Lurker finally signed up

[rallyrocks]

Hi, My name is Pete S and I'm a rockoholic.

Way back when I was a kid I had a tumbler and drove my mother up the wall with it's incessent noise and constant mess.

Now I've grown older, found many hobbies to throw time and money at, one of which is doing car rallies.

Lat year writing a rally took me past some amazing obsidan flows and serpetine zones, which seems to have re-kindled my fascination with rocks.

So now I have a couple of lortones running in the basement, not bothering anyone, but not turning out very shiny stones either.

From the forums here I learned about the $88 Home depot tile saw, great for hacking away at stuff instead of whacking it with a hammer, but a pretty wide kerf, and kind of messy to run in the kitchen.

I can see I'm going to need a bunch more toys to fully satisfy my redicovered need to reveal the inner beauty of rocks.

[stoner]

Welcome to the board. Good to see another N Calif rockhound here. So where did you pass the obsidian flows?
Stick around and we'll help you get those stones nice and shiney.

Ed

[rockds]

welcome aboard and show me the money. I too have been fighting w/ myself on getting a saw - will probably break down and do it but haven't yet.

robert

[Cher]

Hi Pete,
Welcome to the board, always good to have another rockaholic around. Sorry your stones are turning out as shiny as you expected, have you figured out the problem or still searching? It could be a number of things from not enough time in coarse to contamination carried through the stages. Don't worry, once we know all of your specs, someone will be able to help. Once again, welcome to the group.

Cher

[rallyrocks]

The Obsidian flows that rekindled my addiction are up on the Medicine Lake Caldera east of Mt Shasta, while the serpentine terrane was farther west in the Siskiyus.

Since then I've taken field trips to the Virgin Valley Opal mines in Nevada, and the Clear creek/New Idria mining district in central cal, and picked up some more interesting rough stuff- I'll make an attempt to post some pictures in the picture section.

I also came across a nice red brecciated Jasper dyke in a road cut up in Cloverdale.

I expect some of my issues relate to my first selections of rough. The Siskiyu serpentine is harder than that found farther south here, but still only about 3-4 on the Mohs scale, so its pretty soft for tumbling anyway, and probably getting bruised- especially when run in a mixed load without plastic.

When I first got my little 3X1.5# bbl tumbler, I committed the heinous error of running coarse in all 3 barrels, so I expect that possibly some remnant grit hiding in the rubber from that episode may have some bearing on my less than stellar results so far.

Another factor no doubt was not having plastic pellets for my first couple of runs, obsidian and quartz seem to be particularly susceptible to bruising or over tumbling, so little chips from them could be contaminating my pre polish and polish stages.

Two weeks ago I added a 3A strictly for running coarse, I noticed the material reduction starting with a 1.5 bbl load left very little to work with at the later stages, and this will eliminate the "wall impregnated grit" phenomena- although I guess there is a chance that I just need to go out and buy another barrel for polish...

So I have the 3# bbl for coarse and now have dedicated the 3 bbl unit to the later stages, with one barrel dedicated to each.

Last week I invested in borax (probably the least expensive contribution to the cause, but it might open doors to good results) so I will be using that and burnishing between steps from now on.

So right now I have mixed batches going into their second week respectively running in coarse, 120-220 and Alox pre-polish- all from the 4-part Lortone grit kit (which I saw has gotten less than stellar reviews from others over in the vendors forum). My "polish" barrel is empty waiting for the batch from stage 3, and I have more than enough of the Cloverdale Jasper to keep the coarse barrel fed for a long time.

I was thinking of perhaps investing in one or two finer graded SiC grits, maybe some 600 and 1000 for pre-polishing, and of course I need to try other polishes, although I'm not sure I'm ready to go with the real spendy stuff like tin oxide- especially if my problems stem from some other aspect, in which case the most expensive polish in the world isn't going to fix it.

[rallyrocks]

one more observation I wanted to share, since Tumbling is such a hurry up and wait sort of excersize, I'm finding that it meshes well with my other hobbies- especially the Rally thing, since it takes me to out of the way places for a few days at a time, often places where interesting rocks can be found- and the time away from the tumblers seems to make them work better (a bit of the "watched pot never boils" thing I think).

[krazydiamond]

welcome, Rallyrocks! nice to see another road racer has time to tumble stones! i did autocross for a long time and found it very enjoyable. expensive tho, like any good hobby.

i never got into Rally, time - distance ventures but always thought it might be fun.....always good to see new members come in with new stuff to talk about!

KD

[joe]

Hey Rallyrocks! Welcome aboard. You and Robert both NEED to get that saw. I bought one and it's a lot of fun to saw rock! Sounds like you've got the equipment bug along with the rock bug. Good for you!