Post by herchenx on Jan 27, 2012 2:44:00 GMT -5
FIRST, the day was great because the second person on this forum sent me a box of material. This was incredibly generous and I want to say thanks (which I did in a PM) but to avoid a rush at these generous folks I am withholding names - but thanks!!
Then Clyde gave me a call after the scout meeting and spent a generous amount of time on the phone helping me understand more about the cabbing process, what he does, and some things that would help me. Thanks Clyde!
OK
So 13 days ago I opened our first tumble, 3x1.5# Lortone barrels:
forum.rocktumblinghobby.com/index.cgi?board=trtphoto&action=display&thread=49930
I restarted them with a lot less water and have opened them a couple times to check in.
The sad news is that they were all pretty pathetic still. The batch I had promoted to stage 2 had the best slurry, but as I felt the rocks I had to decide to revert some of them back to stage 1 as I felt pits and cracks on several.
I'll come back to the bad tumble, because I have a plan - and it involves the very successful stage 1 tumble I've been reporting on based on Don's instructions. I am going to keep posting this link in case another newcomer staggers along and needs some direction (might as well make it easy to find):
forum.rocktumblinghobby.com/index.cgi?board=trtphoto&action=display&thread=22055&page=4
Last night I finished the first pass of the first stage (following Don's instructions to the letter for stage 1), and I decided to run a day of soap and water in the barrels to clean things up so I could show everything better.
Well I popped open the barrels to find a bunch of foam:
bear in mind, I had already THOROUGHLY rinsed these, and you can still see coloration in the foam, and in fact I saw tiny metallic flecks of Silicone Carbide.
Well I dumped the right barrel (I've been calling it the second barrel) into my collander-on-a-bucket that I am using for stage 1 rinses, and cleaned everything up for a photo:
lots of Bahia Agate, Ocean Jasper, Kambaba Jasper, a couple Mooka Jaspers, some Mexican Black Lace, Some Agua Nueva Jasper, some moss agate, a few red jaspers and a piece of quarts that came from a previously unsuccessful tumble I worked on with my daughter.
Some closer shots from this batch:
After looking at every one, it was clear that none was ready for stage 2. I thought I might break apart several of the Bahia's but I ended up not doing that, and putting everything back in the barrel.
I cracked open the left barrel (normally what I have called the "first" barrel) and cleaned everything up:
Here we have more black lace, agua nueva, a single Noreena Jasper, a good amount of red jasper, 2 hickoryite wonder stones, a good amount of mooka jasper and some more quartz.
Some close ups:
You can see that there are a lot of little chips. These were not put in originally, they are chips from a lot of the other rock in here.
NOW I found a couple stones that were smooth and pit-free:
We'll get back to them later.
Now, back to the disappointing 1.5# tumblers.
I opened the first one and dumped it into the collander. There was no real slurry to speak of, and all the SiC was intact and shiny. I failed to take a picture before I rinsed, but this barrel was identical to the third barrel, and very disappointing. Here it is rinsed:
I opened the second barrel, the one I thought was well into stage 2:
It had a nice slurry, but as I felt the stones, they were still pitted etc, so I went ahead and dumped it into the stage 1 collander and rinsed:
Running the 2x6# barrels really gave me perspective on what a smooth stage 1 polish can look like. The best of the stones, that had been in this stage 2 tumble for 2 weeks, was identical in smoothness to the stones I set aside from my 12th day in the tumbler in the 6# barrels.
On to barrel 3, the other stage 1 barrel with no decent slurry:
dumped and rinsed:
SO how do I plan on saving these pathetic tumbles from the 1.5# stage 1 barrels. EASY - add the larger stones into the 2 6# barrels:
I had a full load in both, there was more variety in size but these 6# barrels are kicking butt so I expect them to shape up these suffering stones and get them on track.
So what do I do with my 3x1.5# barrels? Experiment.
connrock and others suggested using smaller material in these barrels, so I loaded on about 1/3 full of small stuff from the first 4 weeks of tumbling, and I added 2# of Carolina garnet to fill it, and filled another barrel with garnet:
One concern I have had with these small barrels is the abject waste of Silicone Carbide. They never seem to slurry up in stage 1, and they take forever and make little to no progress. The Lortone instructions say to use 12 Tb of 60/90 (If I remember correctly, I don't have the book here) - which seems like way too much given that my best tumbles BY FAR have used roughly that amount for 6# barrels.
I am going to attempt to treat them like the 6# barrels in terms of measurements and scale my rock size down to see if that yields any better results.
So Don't instructions, in spite of being in stages, prescribe a total of 3/4 cup of water per 6# barrel, and a total of 13Tb of 60/90 SiC.
If I cut both of those numbers by 75% (divide by 4) I end up with 3/16 cup of water and just over 3 Tb of SiC.
So to try to improve things, I added 1/4 cup of water and 3 Tb of SiC. This is 1/4 the amount of both, scaled down to the pound rating of the barrel. I know measuring the weight would be more accurate, but I don't have a decent scale, so measuring by volume is easier for me.
I will let this run a week or so and see if I am getting any slurry.
The last thing I did was set aside all the stones from the various barrels that are completely smooth - and I believe ready to go to the vibe. Once I have enough cabs and tumbled stones to move to the vibe I'll fire that up and see if I can't get the next stage of tumbling under way!
Thanks for reading, hope this helps someone.
Then Clyde gave me a call after the scout meeting and spent a generous amount of time on the phone helping me understand more about the cabbing process, what he does, and some things that would help me. Thanks Clyde!
OK
So 13 days ago I opened our first tumble, 3x1.5# Lortone barrels:
forum.rocktumblinghobby.com/index.cgi?board=trtphoto&action=display&thread=49930
I restarted them with a lot less water and have opened them a couple times to check in.
The sad news is that they were all pretty pathetic still. The batch I had promoted to stage 2 had the best slurry, but as I felt the rocks I had to decide to revert some of them back to stage 1 as I felt pits and cracks on several.
I'll come back to the bad tumble, because I have a plan - and it involves the very successful stage 1 tumble I've been reporting on based on Don's instructions. I am going to keep posting this link in case another newcomer staggers along and needs some direction (might as well make it easy to find):
forum.rocktumblinghobby.com/index.cgi?board=trtphoto&action=display&thread=22055&page=4
Last night I finished the first pass of the first stage (following Don's instructions to the letter for stage 1), and I decided to run a day of soap and water in the barrels to clean things up so I could show everything better.
Well I popped open the barrels to find a bunch of foam:
bear in mind, I had already THOROUGHLY rinsed these, and you can still see coloration in the foam, and in fact I saw tiny metallic flecks of Silicone Carbide.
Well I dumped the right barrel (I've been calling it the second barrel) into my collander-on-a-bucket that I am using for stage 1 rinses, and cleaned everything up for a photo:
lots of Bahia Agate, Ocean Jasper, Kambaba Jasper, a couple Mooka Jaspers, some Mexican Black Lace, Some Agua Nueva Jasper, some moss agate, a few red jaspers and a piece of quarts that came from a previously unsuccessful tumble I worked on with my daughter.
Some closer shots from this batch:
After looking at every one, it was clear that none was ready for stage 2. I thought I might break apart several of the Bahia's but I ended up not doing that, and putting everything back in the barrel.
I cracked open the left barrel (normally what I have called the "first" barrel) and cleaned everything up:
Here we have more black lace, agua nueva, a single Noreena Jasper, a good amount of red jasper, 2 hickoryite wonder stones, a good amount of mooka jasper and some more quartz.
Some close ups:
You can see that there are a lot of little chips. These were not put in originally, they are chips from a lot of the other rock in here.
NOW I found a couple stones that were smooth and pit-free:
We'll get back to them later.
Now, back to the disappointing 1.5# tumblers.
I opened the first one and dumped it into the collander. There was no real slurry to speak of, and all the SiC was intact and shiny. I failed to take a picture before I rinsed, but this barrel was identical to the third barrel, and very disappointing. Here it is rinsed:
I opened the second barrel, the one I thought was well into stage 2:
It had a nice slurry, but as I felt the stones, they were still pitted etc, so I went ahead and dumped it into the stage 1 collander and rinsed:
Running the 2x6# barrels really gave me perspective on what a smooth stage 1 polish can look like. The best of the stones, that had been in this stage 2 tumble for 2 weeks, was identical in smoothness to the stones I set aside from my 12th day in the tumbler in the 6# barrels.
On to barrel 3, the other stage 1 barrel with no decent slurry:
dumped and rinsed:
SO how do I plan on saving these pathetic tumbles from the 1.5# stage 1 barrels. EASY - add the larger stones into the 2 6# barrels:
I had a full load in both, there was more variety in size but these 6# barrels are kicking butt so I expect them to shape up these suffering stones and get them on track.
So what do I do with my 3x1.5# barrels? Experiment.
connrock and others suggested using smaller material in these barrels, so I loaded on about 1/3 full of small stuff from the first 4 weeks of tumbling, and I added 2# of Carolina garnet to fill it, and filled another barrel with garnet:
One concern I have had with these small barrels is the abject waste of Silicone Carbide. They never seem to slurry up in stage 1, and they take forever and make little to no progress. The Lortone instructions say to use 12 Tb of 60/90 (If I remember correctly, I don't have the book here) - which seems like way too much given that my best tumbles BY FAR have used roughly that amount for 6# barrels.
I am going to attempt to treat them like the 6# barrels in terms of measurements and scale my rock size down to see if that yields any better results.
So Don't instructions, in spite of being in stages, prescribe a total of 3/4 cup of water per 6# barrel, and a total of 13Tb of 60/90 SiC.
If I cut both of those numbers by 75% (divide by 4) I end up with 3/16 cup of water and just over 3 Tb of SiC.
So to try to improve things, I added 1/4 cup of water and 3 Tb of SiC. This is 1/4 the amount of both, scaled down to the pound rating of the barrel. I know measuring the weight would be more accurate, but I don't have a decent scale, so measuring by volume is easier for me.
I will let this run a week or so and see if I am getting any slurry.
The last thing I did was set aside all the stones from the various barrels that are completely smooth - and I believe ready to go to the vibe. Once I have enough cabs and tumbled stones to move to the vibe I'll fire that up and see if I can't get the next stage of tumbling under way!
Thanks for reading, hope this helps someone.