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Post by Starguy on Apr 15, 2024 16:23:53 GMT -5
Those have great fortifications. It looks like they could have parallax shadows. The cracks barely show. They must be pretty tight. Your shaping and polish look fantastic as usual. I don’t think I’ve heard of Mongolian banded agates before. They’re cool. Thanks for showing.
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pebblesky
fully equipped rock polisher
Purchased another UV mini bowl for tumbling
Member since September 2022
Posts: 1,438
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Post by pebblesky on Apr 16, 2024 13:31:34 GMT -5
Those have great fortifications. It looks like they could have parallax shadows. The cracks barely show. They must be pretty tight. Your shaping and polish look fantastic as usual. I don’t think I’ve heard of Mongolian banded agates before. They’re cool. Thanks for showing. Thanks! I bought these agates from the Inner Mongolia China sellers. According to them the agates were imported from Mongolia. For tumbling I hand picked the pieces that looked promising. I hammered the highly fractured pieces to make very small fillers. I am also tumbling Xinjiang banded agates (black/grey/white bands) and Inner Mongolian banded agates (white, yellow and colorful in the rare cases). Gobi Desert is huge and spans across multiple provinces and countries. Most sellers are not exact about the accurate origination of the agates.
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Post by jasoninsd on Apr 16, 2024 16:59:29 GMT -5
One funny thing: when I sent some of the pictures to my mom, her first comment was "Your hand is scary!". She definitely only cares how the rocks should look, not my hand Those Mongolian Agates look amazing!! This part of what you said had me chuckling!!
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choochoorocks
starting to spend too much on rocks
Rock hounding
Member since April 2020
Posts: 147
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Post by choochoorocks on Apr 19, 2024 10:55:50 GMT -5
Wow love those gobi Jaspers! Their colors are so sweet!
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pebblesky
fully equipped rock polisher
Purchased another UV mini bowl for tumbling
Member since September 2022
Posts: 1,438
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Post by pebblesky on Apr 19, 2024 15:49:31 GMT -5
Some random tumbles from the same batch: A Picture Stone from Xinjiang, China. While I like the earth tone colors and the patterns on them, I expect the majority of them to only take a polish somewhere between matte and glossy. This specific piece has internal tiny air bubbles everywhere, and the photos highlight these air bubbles.
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pebblesky
fully equipped rock polisher
Purchased another UV mini bowl for tumbling
Member since September 2022
Posts: 1,438
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Post by pebblesky on Apr 19, 2024 15:52:37 GMT -5
A yellow jasper from Roy's tumble and end cut box. A portrait view of a desert.
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pebblesky
fully equipped rock polisher
Purchased another UV mini bowl for tumbling
Member since September 2022
Posts: 1,438
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Post by pebblesky on Apr 19, 2024 15:59:52 GMT -5
A dino bone piece. From either Roy's or Tony's box.
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pebblesky
fully equipped rock polisher
Purchased another UV mini bowl for tumbling
Member since September 2022
Posts: 1,438
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Post by pebblesky on Apr 19, 2024 16:00:47 GMT -5
Some dendritic jasper.
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pebblesky
fully equipped rock polisher
Purchased another UV mini bowl for tumbling
Member since September 2022
Posts: 1,438
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Post by pebblesky on Apr 19, 2024 16:02:26 GMT -5
Some unknown jasper or something else.
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pebblesky
fully equipped rock polisher
Purchased another UV mini bowl for tumbling
Member since September 2022
Posts: 1,438
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Post by pebblesky on Apr 19, 2024 16:04:34 GMT -5
This piece looked good several months ago, but I wanted to give it more meaning. After several more rounds of tumbling, I still don't feel personally attached to it so let it be.
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pebblesky
fully equipped rock polisher
Purchased another UV mini bowl for tumbling
Member since September 2022
Posts: 1,438
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Post by pebblesky on Apr 19, 2024 16:08:10 GMT -5
Small Moroccan Berber Agates.
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pebblesky
fully equipped rock polisher
Purchased another UV mini bowl for tumbling
Member since September 2022
Posts: 1,438
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Post by pebblesky on Apr 21, 2024 14:35:24 GMT -5
I finished polishing the top-right piece in 120/220 for a week. I never see this type of rock having a good polish so I think this might be it and no point to go further. But I might try polishing it with other soft rocks (that went through the normal polish process and still didn't shine) one day. When I am not in the mood of dealing with strong vibration, electricity and splashing water, I preform the pieces before tumbling like this: After one or two weeks of coarse tumbling depending on the hardness of the rock, the shape will look perfectly fine. I use tools like these (RTH amazon affliated link): www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09G6LMYL4/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B07MDXY8SB&linkCode=as2&tag=rocktumblin05-20&linkId=796aa2563d956f27ffdebd8dad83b3af which I learned from experienced people here (maybe starguy or jamesp? Can not find the original post) in one of their posts. These tools helped me a lot on preforming thin pieces before I had a cabber, and still works great now.
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chris1956
fully equipped rock polisher
Member since July 2022
Posts: 1,255
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Post by chris1956 on Apr 22, 2024 22:00:12 GMT -5
I really like that bright yellow jasper one.
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pebblesky
fully equipped rock polisher
Purchased another UV mini bowl for tumbling
Member since September 2022
Posts: 1,438
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Post by pebblesky on Apr 26, 2024 23:59:57 GMT -5
Another batch was done. I am slowing sorting them out and taking pictures along with the ones I didn't sort out from the previous batch. One thing I learned from tumbling Crazy Laces is to let them go and move on. There could be quite some fractures, chips, pits, druzy pockets after half a year of tumbling, and grinding on the cabber more than once. Some of them now become tiny scraps staying in polish cycles forever. They always look quite interesting with macro lens.
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pebblesky
fully equipped rock polisher
Purchased another UV mini bowl for tumbling
Member since September 2022
Posts: 1,438
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Post by pebblesky on Apr 27, 2024 0:01:50 GMT -5
One of my favorite Crazy Lace tumbles in this batch: It looks pinker in person.
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pebblesky
fully equipped rock polisher
Purchased another UV mini bowl for tumbling
Member since September 2022
Posts: 1,438
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Post by pebblesky on Apr 27, 2024 0:19:31 GMT -5
Once upon a time, more than a year ago, there was one piece of Crazy Lace which looked like this: and this: I tried to remove the never-ending dents and cracks, then gave up and abandoned it, then eventually brought it to polish last week. Now it looks like this: The white part doesn't polish. I would say this is an example of overdoing.
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pebblesky
fully equipped rock polisher
Purchased another UV mini bowl for tumbling
Member since September 2022
Posts: 1,438
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Post by pebblesky on Apr 27, 2024 0:26:31 GMT -5
Small and nice: The botryoidal area is shown under a clear chalcedony layer. This batch (mainly from CopperBrookFarms) has more tubes than bands.
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chris1956
fully equipped rock polisher
Member since July 2022
Posts: 1,255
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Post by chris1956 on Apr 27, 2024 10:14:42 GMT -5
A very fractured one: I have only tumbled crazy lace once and it seemed like every piece had major and many cracks. I was wondering if this is because of the way they take it out of the ground (explosives or heavy machinery) or is it naturally that way?
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