EricD
Cave Dweller
High in the Mountains
Member since November 2019
Posts: 1,142
|
Post by EricD on Nov 10, 2019 12:20:10 GMT -5
Hello everyone. I'm Eric from Montana.
A few months ago I was given an almost unused Thumler's A-R12 tumbler by a friend of mine. Until then I had never even thought about getting into rock polishing.
I immediately went out searching for unique rocks (well, what rock isn't?) to start tumbling! A lot of the rocks that I returned with are what I call "field rocks". The kind you see in wheat fields/river bottoms that appear ordinary unless you look very closely or wet them. Most of them were already round. All of them were various hardness. I even picked up some broken smoked glass.
Being completely new at tumbling rocks, I followed the instructions and ran them for a week with SiC 60/90 to remove pits and blemishes, and proceeded to do the same length of time with 150/220 SiC, 500 SiC, AO TXP polish. I had not read about thickening the slurry or adding ceramic media, so as you can imagine my rocks got pretty beat up. In hindsight the bashing sounds should have alerted me to a problem.
I then decided I was going to do some reading and only process rocks in SiC 60/90 until I had a better understanding of the process. This forum has been an amazing source of information!! Special thanks to the documented experiments of jamesp and the time he took adding them to the forum.
After a lot of reading on RTH and other tumbling forums, I decided that I should buy a Lot-O Twin to do all but the shaping of my rocks, and at the recommendation of many of you to other people here, sourced one from Shawn at The Rock Shed close by in South Dakota. My experience with him was excellent, however my experience with FedEx taking 6 days to deliver it was not. It's a 9 hour drive from here, come on FedEx! I also bought 12lbs of rough rocks from Shawn, all 6-7 mohs, and stocked up on vibe abrasive and ceramic media. Those rocks should be a real pleasure to shine up.
I am now in the process of finishing the poor bashed up rocks in the Lot-O. Holy cow this thing is fast at it's job! I mounted it on top of 6 concrete pavers that are 2" thick with 4 1/4" concrete fasteners, and glued the pavers together with Gorilla heavy duty construction adhesive, at the recommendation of the local hardware store that sold me the pavers. It vibrated the concrete floor quite a bit, so I set the whole thing on 4 tennis balls with holes drilled in them to allow them to flatten a bit. It's now quieter than my Thumler's rotary.
I am using a variety of information for my vibe recipe from this forum and others, including information shared by jamesp, ingawh, Drummond Island Rocks, and Bikerrandy. Thank you guys and gals for all the useful information and photos you have shared of your experiences!
I am definitely going to try a load in the Lot-O with some AO 46 I purchased from The Abrasive Armory on eBay, after reading jamesp thread on how he has been going straight from AO 80 to 14k AO polish in his vibe. Such a great short cut!
It's a pleasure to be a member here, after lurking as a guest for a couple of months. I apologize for the lengthy post...
Eric
|
|
|
Post by aDave on Nov 10, 2019 13:14:26 GMT -5
Welcome to the forum. Impressive first post, if not for the detail but the fact that you've got your avatar up already and figured out proper tagging - even with folks whose user names don't match their display names. Just a couple random thoughts came to mind as I was reading your post: Your one week time in 60/90 may have been okay for softer stuff you may have found, but plan on weeks, if not months, when you start running your harder materials (7+ on Mohs). Don't know if you caught it in your Lot-O instructions, but you'll need to run the twin with both barrels filled. Considering your attention to detail, I'm sure you saw it, but I just thought I'd mention it. What do you hope to accomplish by using AO 46 in the Lot-O? I'm not being critical...just curious. Was someone doing that as a first stage step somewhere? I know Rob Jugglerguy did shaping runs with his Lot-O as an experiment, and it just didn't do quite as well as a rotary for the coarse grind. That's about it. Again, welcome.
|
|
EricD
Cave Dweller
High in the Mountains
Member since November 2019
Posts: 1,142
|
Post by EricD on Nov 10, 2019 13:57:24 GMT -5
Welcome to the forum. Impressive first post, if not for the detail but the fact that you've got your avatar up already and figured out proper tagging - even with folks whose user names don't match their display names. Just a couple random thoughts came to mind as I was reading your post: Your one week time in 60/90 may have been okay for softer stuff you may have found, but plan on weeks, if not months, when you start running your harder materials (7+ on Mohs). Don't know if you caught it in your Lot-O instructions, but you'll need to run the twin with both barrels filled. Considering your attention to detail, I'm sure you saw it, but I just thought I'd mention it. What do you hope to accomplish by using AO 46 in the Lot-O? I'm not being critical...just curious. Was someone doing that as a first stage step somewhere? I know Rob Jugglerguy did shaping runs with his Lot-O as an experiment, and it just didn't do quite as well as a rotary for the coarse grind. That's about it. Again, welcome. The one week run in the rotary did perfect on some of the softer stuff. Some of the harder stuff is still in there after a couple months. Must be some pretty hard rock or I'm not maintaining the grit as well as I should be. I did notice that I have to run both barrels on the Lot-O Twin, which should give the machine some "off time" here and there when I'm not experimenting with different recipes or using it with rocks I don't want to change the shape of too much. Hard for a single rotary to keep up with a 9lb vibe.
As for running the AO 46 in the vibe, I hope to duplicate what jamesp stumbled upon >here<It may take a bit longer to break down than his AO 80, but I expect similar results.
Eric
|
|
ingawh
starting to spend too much on rocks
The rock wants to shine, I just help it get there
Member since February 2011
Posts: 194
|
Post by ingawh on Nov 10, 2019 15:50:22 GMT -5
Welcome to the addiction, and thanks for the shout-out. :-) Glad it's been helpful. Looking forward to results photos down the line. Best wishes, Inga
|
|
|
Post by Jugglerguy on Nov 10, 2019 16:05:14 GMT -5
Welcome to the forum, Eric. Looks like you're off to a good start.
|
|
|
Post by Pat on Nov 10, 2019 17:54:20 GMT -5
Welcome from California! Not a tumbler.
|
|
Fossilman
Cave Dweller
Member since January 2009
Posts: 20,680
|
Post by Fossilman on Nov 10, 2019 17:56:08 GMT -5
Howdy from Oregon... Montana my home state, from Roundup..
|
|
|
Post by hummingbirdstones on Nov 10, 2019 18:05:10 GMT -5
Welcome from Northern Arizona!
|
|
Tommy
Administrator
Member since January 2013
Posts: 12,648
|
Post by Tommy on Nov 10, 2019 18:08:49 GMT -5
Welcome EricD! Thanks for signing up and the introduction.
|
|
stonemon
Cave Dweller
Member since January 2017
Posts: 1,024
|
Post by stonemon on Nov 10, 2019 19:20:46 GMT -5
Welcom from the McKenzie River in Oregon!
|
|
EricD
Cave Dweller
High in the Mountains
Member since November 2019
Posts: 1,142
|
Post by EricD on Nov 10, 2019 20:25:33 GMT -5
Thank you all for such a warm welcome on such a cold and snowy day ingawh will have some pics up in another section of the forum soon. 5 days I believe. I'll post them even if the result isn't worthy of it. Eric
|
|
|
Post by RocksInNJ on Nov 10, 2019 23:13:12 GMT -5
Welcome from New Jersey and best of luck with you new hobby.
|
|
|
Post by TheRock on Nov 11, 2019 3:59:13 GMT -5
From SW/Michigan
|
|
|
Post by MsAli on Nov 11, 2019 6:23:05 GMT -5
Welcome from Mn!
|
|
jamesp
Cave Dweller
Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,154
|
Post by jamesp on Nov 11, 2019 7:00:22 GMT -5
Welcome to the forum Eric. Thanks for the words. Please experiment with various aluminum oxides in your vibratory. Be aware I used a powerful Vibrasonic vibe with a thicker sugar slurry to circulate the larger/heavier AO 46 particles. AO 220 might have been a better choice for the Lot-O and the end result should be the same. The Lot-O has a bit more gentle action and may struggle to vibrate a thicker slurry that may be required to circulate AO 46 just saying. Possibly AO 80 too... You could/should order a small pack of AO 80(and AO 220) from the Armory just in case. AO 220 may be the best choice for the Lot-O actually. Either will give a fine polish if you run your rotary for a long time on your last silicon carbide addition to break it down thoroughly. After running say SiC 60 in the rotary I do an SiC 500 rotary run for 7 to 10 days to surface prep for an AO 220 run and an AO polish run in the vibe.
So recipe is SiC 60(or 16/30/46), then SiC 500 surface prep both in rotary. Then AO 220 and AO polish in vibe. Sometimes I omit the AO polish run. The AO 220 does a fine job in a gentler vibe. I was proving a point about aluminum oxide with the AO 46 run..
Also, there has been concerns here about running coarser grit like 46 and 80 sizes in a vibe and causing wear on the hopper. This is true for silicon carbide as it is very sharp and aggressive. AO 46 and AO 80 is safe because it is a much smoother abrasive.
AO is a fine finishing abrasive, useless for shaping. Shape with aggressive SiC.
|
|
|
Post by mohs on Nov 11, 2019 16:30:00 GMT -5
Welcome to RTH Eric Ha Ha you have great signature ! EdM hs
|
|
|
Post by As I in does tries! on Nov 28, 2019 0:14:48 GMT -5
Greetings and welcome from Scotland on the other side of the pond!
|
|