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.Notes on Tumbling with a Chicago Electric tumbler with two 3lb Barrels bought at Harbor Freight. Yes, I know this is a very poor quality tumbler.

1^st Batch

1^st Stage

• Barrel 1 contained mostly quartz with a few pieces of obsidian
• Barrel 2 contained various pieces of agate, petrified wood, quartz and 1 piece of sea shell
• 3 TBS of 60-90 grit in each barrel
• Tumbled 7 to 8 days
• Tumbler belt broke between 7^th and 8^th day

2^nd Stage

• Replaced belt with Lortone belt
• Barrel 1 contained mostly quartz with a few pieces of obsidian
• Barrel 2 contained various pieces of agate, petrified wood, quartz and 1 piece of sea shell
• The volume of rock in both barrels is much less than stage 1
• 3 TBS of 120-220 grit in each barrel
• Tumbled 7 days

3^rd Stage

• The volume of material in each barrel was much less than at the start of stage 2
• Combined both barrels into one, some of the quartz was set aside for later tumbling
• 3 TBS of 400 grit in the one barrel
• Tumbled for 5 days
• Cleaned out barrel and replaced slurry with Sun laundry detergent (powdered)
• Tumbled for 1 day
• Cleaned out barrel and added new batch of detergent
• Tumbled for 1 day

4^th Stage

• Cleaned rocks and moved them to a new barrel that is reserved for pre-polish and polish only
• Volume was smaller than before but not as much as the previous stages
• 3 TBS of pre-polish added to barrel
• Tumbled for 6 days

5^th Stage

• Cleaned rocks and found that some them were broken or badly chipped
• Removed damaged material and added plastic pellets to make up for lost volume hoping to prevent more from breaking or chipping
• 3 TBS of polish added to barrel
• Tumbled for 5 days

Finished

• Cleaned rocks and found that pellets did stop the damage
• Some residue from the polish remained on some of the rocks but I was able to wipe it off with a paper towel - did not need to run burnish or cleaning cycle with detergent

2nd batch was started when the barrels of the first batch were combined.

1^st Stage

• Barrel was filled with petrified wood
• 3 TBS of 60-90 grit was added to barrel
• Tumbled for 7 days
• Found that the petrified wood was not breaking down as quickly as batch one did.
• Added 1 TBS of 60-90 grit to barrel
• Tumbled for 6 more days

2^nd Stage

• Barrel was filled with petrified wood
• Rocks were finally becoming smooth
• 3 TBS of 120-220 grit was added to barrel
• Tumbled for 7 days
• Will be checking them later today

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 9:07 pm and is filed under Finished Lapidary Pieces, Rock Tumbling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.