Post by Lady B on May 30, 2007 10:44:58 GMT -5
Greetings to all you nice people in RTH.
We live in FLorida where, as everyone is always so happy to point out for us, there are no rocks. (We do have some phenomenal fossils, shells, agatized corals, and calcite crystals though.) We are just "officially" getting into this wonderful hobby although I have collected small rocks and stones all my life.
Since my husband and I can't go rock-hunting locally we took a trip to NC and did the tourist-thing in Macon County--sat at flumes, bought seeded buckets, and picked out all these nice stones. Brought bunches back with us and then tried sorting them only to discover that what we have are roughs and all our nice picture books show finished stones leaving us wondering just what were all these stones. (Still can't tell the difference between rubies and garnets and rubies and sapphires, especially since I remember one of the mine owners telling us that we defintely had each of these stones. :: ) Could they be cut or polished? Could they be tumbled in our brand new Ray-Tech vibratory tumbler? We knew enough not to try putting all the stones in together--hardness on the Mohs scale and all) but which ones could we put in? And was a vibratory better than a rotating? And did we have rocks for brains?
SO! We found this wonderful website--courtesy of a fellow confused hounder--and started checking out all sorts of messages that all of you folks have posted. There are so many helpful bits and such wonderful photos but there are SOOOO many, it's going to take a while to read everything. In the meantime, based on what we were reading we decided to go check out the Rock Shed and yesterday we took the plunge. We bought a Lortone 33B plus two extra barrels so we can keep one barrel for each level of tumbling, (We are going to use the vibratory for final stage polishing.) and tons of crushed rock to polish (well maybe not quite tons, but lots! ) We also bought the Rock Shed's bag of identified minerals figuring that between that bag and the many different crushed rock types we bought we might be able to identify some of our NC cache.
We are really looking forward to tumbling our stones. (Nature has given us such glorious gifts to play with.) Bob and I are also taking lessons via our local rock club so we can cut, cab, and whatever with the best of them. When we have some results to share, I'll post pictures.
Thanks for all the tips and info all of you have posted. They really help and inspire, as well.
Lady B
We live in FLorida where, as everyone is always so happy to point out for us, there are no rocks. (We do have some phenomenal fossils, shells, agatized corals, and calcite crystals though.) We are just "officially" getting into this wonderful hobby although I have collected small rocks and stones all my life.
Since my husband and I can't go rock-hunting locally we took a trip to NC and did the tourist-thing in Macon County--sat at flumes, bought seeded buckets, and picked out all these nice stones. Brought bunches back with us and then tried sorting them only to discover that what we have are roughs and all our nice picture books show finished stones leaving us wondering just what were all these stones. (Still can't tell the difference between rubies and garnets and rubies and sapphires, especially since I remember one of the mine owners telling us that we defintely had each of these stones. :: ) Could they be cut or polished? Could they be tumbled in our brand new Ray-Tech vibratory tumbler? We knew enough not to try putting all the stones in together--hardness on the Mohs scale and all) but which ones could we put in? And was a vibratory better than a rotating? And did we have rocks for brains?
SO! We found this wonderful website--courtesy of a fellow confused hounder--and started checking out all sorts of messages that all of you folks have posted. There are so many helpful bits and such wonderful photos but there are SOOOO many, it's going to take a while to read everything. In the meantime, based on what we were reading we decided to go check out the Rock Shed and yesterday we took the plunge. We bought a Lortone 33B plus two extra barrels so we can keep one barrel for each level of tumbling, (We are going to use the vibratory for final stage polishing.) and tons of crushed rock to polish (well maybe not quite tons, but lots! ) We also bought the Rock Shed's bag of identified minerals figuring that between that bag and the many different crushed rock types we bought we might be able to identify some of our NC cache.
We are really looking forward to tumbling our stones. (Nature has given us such glorious gifts to play with.) Bob and I are also taking lessons via our local rock club so we can cut, cab, and whatever with the best of them. When we have some results to share, I'll post pictures.
Thanks for all the tips and info all of you have posted. They really help and inspire, as well.
Lady B