Perigrine
starting to shine!
Member since November 2019
Posts: 33
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Post by Perigrine on Nov 13, 2019 15:04:24 GMT -5
Hi everybody!
I've found myself recently bitten by the rock bug...enough so that I spent money on actual rocks and a National Geographic rotary tumbler. That's something old me never would have done. I'm really looking forward to getting further into the hobby/craft!
I'm running minimal knowledge of actual stones themselves, aside from whatever ancient knowledge I can pull from university geology courses 20 years ago. So I definitely need major guidance. Is there an online site someone can recommend so I can start familiarizing myself with what I should tumble, and which ones should go in the bucket together?
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Post by miket on Nov 13, 2019 15:37:16 GMT -5
Welcome from Nebraska! I'll tell you the best site to go to so that you can familiarize yourself... rocktumblinghobby.com. In all seriousness, you can get all of the knowledge you'll ever need right here- the people on this forum have been helping me along for about a year now.
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Post by MsAli on Nov 13, 2019 16:23:27 GMT -5
Hi and welcome from Minnesota
Mike is right, this is the best place. Search through the rock tumbling threads
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Perigrine
starting to shine!
Member since November 2019
Posts: 33
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Post by Perigrine on Nov 13, 2019 16:32:29 GMT -5
Thank you! Colorado, here. I've been scrolling the forums since yesterday. I'm absorbing as much as I can. I sorta feel like a deer in headlights reading through some of it.
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Post by Pat on Nov 13, 2019 16:43:55 GMT -5
Welcome from California. You've come to the right place.
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Post by aDave on Nov 13, 2019 20:50:10 GMT -5
Welcome to the forum.
Word of warning. Your instructions may cause you to scratch your head at the end of the day when you find unsatisfactory results.
That's just the way it is with tumblers such as yours...designed for the new user with no concern about how rocks may turn out.
Instructions are exceedingly lacking, and the recommendation for one week in a coarse grind are tantamount to snake oil at the start of the process. You might get some success with one week with the subsequent steps, but there are plenty of folks who have come here complaining about not getting polished rocks with your tumbler.
Unfortunately, thus far, the reasons for no success have not been identified. We're not sure of the batch of rocks you received with your kit, so we can't even speak to if any of those rocks will take a polish.
Whatever your results are, hang in there. We'll get you set straight. Best of luck.
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Post by hummingbirdstones on Nov 13, 2019 21:13:46 GMT -5
Welcome from Northern Arizona!
This is THE place for rock tumbling. To help the experts (I'm not one of them -- don't tumble) if you can post pictures of the rocks you have, that would be a great start for those folks to chime in and help you out. Start a new thread on the tumbling board so they see it.
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EricD
Cave Dweller
High in the Mountains
Member since November 2019
Posts: 1,142
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Post by EricD on Nov 13, 2019 22:19:41 GMT -5
Welcome to the forum! Great place to start out with your new hobby. All of these guys and gals on here "rock".
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stonemon
Cave Dweller
Member since January 2017
Posts: 1,024
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Post by stonemon on Nov 13, 2019 23:22:32 GMT -5
Welcome from western Oregon!
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Fossilman
Cave Dweller
Member since January 2009
Posts: 20,666
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Post by Fossilman on Nov 14, 2019 10:27:04 GMT -5
Welcome from Oregon....
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Perigrine
starting to shine!
Member since November 2019
Posts: 33
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Post by Perigrine on Nov 14, 2019 11:09:20 GMT -5
Wow! Thanks for the welcome everybody!
EricD I guess that means I'm only intro to rocking. I'm the first and least impressive of the warmup bands.
aDave: I did some research before I started tumbling, and the instructions said only 3 days for course grit. I checked my rocks after 24 hours. They looked pretty good, smoothing pretty well, except for a couple sodalites (I think?-- softer blue and white). One of them was down to 1/3 the original size, the other had somehow been shaped into an amazingly smooth perfect rectangle. I pulled both of those out to tumble with softer stuff. Aside from whatever randomness NatGeo gave me, I have a bag put together by a rock shop of harder stuff. Ruby quartz and other hard ones. They've been tumbling for 60 hours. Gonna pull them tonight and start the next phase.
Does anybody have any recommendations for indoor rinsing and cleaning? I know grit and plumbing don't mix. My weather is good for now, but later...? Who knows.
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agatemaggot
Cave Dweller
Member since August 2006
Posts: 2,195
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Post by agatemaggot on Nov 14, 2019 11:36:30 GMT -5
Rinse your rocks in a 5 gal. pail of water in an old kitchen strainer then let the water settle and pour clear water in toilet. pour the rest in a container where it will evaporate and dump the remaining powder in garbage can. Landfills contain worse things than rock powder !
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Perigrine
starting to shine!
Member since November 2019
Posts: 33
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Post by Perigrine on Nov 14, 2019 19:25:10 GMT -5
Yes...yes they do! I could even dump some of the rock particles in the rock fields around my apartment.
Thanks for the excellent suggestion. My plumbing thanks you too.
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Post by RocksInNJ on Nov 15, 2019 1:30:32 GMT -5
Welcome from New Jersey. Once you start tumbling rocks of greater hardness 7 or 8 on the Mohs scale, it’ll take a lot more than one week in the first stage of coarse grit. You may have to repeat the process multiple times even up to a few months or more. A week in the other stages may be fine, but the first stage is the most crucial, as you don’t want any sharp/rough edges, pits or cracks in your rocks that could damage or carry leftover grit onto the next stages.
I’m still very new to tumbling myself, but this is something I learned from the wonderful people here and after many attempts at running my rocks through the first stage. In fact it’s been a couple of months now since I started my first batch and I still don’t have enough rocks from the first stages to fill my barrel to 2/3 full for the second stage.
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deedolce
fully equipped rock polisher
Member since October 2006
Posts: 1,828
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Post by deedolce on Nov 15, 2019 8:48:01 GMT -5
I still haven't mastered tumbling, but I will someday! This is definitely THE place and folks here have always been more than generous with their knowledge. Welcome from Tucson!
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Perigrine
starting to shine!
Member since November 2019
Posts: 33
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Post by Perigrine on Nov 15, 2019 11:51:20 GMT -5
Thank you thank you! Who knew tumbling was gonna be so hard? I thought 'You puts the rocks and grits in the barrel and hit go!' I knew I shouldn't have put those NatGeo rocks in with the pack I bought from that rock store, but I wanted a bigger variety. Some rocks are now ground to nothing, and some are barely affected. I'll post some pics when I figure out how to get around work's website security.
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Post by RocksInNJ on Nov 15, 2019 13:48:58 GMT -5
Thank you thank you! Who knew tumbling was gonna be so hard? I thought 'You puts the rocks and grits in the barrel and hit go!' I knew I shouldn't have put those NatGeo rocks in with the pack I bought from that rock store, but I wanted a bigger variety. Some rocks are now ground to nothing, and some are barely affected. I'll post some pics when I figure out how to get around work's website security. Yea you want to run rocks of the same hardness and have multiple sizes as well. Softer rocks requires a lot more knowledge and attention. This hobby is a lot of trial and error and learning as you go, as I’m quickly learning myself, but it sure is fun.
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Perigrine
starting to shine!
Member since November 2019
Posts: 33
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Post by Perigrine on Nov 15, 2019 15:42:43 GMT -5
I'm having fun too, even when I'm looking through my yield and going hey wait, weren't these 300x bigger!?
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Post by RocksInNJ on Nov 16, 2019 1:48:18 GMT -5
Ok that’s weird. I just saw a great reply from aDave that explained a lot of what I wanted to say, but when I went to thumb it, it said it was gone. Hopefully he’ll chime back in. He’s much more experienced than I and the ghost post explained a lot.
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Post by aDave on Nov 16, 2019 12:35:03 GMT -5
Ok that’s weird. I just saw a great reply from aDave that explained a lot of what I wanted to say, but when I went to thumb it, it said it was gone. Hopefully he’ll chime back in. He’s much more experienced than I and the ghost post explained a lot. Thanks for the note. I ended up deleting the post, as I didn't like the way that some of it read, and I thought it could be interpreted that I was lecturing the OP. That was not my intent. Since it was easier to delete, instead of trying to edit and massage, I just took it down. If I get some time later, I'll try to readdress it.
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