jukerocks
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since March 2012
Posts: 154
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Post by jukerocks on Mar 2, 2012 19:29:47 GMT -5
I'm a new rockhound from central Florida. I became interested in rock and gem mining after visiting in Franklin, NC and bringing home a ruby and other rocks from a mine there. My first batch was not great. Now I'm on batch #2 and #3 - I have a double barrel Lortone. My question is this - stage #1 - after about 10 days of coarse grinding I'm still not satisfied but the amount of rocks in the barrel is now well below 1/2 - is it OK to add pellets in stage 1? From everything I've read on line, most folks don't use pellets until steps 3 and 4. Any advice and help is greatly appreciated. Alot of my rocks from batch 1 look frosty - I burnished them but the rocks still have that frost like appearance. Learning as I go....
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Post by jakesrocks on Mar 2, 2012 20:13:34 GMT -5
First of all, welcome aboard. Your rocks will look frosty after the first stage. If you let them run a long time in stage #2, they'll begin to take a slight shine. At the end of stage #3 they'll start to shine. Then on to the polish stage, followed by the burnish. You're not burnishing the rocks in the first 3 stages. Only getting them clean for the next stage.
Don
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Post by roy on Mar 2, 2012 20:46:18 GMT -5
welcome to the club
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Post by helens on Mar 2, 2012 21:37:12 GMT -5
There are a lot of great tumbling directions (and grits to use) in the Tumbling sections (top 2) on the forum that should help a lot:). Welcome!
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Post by talkingstones on Mar 3, 2012 13:19:40 GMT -5
Hi! I'm just finishing my first batch in a vibe tumbler. What I've found is that when I ran into problems...and even before that, when I posted pictures of what I was seeing in the Tumbler section, I received a lot of input that has been incredibly helpful! If the members can see what you're talking about, they can give you a lot more help! Have fun and welcome!
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Post by johnjsgems on Mar 3, 2012 14:32:05 GMT -5
As far as pellets, ceramic media or plain pea gravel makes a better filler. Plastic pellets makes a nice cushion for more fragile rocks. If you do use it as filler use dedicated batches as plastic embeds with grit. Welcome to the forum.
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Post by paulshiroma on Mar 11, 2012 23:20:43 GMT -5
Welcome to the forum, Jukerocks! Also, take your time and don't follow the written directions that came with your tumbler, especially if they say something like "each stage will take a week". The first thing the gang here reinforced with me was to let each stage take as long as necessary and not to worry about a fixed amount of time per stage. Often that first stage with the coarse grit will take me three or four weeks before I can move anything along.
Paul
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