pugdog
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Apr 8, 2005, 12:56 AM
Post #1 of 1
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Rough - you get what you pay for.
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I just posted an announcement, but it ended with some helpful hints, which I thought I'd put here, since not everyone reads announcements, and a year from now, this won't seem as old.
1) Mini-slabs are popular now for beading and other jewelry, and the Lot-o-tumbler is a great little device for polishing them up! It's really gentle on slabs, and can do anything that fits through the mouth of the barrel. I've done some awesome polish jobs with it. I haven't had a slab break in the grind or polish (even very, very thin ones). I still wouldn't put extremely valuable items in a random polisher, but for most agates and similar, the results are beautiful.
2) Like everything else, there is no free lunch. You can find tumble grade stones for $1.95 a pound or less, but what you get are usually jagged, pitted, and largely unusable stones. To grind them down to a "smooth" look will leave you with pebbles -- literally. Look carefully at any great "deals". If the rough is large, you'll have to break it, and that can be a tricky and wasteful (even dangerous) endeavor. When hit, agates tend to splinter, and create lot's of shards and splinters that are wasteful and don't tumble well, and can cut like a knife or lodge in an eye. Those chips can often be used in a rotating tumbler to get those tiny stones used for gem trees and artwork, but if that is not your primary goal, it adds up to a lot of waste.
3) Pitted rocks, can be a problem in a grind as well. Grit will hide in the pits, and may come out in the next step. If you use small pitted rocks as filler *don't* pass them on to the next step. Keep them in the coarse grinds until they are smooth, or all ground down. In short, the better the grade of stone you put into the tumbler, the better the end product coming out will be.
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