Post by tkvancil on Jan 19, 2013 23:34:59 GMT -5
My earliest attempts at tumbling were pure frustration. The issues were overloading the barrel. too much water, and improper belt tension. The 3# lortones I use call for 4 tbs. of grit. After a week of tumbling I would open them to find 3 tbs. of basically unused grit. In short time I got my issues straightened out with information I got from this board. I did however continue to rinse the mud out of my slurry to see how much "easily recovered" grit was left. I used this as one indicator of my progress.
"Easily recovered" goes like this. Rocks and slurry are dumped into a plastic colander sitting inside a large plastic bowl. A garden sprayer is used to rinse the slurry off the rocks. Next,after settling, the water muck and such are poured out of the rinse bowl into a 5 gallon "muck bucket". Now by turning the bowl and spraying in water the rest of the fine particles can be poured off into the muck (basically panning). When the water pours off clear all that is left is the heaviest particles. These days I empty up to five 3# barrels into the same bowl and get 1tbs. or less of left over grit.
Initially I did not reuse this stuff as I had read on the internet that unused grit had all the sharp edges worn off and was useless. I still saved it because in my mind that information didn't jive with what I knew about crystals and how they fracture. That and I'm cheap . The first time I did reuse it was with some Mexican Crazy Lace. I had noticed that during the first week of tumbling I wasn't using up the grit. I think it was because all the soft stuff was grinding off fast and mucking up the works. So when I started a new batch I put in recovered grit. I have also used recovered grit in later weeks of the coarse grind. According to my notes the reduction in mass is comparable to using fresh grit.
Now I'm not suggesting that it's really worth your time or trouble to do this... but in case you want to it works. I might not be doing it myself except that it has become part of my process. Still using this method to help gage my success.
"Easily recovered" goes like this. Rocks and slurry are dumped into a plastic colander sitting inside a large plastic bowl. A garden sprayer is used to rinse the slurry off the rocks. Next,after settling, the water muck and such are poured out of the rinse bowl into a 5 gallon "muck bucket". Now by turning the bowl and spraying in water the rest of the fine particles can be poured off into the muck (basically panning). When the water pours off clear all that is left is the heaviest particles. These days I empty up to five 3# barrels into the same bowl and get 1tbs. or less of left over grit.
Initially I did not reuse this stuff as I had read on the internet that unused grit had all the sharp edges worn off and was useless. I still saved it because in my mind that information didn't jive with what I knew about crystals and how they fracture. That and I'm cheap . The first time I did reuse it was with some Mexican Crazy Lace. I had noticed that during the first week of tumbling I wasn't using up the grit. I think it was because all the soft stuff was grinding off fast and mucking up the works. So when I started a new batch I put in recovered grit. I have also used recovered grit in later weeks of the coarse grind. According to my notes the reduction in mass is comparable to using fresh grit.
Now I'm not suggesting that it's really worth your time or trouble to do this... but in case you want to it works. I might not be doing it myself except that it has become part of my process. Still using this method to help gage my success.