Rock Tumbling 101

Hi Pugdog, I'm new here, but have had my Lot-O-Tumbler for 7 or 8 years. It's been feeling lonely and neglected for the last two or three, but since our daughter has turned 5 and she is truning into quite the agate finder, I thought it was time to show it the light of day again. We just fired it up yesterday for the first time that she's seen it, and thought it was pretty cool.

 We live in N. Central Minnesota and frequently find Lake Superior agates by accident, but have also started going back to some local rock pits off the beaten path I used to frequent to do searches. She has mentioned how much easier they are to find when it's sunny out, that it's easier after it rains, that they seem to come in bunches once you find one, etc. I think she's off to a good start.

I currently have roughly 2 1/2 5 gallon pails full of agates, ranging from 1/8" diameter that I include for getting into some of the pits to 4-5 inches across. Width, not circumference. Bigger than my fist, and I'm 6'4, wear XXL gloves when I can find them. OK, enough about me, a few questions if I may...

I have two barrels, one I used to use for grit, one for polish, had one marked so I wouldn't cross grits when polishing, but I forget now if I'd marked the grit one or the polish one. Is there a trick to ensuring that EVERY LAST SPEC of grit or polish is out before I start tumbling again?

I've lost the directions for my unit, but it seems there was some sort of adjustment for the intensity of the action? Bending something possibly?

I have it bolted to a 3' long, 10" wide, 6" high solid piece of cement with rebar going through it, not sure where I found it, but I figured it would be stable, not to mention heavy! Probably 80 lbs or more. I currently have it set on top of a folded up blanket on the cement garage floor, trying to reduce noise. Will this effect the action at all?

It seems to me, if I remember correctly, that the rocks used to scroll up all the sides and funnel down into the center if you viewed it running with the top off. At the moment, it seems to roll everything from one side to the other. Could that be from sitting unevenly on the folded blanket, and will it have any effect on the tumbling effectiveness?

Right now, all I have in there is 3/4 load, some water and a couple drops of dishwashing soap as a surficant. Just trying to get the dirt off, since I am out of grit. It's a 45 mile drive to the nearest grit resaler. I've tried sand from the lake before, nothing happened. Is there anything besides actual grit that will start to remove some surface material until I can get to "The Big City" to get some grit, or I may get some off the internet.

The gentleman I bought my unit from was pretty heavy into agates, had the equipment to do slabs, marbles, balls, several types and sizes of tumblers and a storefront at his resort, but unfortunatly, his health is faltering badly, the resort is for sale, he has moved to another city to be closer to his family. When I was tumbling a few years ago, he was an easy 5 minute drive for advice, supplies and hands on information. Now, I'm floundering slightly as I try and recall all the aspects of proper tumbling, thankfully I stumbled across your site. It's the first, and only one, I've found that touts the merits of the LotOTumbler. BTY, mine is the smaller one, the barrel is somewhat larger than a softball, maybe 7 inches across in the middle?

Thanks for providing a great site with info for us using the LotOTumbler, I see you're pretty much the only poster, and not many members, but I can see with the number of views you have, there's a lot of quiet people out there with a steady hum in the background.

p.s. I'm sure I'll think of other questions as the days go by, having just fired this thing up after a few years of silence.

p.p.s. OH YEAH!! I almost forgot the BEST thing!!!

Yesterday, we were at my Mother In Laws for Mothers day, Claire was out on the edge of the lake, her and her 4 cousins were trying to catch sunnies in a fish net as we finished lunch. She suddenly started hollering at me, I could see her out the window, she was fine, but saying that she'd found an agate so big she couldn't pick it up. Well, you know, she's 5, she does find a lot of agates, but she also picks up a lot of quartz and other rocks that look something like an agate, so I said I'd be out when we finished eating. She ran up to the house, INSISTING that it was an agate and that I had to come RIGHT NOW!!!

Being the attentive father that I am , I got up to go check out her "find". They have rip-rap along their shoreline, basically 6-10" diameter rocks for a buffer against the waves. She ran up and pointed at one, and as I got closer, I could see it did indeed have a different look than the other rocks along the shoreline. Once I got closer, it did have the pockmarked, pitted surface of an agate, but it was way too big, maybe 10" long, 8" high, 5" thick. I picked it up to check it out, and lo and behold, smack my a$$ and call me Sally, there were a few places on the edge where it had chipped off as it got dumped around this place or that, and there was AGATE inside there!!! I don't know yet if it's a whole agate, or just small agates locked inside a larger rock, or what, nor do I know where to go or how to find out, but I think she may have found something good. It figures she'd find it now, last weekend there was an agate/marble/rock show/sale at one of the local churches, I'm sure someone there could have told me what I have. For now, I guess I'll just have to sit on it and see what develops.

Thanks again, I look forward to any advice you can offer.

Thanks for all the answers, pugdog. I think I'm getting back into the swing of it. I have been sorting every night, I'd forgotten how much fun it is to see the effects of one days tumbling on individual rocks and how many of them you remember after you've eyeballed each one seperatly a few times. Still just doing rough, but have plenty left to do. A couple more quick questions, if I may?

In the directions, it says if you can't rinse the rocks after 12 hours to add one capful of water. Should this be done when initally starting the run, or after the batch has ran for the 12 hours?

What effect would it have on the units action to cut off part of the top of a barrel to make the opening larger? I have some rocks that are just too big to fit through the opening, but would easily fit into the barrel. I was thinking of doing just one or two at a time with nothing over 1/4-1/2 inch diameter for the balance of the rocks to keep the action up. I suppose it would dry out a lot faster, but I'm sure I could come up with a way to seal the larger hole back up.

I've been sorting the rocks, then placing the ones that still need roughing back into the barrel till it's almost full to the top, maybe 1" down,

filling it with water, then draining all the water back out so that the rocks are still completly wet but there is no other appreciable water left in the barrel.

Get the tumbler going, then slowly adding two tablespoons of grit, rotating the barrel 90 deg once or twice as I add to get good coverage. Get good action, the grit sticks well to the agates, but occasionally the next morning the rocks are dried out.

Should I be adding a little more water at the start, and is there any good way to get the dried grit out of the deeper pores that I didn't intend to tumble completly smooth anyway?

A lot of my agates are partials, meaning that they've been broken at some point in the last million years, have one good side that's completly smooth and another side that has various sizes of pits, the small ones I try and tumble out but the larger ones I wouldn't worry about, they're clean enough, but when a batch gets too dry it seems nearly impossible to get the dried grit out of the deeper pits.