3lb Tumbler 1 is on a special tumbling mission. I’ve been given 19 stones collected from Moeraki by my neighbour up the road. He’d seen some similar polished stones before and wondered if the stones he had would turn out the same way. Moeraki stones are very different to the stones that I have been tumbling so far.
These stones would end up taking the longest (so far in my shortish “tumbling career”) and would do the most “re-dos” I’ve ever put stones through (so far) in order to get a result that I was happy enough with.
Stage 1: 80/100grit – 3lb Tumbler 1
Weight in: 514g. 19 stones. 12 days.
As you can see in the image to the right, most of them are covered in this white substance but you can see flecks of amber underneath. Pellets were added to help make the load in the barrel enough to not add any extra stones. I forgot to weigh them on exit!
Unfortunately I wasn’t happy with the result after 12 days. Some old stock of coarse grit (100grit) was still on the shelf so I decided to re-do the stones at Stage 1 for another 9 days. (Also realised after the fact that I put in too many tablespoons of grit. Must have thought I was using 4lb tumbler! Eeeek). I did remember to weigh the stones on exit this time – 494g – a loss of only 20g – so these stones are hard! That’s two tumbles in very coarse grit and still only 20g lost!
Still wasn’t happy with the stones after a second tumble in 100grit so I decided to put the stones through another tumble in the same 100grit. Perhaps they didn’t really need the pellets either? This time I made sure I only put in 4 tablespoons of grit and the 19 stones tumbled for 13 days this time. On exit, they weighed in at 464g – a further loss of 30g.
I decided to proceed with the next two stages just to see how the stones might change with the different coarseness of grit.
Stage 2: 220grit
Weight in: 464grit. 4 Tbspns 220grit. Pellets added. 13 days tumbling. Weight out: 447g. Loss of 17g.
Stage 3: 400grit
Weight in: 447g. 4 Tbspns 400grit. Pellets added. 19 days of tumbling. Loss of 31g.
This is what the 19 stones looked like after three rounds at Stage 1, then Stage 2 & Stage 3 – a grand total of 66 days in grit! I wasn’t really happy with how they looked and I really thought they could look better! As you can see in the image below, most of the stone still have some of that white substance on the surface and most have quite a few pits in them. One or two are smoothing out nicely though.
After showing the neighbour the results so far and after much thought, I decided that I’d put the 19 stones back through all the grit stages one more time just to see if they got any better looking. I had a feeling they might. No idea why as I still have only half an idea of what I’m doing! However, I really wanted to see them polish up well.
I added the 19 stones to another batch – Batch 13 so the rest of the Moeraki Stones journey is detailed in that post. Since I’m writing these posts retro-spectively still, I’ll be able to link to that post by the time anyone reads this!
Batch 10 | 3lb tumbler 1 | Moeraki | 16 October 2022 – 29 December 2022 (grit tumbling only)