Tonight I finished my second batch of tumbling. I did not keep as good of records as I had with the first batch but I basically followed the same steps. On some of the steps I had to run the process a bit longer to get the results I wanted. I also added a burnishing step before running the final polish as suggested by Jack Yorkshire. When the batch was ready for the third stage I added the material that I had pulled out from my first batch of tumbling and added some cabochons.

This first photo is of the cabochons that I added at the third stage. The top two are made of Owyhee Picture Jasper. The bottom right piece is Willow Creek Jasper. The bottom left piece is made with an unknown agate, this photo does not do this piece justice.

This picture shows the complete batch. I originally started with just petrified wood and jasper then added the quartz at the third stage.

This photo shows a close up look of the jasper and some of the petrified wood. The jasper was found on the Idaho-Oregon border along highway 95. I didn’t think much of it when I found it but these pieces along with some I cut and polished turned out to be really nice.

The petrified wood in this last photo came from many different locations. The photo does not do justice to these pieces.

Wagontown, 10 miles west of Silver City, was once a stage stop on the road between Silver City and Jordan Valley. The town had few houses and a mill at one time but today there is nothing left except for the cemetery because the process of dredge mining the area destroyed the remaining buildings.

  The town may no longer exist but the area is still a destination point for rock hounds. A wide range of materials can be found here including agatized petrified wood, a colorful agate with various shades of white, red and purple and grey black agate with reed fossils.

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The camping trip to Silver City had been planned for almost two weeks however as always I was getting my gear ready the night before the trip. Earlier in the week I had been gathering my rock hounding tools and had not been able to find my sledge hammer or rock chisel. I decided that I would buy these items again and as I paid the shop owner I joked that I already owned these items but could not find them but I probably would now that I was purchasing new tools. As I was getting the camp gear together I looked in the bottom of a crate of cooking supplies and there were my missing tools. I had left them there last fall when I went to Hampton Butte.

At around 6:00 Saturday morning Jason arrived at my house and we loaded up my gear. We then made our way to Silver City taking time to checkout road cuts and rock formations along the way. When we arrived at the old ghost town we took some time to explore the area taking pictures of the old buildings and checking out the displays at the Idaho Hotel which still offers rooms and dinning during the summer months. Many buildings have been restored but they have been left as close to original as possible. Visiting this place is like stepping back into the late 1800’s.

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Last night I pulled out the fist batch of finished rocks from the tumbler. Overall I am quite happy with the results. There were a few little problems along the way but they all were fixable and provided a great learning experience.

Please read more to see my notes on this tumble.

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