT -5
I suspect only crystals from a pocket would tumble without pits or fractures. Most black tourmaline found is of the “frozen” variety where it eroded out after being entirely encased in quartz of feldspar.
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