Batch 6: Bluecliffs Beach Stones

There’s a couple of big stones in this batch (a pink one and a bluey/white one) collected down where the Rowallan Burn now comes out near to the start of Bluecliffs Beach, Papatotara. There used to be a road going right along the beach – apparently you could drive from the Waiau River Mouth all the way to the cribs out at Waikoau River. The council have now closed that road because it washed away.

I am interested to see how those two bigger stones go in the 3lb tumbler. Only 30 stones fit due to the bigger size of some of the stones.

Stage 1: 80/100grit – 3lb Tumbler 1

Weight in: 896g. 4 Tbspns of 80/100 grit – no pellets added. 12 days tumbling. Lost 166g. Unfortunately an orange stone I had my eye on broke into several pieces!

Stage 2: 220grit

Weight in: 730g. 4 Tbspns of 220grit – I added pellets this time since the orange stone broke I thought the smaller stones might need some cushioning from the big stones. 10 days tumbling. Lost 87g. I thought that 29 stones were not enough in the barrel so I added 3 collected stones that could skip the 80/100grit and 220grit stages.

Weight in: 696g + 53g (3 extra stones). 4 Tbspns of 400grit – added pellets. 11 days tumbling. Lost 71g. I removed one stone because I felt it needed to go back to a 220grit redo – it had too many pits still.

Stage 3: 400grit

Note: I have been doing a 24 hour soap tumble between each of the grit stages but I’m starting to think this may be unnecessary. I think that I’ll only do the soap tumble after the 400grit to make sure that there’s no grit being transferred to the polish mix.

4lb Tumbler

Stage 4: Polish Mix | Stage 5: Borax

Combined Batch 6 & Batch 7 together for the polish and borax tumble. 56 stones in total. It was a new polish mix with 600mls of water.

10 days of polish tumbling then 5 days of tumbling in borax. Some of the stones lacked the lustre I thought they would have but the big stones turned out quite nice – very smooth and shiny!

Batch 6 | 3lb tumbler 1 | finished Stage 3 (400grit)

2 Replies to “Batch 6: Bluecliffs Beach Stones”