Most of Batch 55 of Gemstone Beach stones are redos meaning I wasn’t happy with the tumbling and/or polishing stages of the stones. There are, however, a few new stones in the batch taken from my Gemstone Beach containers.
This batch has many varieties of hydrogrossular garnets added to it at Stage 2 as most of the time these don’t need a cycle in the coarser grit. There are a lot of these around on Gemstone Beach at the moment but I’m not quite sure why. Perhaps the rough seas of late have stirred up the beach quite a bit and therefore more of them are visible but I also think I can spot them a lot easier and quicker now! JP from TumbleStoneBlog has a very informative post about Hydrogrossular Garnets that is worth a read! He explains why hydrogrossulars are found at Orepuki.
Barrel Loading
I am sticking to the ⅔ full rule and also only adding a tablespoon of grit per lb of stones in the barrel. Usually this means about two tablespoons of grit as opposed to the four that I used to put in. Rob (from Michigan Rocks YouTube) adds 3 tablespoons of grit to his 3lb tumblers, 4 tablespoons of grit to his 4lb tumblers. At this stage the amount of grit I’ve been adding seems to be doing the job. There’s no gritty-ness left after 10 days tumbling and the grit slurry is not to thick nor is it too thin either so I am going to stick with ratio of grit per lb of stones.
Something different I have tried this time is using the dremmel to smooth out some pits in five of the seven stones deemed not ready for Stage 2. In Image D you can see the five (of the seven from Image A) that got the dremmel work then went into Stage 2 (220grit) with the others.
Batch 55: 3lb Tumbler 1
Stage 1: F60grit
Number of Stones: 41
Weight in: 687g
2 Tbspns of 220grit
1 Tbspn Borax
No pellets added
Days Tumbling: 7
Weight out: 574g – loss of 113g
(34 ready – 7 not ready)
Stage 2: 220grit
Number of Stones: 34+25+6+5=70
Weight in: 810g
2 Tbspns of 220grit
1 Tbspn Borax
Ceramic media added
Days Tumbling: 7
Weight out: 809g – loss of 61g
Stage 3: 400grit
Number of Stones: 70
Weight in: 809g
2 Tbspns of 400grit
1 Tbspn Borax
Ceramic media added
Days Tumbling: 8
Weight out: 764g – loss of 45g
Batch 55: After Stage 1
Batch 55: Added to Stage 2
Pre-Polish: PolyAl-1
Number of Stones: 70
Weight in: 764g
3 Tbspns of PolyAl-1
Ceramic media added
Days Tumbling: 7
Weight out: 764g – loss of 0g
(Was going to do 600grit but decided to do 1000grit – PolyAl-1 instead. Interested in result of this change if any.)
Ready to Polish
I did not do a soap tumble (for cleaning purposes) prior to doing the polish tumble. I wish I had as there appeared to be quite a lot of “grit” contamination when checking the barrels after 12 days polishing.
Stage 4: Polish Mix
Number of Stones: 70
Weight in: 764g
Polish Mix (3rd use): 9 Tbspns of polish mixed with 600mls of water. Plastic pellets added.
Days Tumbling: 12
Weight out: 760g – loss of 4 grams
Final Clean
48 hour tumble in 2 Tbspns of borax.
Polish Complete
Polished Stones of Interest: Batch 55
Batch 55 | 3lb Tumbler 1 | Gemstone Beach | 7 April – 23 May 2024
Really awesome blog, lots of great information.
Your stones were nice and shiny at the end
Thank you my friend. I am pleased that the particular attention to 2/3rd barrel loading and inspecting the stones more carefully after Stage 1 is making a difference to the results I’m now getting. I was rather disappointed previously as you know!