Rock Tumbling, How to polish rocks. Featuring: BC Ocean Picture Stone!

well hello everyone dan here with down here prospecting here welcome back to my channel and if you're new welcome i hope to earn your subscription today i am still recovering from my heart surgery it's winter outside i can't get out and do much prospecting but i thought i would take you through some of the things that i can do while i'm recovering while i'm stuck inside while kovit is keeping us indoors one of the most exciting things that i found this last year was my ocean picture stone claim and i have sold a lot of that stone and a lot of people have asked me how well does it tumble so i thought today i would take you through rock tumbling how to rock tumble how to polish rocks specifically with my ocean picture stone should be fun i hope you all enjoy [Music] now obviously we're indoors i don't need this hat now if you haven't seen my videos with the ocean picture stone this is some of the most amazing blue gemstone around absolutely love it it's very very popular with lapidary artists and jewelers who make all sorts of jewelry and sculptures and everything out of this stuff today i have separated out a whole bunch of uh real nice looking little pieces that i'm gonna put into the rock tumbler and see if we can get some beautiful little polished stones of ocean picture stone first i want you to see what i have here and the best way to see what is inside each of these rocks is if i actually take a little bit of mineral oil and put it on the surface so that it polishes it up a little bit and you can see what kind of stones i have here so i'm going to take a second to do that and i'll show you my rocks one real nice thing about owning the quarry where we harvest this ocean picture stone from is i have as much of it and any kind of it as i want so i very lucky i got to go through the bin that i keep all the smaller chips in and choose the pieces i like the best i really like pieces that have host and blue and white so i went and picked out a whole bunch of those kind of pieces it's the bin that we make our small chip bags out of we sell these on my website www.danherprospectum.com for 30. half pound of ocean picture stone chips that are perfect for tumbling or making pendants out of or that kind of stuff and i'm very lucky i got to go and choose the best for what i was doing there we go got some with dendrites in it got little cylinders that are the core samples that i took uh when i was checking out the seam got some great host rock with layers of blue on top of it a nice variety one with the seam going through it here nice variety of stones now often when you're dealing with lapidary rough you can't really tell what's inside the stone this is a piece of ocean picture stone from the outside it does not look like much at all but when i gave it a fresh break wow amazing host blue water waves out in the distance sky off sky in the distance distance and what a beautiful piece but again if you're just looking from the outside it doesn't necessarily look like much and that's often why we have to wet them down coat them in mineral oil whatever to really see sort of what might be inside those rough stones absolutely beautiful [Music] okay let's get to tumbling first thing we have to do is take the uh rocks and put them in our tumbler now i am using a lower tone 12 pound tumbler the big guy from lower tone here there might be a bigger one but it's a it's a big guy it can take a lot of rock filling it up they say to fill up these tubs two-thirds to three-quarters full that's not even half i need to add some more rocks to this thing so i do have some chips left over from the dana blue seam so let's put those in as well i'm gonna try putting one one only of my special big garnets i have these up for sale on my website one big garnet and i still have a lot of room in there so i have a whole bunch of agates for my agate bags i'm going to fill this thing up with eggs just so it's nice and full while we tumble a bunch of agates that i usually have in my egg bags they can go into once they're polished they'll probably just go back in the egg bags for sale so some of the black and white agates from a different claim of mine those might polish up nicely i don't know let's toss them in and see what happens we're getting there now this is a special rock i found at my ocean picture stone claim it's a very green with egg and blue going through it hard to see on the camera here but i'm going to put a piece of that in just a slab a slab cut here nice and thin and see what that comes out like and to take up the rest of space some of the serpentine i sell on my website as well it's a very soft rock but let's see how it polishes up and there we go we are two thirds full now to put some water in it for rock tumbling you want the uh rocks to just be covered by water so you'll fill up your rock tumbler until the water just covers the rocks there we go right up to the surface that's good now rock tumbling is done in three to four steps using different grits to start with for this we're going to be using the coarsest grit which is a 60 to 90 grit silicon carbide and for this size tumbler and this amount of rock here we want almost a full cup of grit in there maybe a little bit less because i'm only two thirds full not three quarters there we go basically three quarters of a cup a little bit more than three quarters of a cup of course grit in there to do the initial rounding and grinding of those stones the coarse stuff just takes off the sharp corners and starts making the stones nice and round we can now put the lid on it's very important on these lids that they're clean around the edges and that this groove around here is nice and clean in fact after the coarse grit cleanliness is very important through all of this grinding because you don't want to get accidentally have any extra coarse grit when you start using the finer grits but to start with we just want to make sure that that lid seals so we make sure that the groove is clean and the lid is clean we can then get it in there make sure it's sitting down all the way around nicely [Music] put the cap the lid cap on of course we have the paper washer which sure does nothing the aluminum washer which helps hold her down nicely and the top cap the nut the nut holds everything on tightens it up seals it nicely and it also has a groove in it that rides in the tumbler to keep things aligned perfectly we will now put the drum in place making sure that that nut slides right into the holder which keeps the tub from moving back and forth it holds it in place nice nicely all ready to go and why why they don't put a switch on these things i don't know to turn them on and off you have to plug them in or use a power bar oh no i have to unplug something there we go she's tumbling now i should say that each the four grits i'm gonna use in here needs to be tumbled for a long time i'm actually gonna i'm planning on this to take more than a month so i'm gonna plan on each grit take a week's time we're going to see how that goes after each grit to decide if we need more in fact i'll even open them up about halfway through each week just to see how things are going but for the course grit we're going to go for quite a bit of time probably a full week you need at least three days some people do it overnight not enough not enough really depends on the look you're going for but for me i'm going for a week on this course grant here we go [Music] so it has been tumbling for two days now i just want to open it up and have a good look at it make sure things are going well inside there's two problems i could see inside here one the serpentine is an extremely soft rock compared to the hard agates and quartz that's in there i want to make sure that it's not just chew it away to nothing that is one thing you have to watch out for and second the thin slabs with those big big rocks that were in there i just want to make sure i haven't smashed them so if i have it's too late for anything it's not a big deal let's check it out so i just rinsed a couple off to have a good look the thin slab is holding together nicely hasn't cracked into the force of the big rocks hitting it ocean picture stone is smoothing off great and the serpentine is holding its own it doesn't seem to be wearing away to nothing although it is smoother than the rest of the stones so looks like things are tumbling well doesn't look like i have to do anything to it close it back up turn it back on and we're good now this is tumbled for a week it's time to empty the drum clean everything extremely well and put it back on with the mid grip let's do it so the first thing to do once it's open is to pour out the sludge through something to sift it out in this case i'm going to use an arbor fabricating classifier the 1 8 version now for this job cleanliness is extremely important so i'm going to wash out the tub so that when i start tumbling it with the mid-size grit there's no chance of coarse grit being left in it and i will wash it very good there we go the tub is perfectly clean the lid needs to be perfectly clean and the rocks have to be perfectly clean so i really took my time i made sure everything came out perfectly clean there is no chance of any grit left on any of these stones the serpentine is rounded over quite nicely it hasn't gone away i was a little bit worried the serpentine might be so soft that would just wear away but it's nice the thinnest of the slabs didn't shatter it's still in good shape that'll come out nice there's a piece of dana blue wow some of the cylinders some purple agate very nice looking rocks so we have filled this back up about three quarters of the way with water we have the medium sep grit here this is 120 220 grit and we're going to use about the same amount about three quarters of a cup in there so we'll seal the top back on make sure it's all nice tight and sealed and put it back on the tumbler so the tumbler's been going now for a week with the second grit it's time to clean it out and put the third grit in and let it go for a week too for step three here we will be using the fine grit 320 to 400 silicon carbide grit and again cleanliness is so very important tub is perfectly clean the rocks are perfectly clean where i have been using just under one cup maybe three quarters of a cup for this finer grit we can get away with a half cup and there we go that can tumble for a week this is interesting when i started this bin was three quarters full of rock now we're about a quarter full and i have noticed that the serpentine has almost all completely worn away you know three or four weeks of hard egg it's beating on the soft soft serpentine was just too much for it in fact everything in here is way smaller than when it started fill it up with water and put in the next grit so for the final grit we'll be using one micron cerium oxide this doesn't go by grit levels like the other ones where it said like 100 200 500 grit this is one micron stuff i'm not sure what that actually translates to to grit if someone wants to calculate it for me please leave it in the comments below and we won't be using quite as much because there's not quite as much rock anymore so there is a quarter cup in you know i may have two or three pounds of rock left in there tighten everything back up and put it on for one more week and then she'll be done so we have been going a month now at this tumbling the coarse medium fine and then the polished grits each for a week it has been a month can you tell the difference in my beard it's time to open up the tumbler after the polish and see what we got there is possibly one more step there is a burnishing step if we need it that's done with ivory soap but we'll only do that if we need it if not i'll just explain it to you let's check it out well here we go i'm gonna take these out of here dry them off wipe them down and see how nice they look all polished up now the eggs i put in they came out beautifully nice perfect polish every last one of them is just shiny and beautiful i think i will include these in my agate bags that i sell my agate grab bags i'll take one put in each bag some of these you have to look up against the light to really see what's inside them black and white eggs from my egg acclaim are amazing love these little things now this is something i'm worried about right from the beginning and my worries came to fruition the serpentine i put in was just too soft of all the serpentine i put in this is all i got back out again all the rest of them just ground away to nothing and disappeared so something to watch out for when tumbling rocks of different hardnesses probably shouldn't be tumbled together the soft soft serpentine just went away and now for what everyone wants to really see the ocean picture stone all tumbled up and polished came out beautifully there are some nice nice pieces in there let's get some close-ups i should also point out the video of this camera doesn't pick out the color nearly as well as the pictures of this camera do so this is the video and here's a picture and i wasn't playing with the settings at all no saturation no nothing like that that's just a picture with a flash the more light you get on this stuff the more the color shows up look at that piece of dana blue [Music] very very happy with the agates very very happy with the ocean picture stone the serpentine hmm bye bye serpentine too soft so i hope you all really enjoyed my video on tumbling the ocean picture stone or how to rock tumble in general had some great success got some beautiful stones hopefully if you needed it you'll learn something along the way i had fun doing it hopefully you had fun watching it and again a couple things to watch out for watch out for hardnesses soft stones and really hard stones don't tumble well together they don't play well together so try to stick to an equivalent or a similar type of hardness on your rocks also cleanliness cleanliness is next to godliness make sure you clean everything between each stage so crazy well if you don't you will contaminate between stages and that will interfere with your polish i did mention there was one other step that you could do if your polish wasn't coming out nice and shiny or if you wanted just that extra little kick tumble it for a couple hours with shredded ivory soap just take ivory stupid knife to ivory soap shred off a bunch put it in the tumbler add water tumble your rocks with some ivory soap hard soap and it will give it just that extra little kick and as always i hope everyone's having an amazing day out there if you enjoyed this video there's a good chance you're going to enjoy my other videos i have lots more on rock hunting rock working gold panning treasure hunting mining everything if you haven't looked at the rest of my channel yet go have a look there's probably something else out there that you're gonna like big big thanks my patrons because your support i get to make these videos for everyone to watch if you want to learn more about supporting my channel head off to patreon.com until the next video everyone bye [Music] you

Channel: Dan Hurd

Views: 83,571

Rating: 4.9546447 out of 5

Keywords: Rock tumbling, tumbling rocks, polishing rocks, rock tumbler, rotary tumbler, rotary, lortone, QT12, QT66, rock tumbling grit, grit, polish, stones, rocks, gemstone, how to, diy, step by step, rock tumbling procedure

Id: ch_9Y2e2QJ8

Length: 23min 5sec (1385 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 11 2021