Tumble and Polish

Batch 45 stones are from Gemstone Beach. I’m pretty sure there’s a pretty pink thulite in the mix that I am very interested in seeing how it polishes. These stones were collected during a fossick with JP back in April last year. They are a little rougher than what I now pick up and keep but were interesting enough to keep for tumbling and not put into the garden pots!

Batch 45: 3lb Tumbler 3

Observations: After Stage 2 all stones were looking very smooth with no obvious bruising or pitting. I have been consciously and consistently marking the ⅔ of the barrel and making a point not to overload it with stones. One of the eight hydrogrossulars was not quite ready for polishing so it was removed and placed in the holding box for a redo. There are some really different patterned stones in this batch that look very pretty and unusual. This batch also includes a couple of poppy jaspers too! Stage 3 was unusually long (15 days instead of 10! Life just got in the way!)

Pre-polish Soap Tumble: Normally this is 24 hours but again life got in the way and it went for 4 days! While this batch feels like it’s been slightly neglected, it doesn’t appear to be any worse for wear thank goodness!

I have made an error with mixing stones! The 29 stones (pictured above) added to Stage 4 are mainly from Papatotara, not Gemstone Beach as labelled. I am pretty sure the confusion has come about because there was a couple of redo stones added to the early stages of the original Batch 35 (Papatotara Coast stones) that were stones from Gemstone Beach and Kakanui. This has prompted me to not include mixed orgin stones anymore – it’s just too confusing to remember where a stone originated! Being sure about where a stone is from helps with stone identification!

I have been following a lady on instagram iwantalltherocks (she’s on TikToK too!) for a while now and I noticed that she adds a Tbspn of borax to her polish mix. I have been adding a Tbspn of borax to the grit stages for a while now and it really makes the slurry a little thicker which in turn seems to tumble the rocks with less bruising. For this combined batch I decided to give the adding borax to the polish mix a go!

I also noticed that iwantalltherocks doesn’t mix her polish powder with water before adding to the barrel, it just goes in dry. Since I don’t know what her polish powder is, I am going to keep mixing my polish powder with water first as that is the recommended process for the tumble polish mix I get from The Rock and Gemstone Shop here in New Zealand.

Polished Stones of Interest: Batch 45 – Gorgeous Pink Thulite

Batch 45 | 3lb Tumbler 3 | Gemstone Beach | 6 January 2024 – 29 February 2024
(Batch 35 (Papatotara Cost stones) added 15 February – 29 February to Stage 4)