Wooferhound
Cave Dweller
Lortone QT66 and 3A
Member since December 2016
Posts: 1,422
|
Post by Wooferhound on Feb 20, 2017 12:32:37 GMT -5
It was very inconvenient for me to do my Sunday Cleanouts and inspections out in the yard on my knees and the grit going everywhere. So I built a table with a sink to make it much easier and less messy. I had salvaged a sink from the curb and had been dragging it around with me for 20 years intending to use it to help me in the darkroom developing prints. It became obvious that I was going to use it for my new rock hobby because nobody uses film anymore. Made from 100% used wood and not very weatherproofed but should last long enough before I move to my next house. Underneath is a 2 stage grit recovery system. The first small tub will catch the heavy stuff, then the 5 gallon bucket will be a settling tank and will be siphoned out a couple of days after the cleanouts. Eventually the heavy stuff will be reused in tumbling stage 1 and the fine stuff settled in the bucket will be used to fill holes in my yard.
|
|
|
Post by Pat on Feb 20, 2017 12:50:30 GMT -5
Clever, workable, and convenient!
|
|
Wooferhound
Cave Dweller
Lortone QT66 and 3A
Member since December 2016
Posts: 1,422
|
Post by Wooferhound on Feb 20, 2017 12:55:51 GMT -5
I was thinking that, just by adding some screen, I could have Plastic Bead recovery too. another stage
|
|
jamesp
Cave Dweller
Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,154
|
Post by jamesp on Feb 20, 2017 13:18:29 GMT -5
yes !! a 2 stage separator !
Prelude to coarse grit diamond grit seperation.
COUP de GRAS
Making an offer on your patent
|
|
Wooferhound
Cave Dweller
Lortone QT66 and 3A
Member since December 2016
Posts: 1,422
|
Post by Wooferhound on Feb 20, 2017 18:57:20 GMT -5
If you can separate SiC from Diamonds, I will be truly impressed. Sounds like a sluice to me.
|
|
Wooferhound
Cave Dweller
Lortone QT66 and 3A
Member since December 2016
Posts: 1,422
|
Post by Wooferhound on Feb 20, 2017 20:21:27 GMT -5
I absolutely do not care, what goes down this drain.
|
|
jamesp
Cave Dweller
Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,154
|
Post by jamesp on Feb 22, 2017 6:05:45 GMT -5
If you can separate SiC from Diamonds, I will be truly impressed. Sounds like a sluice to me. This would work well separating heavier diamond grit from tumbles. In the event you were using expensive diamond grit instead of SiC grit.
|
|
Wooferhound
Cave Dweller
Lortone QT66 and 3A
Member since December 2016
Posts: 1,422
|
Post by Wooferhound on Feb 22, 2017 12:58:52 GMT -5
This grit recovery system pictured has not been used yet so it is not proven. The top tub is 1.5 gallons and it just seems that the flow will be too slow to flush out some of the finer powder that I'm not interested in adding to a stage 1 grind except maybe as a thickener. I am looking for a shorter narrower container to use which will have a faster flow to prevent that from happening. Just wanting to keep the bigger stuff, larger than about 220 grit would be nice. I'll use it for the first time on Sunday and then I will get an idea how to proceed next?
|
|
Mark K
Cave Dweller
Member since April 2012
Posts: 2,528
|
Post by Mark K on Feb 22, 2017 14:52:50 GMT -5
I think that the top tub is too small and is going to fail. If you are trying to salvage stage one grit, just get a 100 mesh classifier and run the water through that.
|
|
|
Post by captbob on Feb 22, 2017 15:16:32 GMT -5
Same with Jame's diamonds. A classifier on top of a 5 gallon bucket would do it.
|
|
RockDog
off to a rocking start
Member since July 2015
Posts: 22
|
Post by RockDog on Feb 22, 2017 18:09:52 GMT -5
Love the idea of the work table. I'm also a little tired of bending over and rinsing. Another project. Thanks for the idea.
|
|
jamesp
Cave Dweller
Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,154
|
Post by jamesp on Feb 22, 2017 18:46:18 GMT -5
Unfortunatly my slurry is to thick to go thru a fine screen. I pour the barrel into the stainless pan with 1/4" holes while it is sitting on the black tub. Then wash the slurry off the rocks and capture everything in the black pan. Then remove stainless pan of rocks and start to pour water off the black pan. By this time the thick slurry has thinned and released the grit and the grit has settled to the bottom of the black pan. Tilt black pan with corner in mouth of barrel and with a fine spray wash it back into the barrel. Or rinse into a storage vessel for reuse.
|
|
Wooferhound
Cave Dweller
Lortone QT66 and 3A
Member since December 2016
Posts: 1,422
|
Post by Wooferhound on Feb 27, 2017 7:36:00 GMT -5
I did my first cleanouts yesterday using my new sink and grit recovery system. I had two 6 pound barrels running course stage 1, and a 3 pound barrel running polish. It was so nice to be able to stand up at this sink and wash everything down the drain without concern for the pipes. The grit recovery system worked fairly well. I punched a hole into the end of the tub that I wanted to catch the course grit into, this was to try and increase the flow rate so only the largest grit sizes would be captured. I feel that I am capturing everything that is 500 mesh and larger which is a finer size than I was targeting but it's plenty workable. Here is the grit recovery tub after I was finished and it had some time to settle out. Poured the water off the top and it is all drying out right now. So overall it was a success and a huge convenience. After the captured grit dries out I'll post what I find in there. In the future I will probably just keep the captured grit wet until it's next chance to get used.
|
|
jamesp
Cave Dweller
Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,154
|
Post by jamesp on Feb 27, 2017 8:16:18 GMT -5
Perfect. Maybe a taller top drain on recovery tray for 200 particles and smaller.(looks like the 5 gallon bucket has some SiC splashed up on the walls). Just a note, I pour the whole slurry diluted in rock wash less rocks into a bit deeper, larger tray and let it sit for a while. Once clear water rises and silt/grit settles I pour off the clear water. Zero loss. My system, down on knees. Like yours way better. www.flickr.com/photos/67205364@N06/sets/72157677229423944
|
|
Wooferhound
Cave Dweller
Lortone QT66 and 3A
Member since December 2016
Posts: 1,422
|
Post by Wooferhound on Feb 27, 2017 11:07:41 GMT -5
(looks like the 5 gallon bucket has some SiC splashed up on the walls). Last week I used that bucket to do my cleanouts so I could see how much water I used in the process. Yesterday when I was working with my current tumbles, I ran that old slurry through the recovery system to get that grit back too. So in the last picture, the settled grit is actually from four 6 pound barrel cleanouts.
|
|
Tommy
Administrator
Member since January 2013
Posts: 12,592
|
Post by Tommy on Feb 27, 2017 14:21:00 GMT -5
That's awesome thank you. One of the reasons I don't tumble much is because I hate the cleanouts. Great idea - I'm going to 'borrow' it
|
|
Wooferhound
Cave Dweller
Lortone QT66 and 3A
Member since December 2016
Posts: 1,422
|
Post by Wooferhound on Mar 2, 2017 0:24:33 GMT -5
Well Then ... how are y'all doing this ? I would have expected that you guys had invented something like this way before I got involved in December. A cleanout sink and grit recovery seems to be the most important thing involved with this hobby. Common question around here is "What to do with the slurry"?. The common answer is to pour it into the back corner of the yard.
One thing that I noticed is that even with a dedicated sink , it is still a messy process.
|
|
Wooferhound
Cave Dweller
Lortone QT66 and 3A
Member since December 2016
Posts: 1,422
|
Post by Wooferhound on Mar 8, 2017 12:28:26 GMT -5
Been very busy lately but finally got around to inspecting the Recovered Grit from my first 4 cleanouts of stage 1 course grinding. This recovered grit had the clear water poured off the top and ended up drying out into a 1/2 inch cake. I crushed up a small chunk of it and took a very close look. Seems that the leftover grit is fairly used up. I was using both 80 AO and 80 SiC to begin with, then rolling it 4 to 8 days before cleanouts. There are rock pebbles in there but the settlement system I made seems to be recovering grit mainly between 200 and 800 mesh. I did throw a coupla large chunks of it into the last Stage 1 barrel that I started on Sunday.
|
|
Wooferhound
Cave Dweller
Lortone QT66 and 3A
Member since December 2016
Posts: 1,422
|
Post by Wooferhound on Mar 19, 2017 17:31:16 GMT -5
So, I have had a chance to use some recovered grit in the last few rolls in stage one that I've started. I think that the recovered grit is pretty much completely broken down and there is not much cutting power left in it. But, it does get a good slurry started right away and that slurry is made up of small abrasive and rock particles which can't be bad. I will continue to use this recovered grit in all stage one tumbles.
|
|
Wooferhound
Cave Dweller
Lortone QT66 and 3A
Member since December 2016
Posts: 1,422
|
Post by Wooferhound on Mar 20, 2017 16:18:08 GMT -5
And , another thought . . . The runoff from the settlement tank only contains very fine powder that is the broken down remnants of SiC and AO grits among other things ? So my new thought is to try and use this dried runoff powder as a polish ?
|
|