Tumble and Polish

The stones in Batch 25 are also from Gemstone Beach but I collected them over a year ago. Batch 24’s post mentions how intrigued I am by how much rougher these stones are to the stones I now pick up. I must be getting fussier.

Rock Hounds to follow:

Lately I’ve been watching a couple of different Rock Hounding YouTube Channels to glean more tips and techniques for getting a better finished polished stone. You might like to check out the following Rock Hounds also:

Batch 25: 3lb Tumbler Four

Stage 2 saw two stones removed. One stone was added from the holding box to Stage 3. A full barrel means no pellets needed. The barrel was full so no pellets were added. There’s a two-week gap in time between the end of Stage 2 and the start of Stage 3 because I went away up North. No tumblers were running.

All of the stones in this batch were inspected closely after finishing Stage 3 (400grit). Only very smooth to the touch stones with no pits or cracks visible to the eye made it through to be polished. That means 15 of the original 53 stones were removed for a redo and placed in the holding box. That’s a lot more stones than normal that didn’t make it to the polish stage.

Transfer to 4lb Tumbler

This batch (25) went into the 4lb tumbler along with Batch 24 + Batch 26 (some hydrogrossulars that were tumbled in 3lb Tumbler 1) + Batch 28 (Redo stones from the holding box originally from B21, 22, 24 & 25). You can see how easily you can loose track of which stones are which and where they came from originally! The barrel was quite full and in hindsight it may have been a little too full.

Polished Stones of Interest: Batch 25

Batch 25 | 3lb Tumbler Four | Gemstone Beach | 14 July – 31 August
4lb Tumbler | Batch 25, 24, 26 & 28 | Mainly Gemstone Beach stones | 15 Sept – 27 Sept 2023