Hello, my name is Rob and I'm going to
show you how to tumble rocks. I'm going to assume that you are new to this, maybe
thinking about getting a tumbler, maybe you've just gotten a tumbler, maybe
you've only done a couple batches, if you're having trouble with your tumbler...
So I'm going to assume you don't know too much and cover all little details. So
this will be probably a fairly long video. I'll be using a rotary tumbler for
this. I have a Lortone 33b which i think is a good first tumbler. This has
two three pound barrels. These barrels roll here at the same time. I like having
two barrels. You don't pay that much more because you're paying for one motor and two barrels. You can get this cut off there. It's called a 3A, I think. But for
another, I don't know, 30 bucks or 40 bucks you can get a whole other barrel
so you may as well do that. The reason I like two barrels is because you can have
something going in each barrel. You can have to have two rough tumbles going, you can have different rocks going in each barrel, you can have one barrel doing coarse and the
other barrel doing the later stages of tumbling. It just gives you a lot more
versatility so I always suggest beginners get a two barrel tumbler. This
is my first tumbler, and it still works great. I've had it for six or seven years I don't work for Lortone, by the way, I'm not getting paid to say that. I just really like
their tumblers. So anyhow, I'm going to be tumbling, this is called Serape Jasper
from Mexico, and I've never tumbled this before. But this is a hard rock. On the Mohs
scale of mineral hardness it's about a seven, and I suggest the beginners start
with either agate or jasper or some other hard rock
that's around that hardness. Softer rocks are harder to tumble and you're better
off start with something hard. They just shine up a lot easier than softer
rocks do. So anyhow, this is pretty stuff. I said I've never tumbled it before, but
it looked nice so I ordered some. I got ten pounds of it.
I noticed this piece. It's really pretty here and I'll probably end up throwing
it in the tumbler, but it's got all these crystals on the back here, so for now I'm
going to set that one aside and I might just keep that as a specimen. So anyhow, there's a couple different sizes that I could buy. I think I got like medium
and large so there's some smaller pieces in here. You want a mixture of sizes when
you do this. You don't want them all big or all small. It's better have a mixture
of sizes and then they just kind of nestle in together a little better. You
get more surface contact. The more parts of the rock you have touching when they're
rubbing around in the tumbler, the better. That's going to make them grind down a little bit faster so I've got a little tiny pieces and then bigger pieces. So let's
fill up a barrel. So these larger pieces are kind of big
for this barrel. You want to have enough motion in there. But you can get
away with throwing maybe two of these in. One, no problem.
Two is maybe pushing it a little bit, but what the heck. I'm just gonna throw a couple small
pieces in the bottom here, and a medium sized one, and I'll throw that big one in the middle. So you want this barrel about
two-thirds or three-quarters full. It's not real fussy how you do it, but I
found this a nice little tool when I first started. I measured the barrel.
There's a little lip where this sits down inside here. I measured from the top
of that lip to the bottom. I think I did 2/3. I figured out whatever that
distance was and found 2/3 of it. Actually 1/3 of it, and then I added on
that little quarter inch or so on the top there. So this is the
third of the height of the inside of the barrel when it's closed plus that little
lip. So when I set this down on top and it sets level on there I know I'm pretty
close to 2/3 full. I can fit a couple more pieces in there. Ok so that's level across there and that should
give them good movement in there. You don't want it too full, you don't want it
too empty. Right around there is good. So next we need some water in here. I usually go a half a cup with a three-pound barrel. I probably am a little on the light side from what most people do. Most people would say just fill to the bottom
of the top layer rocks and I'm a little bit under that. But that's just how I do
it. This is silicon carbide grit. This is 80 grit and common sizes
you might want our 60/90 or 80 or 46/70. that's 46 slash 70. That's a little coarser
grit so if I'm doing a bigger barrel like a 6 or a 12 pound barrel, it would be
about that big around, let me show you one. This is a 12 pound barrel. So in
something like this I use 46/70 grit because there's going to be more weight
of rocks in there so as they're turning, the rocks are way
up here pushing down a little bit harder. It'll break down that more coarse grit.
But with a small barrel like this most people use 80 grit or 60/90 grit. So
in a little barrel like this three tablespoons is about enough. You can put in four if you wanted, but I'm going to go with three. And then I always button up the
top right away so this stuff doesn't get spilled. You don't want that getting
in with your other grits or track it around the house. So then we put the lid on and put it on the tumbler. This doesn't have an on/off switch so when you plug it in, it goes on. This goes that way, this goes this way. This
barrel is empty right now. That's a noise it makes
these smaller barrels aren't very loud. You wouldn't want in the same room with
you, but if it's down the basement like mine is, you're not going to hear this too much
upstairs. The bigger barrels, you can hear those thumping around a little bit more.
I'm actually not going to run it on this machine. I have a big homemade tumbler
I'll put this in. I can put a whole bunch of these barrels in there, so I'll be
running it in that, but this is what you would be running it on. It really doesn't
matter. It's just turning the barrel. It doesn't matter what machine you use to
do it. So we'll check back in on this in a week. So it's been a week, and the rocks are
rinsed off, and you can see there's quite a bit of change in this for the first
week. I really like the first week of tumbling because the rocks change kind
of the most out of all the weeks I'd say. You go from sharp jagged rocks to rocks
that are a little less sharp and jagged. So you see like on this one that hasn't
been tumbled, it's real sharp along there real, I think you can see that, real
pointy. I'm not going to cut my finger or anything, but compared to this it's
much more rounded off on the edges. These have all gotten much more mellowed on
the edges. That's a pretty Rock. I really like that. I'm concerned about this
notch here though. When other rocks are kind of rubbing
against that, they tend not to get into that notch there. So I either have
to wear this whole area down to that depth, or what I'll probably do in a
couple of weeks is cut off part of this. I'll probably use a saw to do it. If
you don't have a saw you can use a chisel. I just really want to keep that
shape there so I'll probably try to cut it right along here somewhere, take this
piece off. So that's a decision I'll make in a couple weeks when I see how it's going.
These are looking good. They're coming along nicely. I see I've got a couple little tiny pieces in here that
broke off somewhere along the line. So all this these will go back in the tumbler.
I don't expect these to be done for several weeks yet so just the rocks
in here... the first rock will try to come out in, I don't know, three weeks from now?
So my volumes down a little bit because those all shrunk a little so we're this
was sitting up a level now it's down between maybe three-eighths of an inch
down. So I'm going to throw another rock in there and get the level up kind of where it was. Not level level, but... You get the idea. Alright, so just like last week we add in our water and 3 tablespoons of 80 grit. And I'll keep
doing this same procedure week after week after week until I get enough rocks
ready to fill up a barrel this size again to go to the next stage. So any that get done I'll just set aside. But like I said, I'm probably not going to set anything aside for a little while. So this will go back on the tumbler and I'll see you
next week. All right, that's two weeks down on the Jasper and
I've already rinsed these off and inspected all of them and these four
little guys are getting really close to being done. They've got another week or
maybe two before they're ready for the next stage, so they go back in. Most of these are not anywhere near being done yet, so I've got a long ways to go on most of
them. This one that's been bugging me since the beginning because of this big
notch in it and this really cool pattern back here. I really want to take this end
off it. I looked at it closely, I don't think you're going to be able to see
it, but there's a crack that runs right along here and right along there. It's
pretty much exactly where I want this to be broken off. So I'm going to take this
chisel (not on top of here, I'll put on the floor in a minute). I'm going to put the chisel there and smack it with a hammer, and I'm hoping to take that off but preserve all
this. This one... this one? Yeah this one's a mess. It's got a big crack here. It's got
a crack over here, and it really needs to be broken. This
crack in particular kind of goes around the edges, so I know it goes all the way
through and I'm never going to get rid of it. So I'm going to take that off
right there. Hopefully right across here. This crack
is also probably all the way through, but I'm going to let it go a little bit longer
because I can't see it on the sides, I can't see it on the back. I do see it
from here around here. So that should probably be broken also, but I'm hoping not to make the rocks quite that small. So that's going go for another
week or two and I'll wait to make a decision on it. The other one that doesn't look
real bad but it's got this little protrusion here, I'm going to try to take
that off with the chisel also. Now I could do all this with the saw and be a little
more precise about it but this is supposed to be a video for beginners and
most of you won't have saws if you're just getting into tumbling probably, so
I'm going to try to stick with hand tools the best I can. So you just pick up
a chisel the hardware store get a hammer and give it a smack. so I'm going to do that.
probably throw on a couple more rocks because the level is down a little bit
so even though I'm not taking anything out all the rocks got a little smaller
this week and so I'll put in a rock or two or three or whatever it takes to get
that level up to about two-thirds or three-quarters again I just broke this
rock and I forgot to turn the camera on but see if I can recreate this this
looked like this and I put the hammer or the chisel right there and gave it a
whack and it came off like that this is pretty sharp along here that's really
thin and sharp so I'm thinking by the time this tumble is enough to take all
this other stuff down that might round off well enough and be fine so I'm not
going to do any more to it right now I really don't want to break this part of
it so both these pieces will go in and I'm gonna try to do something with this
one next so there's this huge crack here and then there's a crack here and this
crack looks like it goes most of the way around so I'm going to take this one off
first and then I might let it run a little longer
might just knock this other one off right now to side this little shield
here I put down to contain the shrapnel didn't think of broken first that broke
the exactly where I thought it was going to and I don't know if that crack goes
all the way through it probably does but I'm gonna tumble this for a little bit
longer and just see what happens I'll keep an eye on it and then this one I
just want to take off that little pointy part right there turn off that chisels
gonna grip it though it might not be so easy when I put the chisel on it it it
slides away it just slides down it I don't think I can get a grip on that one
okay without that under go a little bigger than I wanted but that's okay
that's better than it was so that'll round off that'll be fine
alright so those go in the tumbler and like I said I'll put a couple extra
rocks in and I'll check back with you again next week I just got done rinsing
the rocks off after their third week in the tumbler and I'm pretty happy with
the way they're shaping up this one that I thought belong here or broke along
here it was all jagged and rough it's not anymore it still has some pretty big
protrusions that need to come off but like this rocks come along pretty well
still some pretty good dents we're still a couple weeks off from any of these
being done but they're getting closer so I'm gonna throw them back in here and
we'll check and see if they've lost any volume and I'm sure there's a lot of
some value significant yeah yeah that's down about
the width of the lip there boss scraps and this isn't to fill up
the extra space this is actually to get in between little nooks and crannies in
there a little better so all these rocks are are much bigger than some these I'm
gonna put in so they should fill in little holes so run away for another
week and I'll see you next week nope this is a big week I've got two rocks
are ready for the next stage unfortunately none of these rocks are
ready for the next stage so I want to pull the camera a little closer and show
you I look for it each week and I'll just go through several rocks with you
and show you really close what I'm looking for
all right so this is the first rock it's not perfect it's also not a very pretty
rock but a tumble haul so there's some really little holes in there but they
look to me like holes that aren't gonna go away I can see some little sparkles
in there so I think there's little crystals in there and those kind of
holes usually go throughout the rock and if you grind those away there's just
more that show up underneath so I'll move that on I'll just have to be
careful and make sure all the grits out of the holes between stages this is a
better Rock it looks perfect to me let's see any problems with it so that
should come out really nice in the end then we have these three that aren't
ready to go on this one there's a little bit of a dip right there I can feel my
finger I can't release when I can see a little bit but
that's not ready and the rest of the rock looks fine I probably should move
that on but I'm not going to this one was also close though right here hope
you can see this that little shallow fracture there with one more week of
tumbling I hope I can get it out there's also a little piece a little spot right
there those don't look bad here but in the final stage after the final polish
they're gonna look bad they'll show up really clearly so I'd rather tumble
those though now this one's close got a bad spot right there and there's another
little spa right there so that little guy's got to come out that should come
out easily in a week that looks really really shallow all right looks like it's
on the rocks that aren't doing so well this one still has that protrusion I'm
wondering if I should knock that off I'm kind of thinking I should have but there
is really deep back here that's gonna take a while to get that
tumble out so this is gonna be in there for a while and hopefully that mellows
out a little bit at least this one's getting pretty close
we're spot is right there there's a pretty deep groove right there and
there's some spots up here need to go but that's not looking too bad spot
right there that's almost gone that'll pay probably a couple more weeks before
it's ready to go on and then this one that I showed you a week or two ago I
need to split that that that crack is really deep and goes all the way across
here so I'm gonna take a hammer and chisel and break that ready to happen in
half there the back doesn't look too bad but I just I think that goes really deep
so that one's gonna get broken in half right in a crack there in the rest these
are you know looking looking better than they started out they're getting close
that's got a bad spot right there that's about there a little bad spot there
there but it's getting close so hopefully in the next couple of weeks we
take out quite a few of these rocks and start moving some new ones in in their
place all right see you next week
this week these two little guys are done I think I predicted they'd be done last
week and they are those are ready for the next stage this one that I hadn't
broken before I decided to break it so probably show them in the first place
but it's broken now and with my rocks that are in there and a few little
scraps from before now there's a little bit of room for a couple extras in here
so be in there boring so four more rocks in there and we'll let them go for
another week another week down in one more rock radio move on so then we'll
get set aside and these three are really really close they all have really little
imperfections in them but they've been there this sly maids will throw them in
for another week and make them look the way I want them to look this one on the
other hand it has a kind of deep hole right there just on that end the
restaurants are pretty good it's got a little ways to go but I'm gonna put a
nail in there and just give it a tap with a hammer and hopefully that end
will just pop right off and then we're going down quicker that way then wait to
grind through all this rock and then smooth it off after that these are not
that close so let's see we can get in here that's pretty much where it was
before I did take a rock out I should probably throw one in but I want to make
sure there's enough action on the movement in there that they actually
grind down for you oh by the way the last couple of weeks I've been putting
in 4670 grit instead of 80 grit I haven't noticed a big difference I
didn't think I would last week I also put in four tablespoons
instead of three tablespoons I don't know how much it matters but I think I'm
going to continue putting in four tablespoons to try to get these done a
little bit quicker so we'll see you next week well another
weights down and two more little rocks done that's a really pretty little rock
this one doesn't look like much but it's going in this one we have a finished
after I think seven weeks these two are really close and I'm pretty sure I told
you one of these who's going to be done this week I think this one it's been a
week for me I don't only been like 30 seconds since I talked about it for you
but these still are done I'm trying to put small ones in now because with a
small barrel I've already got some big ones in there I don't like hinder the
movement too much one things people move around pretty well so with these bigger
ones in there it doesn't roll around too well
try to keep it to do stop all those so we'll see you next week all right
leather week down I got one little guy done this one looks pretty nice so it
goes in the done file that's where we're at right now and then these four I was
going to show you they look like they're really getting close so this one I just
about burst into tears in there to go because I was looking at it and it looks
pretty good except there's this crack and then the crack goes way up around
the end and I pulled on this thing with my fingers in this program off so that
was going to come off anyhow I just didn't expect it I haven't noticed that
before so I gotta wait for that whole end to
grind out again which kind of makes me sad but that goes back in this one has
it looks really good except there's one little spot right um there you know
you're gonna do will see it but it's just about there so it's been in for
nine weeks already why don't know if this particular one
has been for nine weeks so what's one more week
think I'll make it perfect this one also has a little bad spot
right in there I can feel it I'm sure you can't see it there's a little
crystal a pocket right here that's fine I'll just let that go and make sure I
cleaned out really well that allows you look cool but I get that one little
speck out so like I said put in there long enough days we'll go one more one
more week and then this one looks pretty good except it's got a little crack
crater on the top there that crack goes all the way around
I can feel bumps on it so I'm willing to leave that crack as long as I make a
little bumps on it but it might end up falling off like that other one then
let's go back in here probably don't want to add too much more by the time I
am in my little filler rocks in there there's a little bit of can see this
little hole right there all right so offer another week or rolling all right
this is a big week we've got two rocks done this one has a crystal pocket in
here that I'm not going to ride out because I like it but the rest of it is
all completely smooth this one's all done those are in the done box this is
the one that broke last week it's got a long ways to go in there for a while is
down a little bit so for another week we have all right this week we have two
little tiny rocks down there ready to go so those are in the done box these are
not done there's a couple ever getting close maybe next week are two more this
is the one that broke a couple weeks ago a few weeks ago and that spot that a
broken spill has pretty deep holes in it so that's gonna be a while the lesson
here is it's better to break them yourself early rather than to wait for
them to break themselves like this the earlier you get a broken the quicker
that that break starts to smooth over a little bit so these go back and we're
still pretty full just took our two little tiny rocks so I'm not going to
add any this week so we'll see what happens for next week a little more
progress this week got two done levels down a little bit so I put that in there
I see it's down just a little so they have room for bigger one one more okay
good enough that's down a little bit but this rocks sticking up to the middle of
it so so for another week of template we got three more done this week so those
done box pretty boring - done this week for one
we're in the barrel - done run again this week we have one more done there's
nothing else to report oh these rocks have been tumbling for 17
weeks now and I'm a patient person but there's a limit to my patience and it's
just run out so my goal was to teach you how to tumble and a small barrel like
this this what most people start out with I've got big barrels and vibratory
tumblers and all kinds of stuff but most people start out with this so my goal is
to show you how to do it from beginning to end and I still do that but I'm gonna
cheat a little bit so right now we've only got these rocks done for previous
weeks these came out this week none of these are done yet I think one of my
problems was that I picked the wrong rocks to show this with these are just
taking longer than most rocks do so I don't want to discourage you
bufort crushed rocks when they crush the rocks there tends to be fractures and go
all the way through them so we run into that plus they just seem to be unusually
hard rocks so I'm gonna take the minute now and tell you how to shave some time
off you're tumbling so the first thing you can do is use a bigger barrel so
this is a 12-pound barrel this is a three-pound barrel there's some
advantages to using the bigger barrel costs more this tumbler is about $200 to
start with this one's about $100 you can put a whole lot more rocks in here so if
you've got more rocks in your tumbler it's it's got two advantages one is
there's just more rocks so you're going to be turning out rocks and a little
faster pace just because there's more tumble involve in time so on this one
you got to get the ones in there tumbled and then add more and they're starting
from scratch or here you're putting them all in at the same time they're going to
just be all of them are going the whole time instead of just a small number of
them the second thing is if you think about like sanding wood if I have to if
I'm going to stay on the top of this table here and I press really
it's not gonna do much good if I put some elbow grease into it rub a little
bit harder I'm gonna stand it quicker the same thing happens here with this
this barrel it's going to be filled up to about there you've got all that wave
those rocks pushing down compared to the smaller barrel where you've just got a
little bit of weight pushing down on it so as we're tumbling it's just runs
harder because the more weight on top of it the next thing you can do is not be so
picky let me get some rocks to show you what I'm talking about so these rocks are examples of rocks
that are shiny but not tumbled to get all the little flaws out so so putting
stone where it only on the tumbler for three days this is in a vibratory
tumbler but you can do so the same thing in a rotary tumbler and it's got a nice
shine on it but it's still got holes and all the natural shape to it here's a
couple Montana agates these were tumbled and I left in big holes and cracks and
all kinds of stuff in them but these still nice and shiny and actually some
people may prefer them this way there you don't have to have every little flaw
to make them nice rocks so that's the reason I'm taking so long or one of the
reasons is because I'm trying to get every single little fly you don't have
to do that the next thing you can do is couple rocks from the beach let me go
get some examples so here's a few beach rocks I picked up they're already
partially tumbled by the waves so they've been rolling around the sand and
other rocks and stuff so it's kind of like nature's tumbler and they're
already rounded off anything most of the way there are they might spill out deep
holes on them and they're not going to be real quick all the time and they
should always go on the first day some people want to skip the first stage I
wouldn't ever so this is a piece of this serape Jasper same as the stuff they've
been tumbling here you can see how sharp the corners are like I said there's
accent because it was crushed that's just going to take a lot longer to shape
up than this is this is like almost looks like those already so that's
another thing you can do next thing next thing you can do is you
can grind some of these rocks so not everybody has a grinder this is supposed
to be a good beginner video but if you didn't have a grinder tonight you have a
grinder I've got this machine and then over there you can see it's behind the
camera but there's a flat lap it goes around this way I'm gonna use that one
but you can see there's there's one little bad spot I circled so on all
these I took a marker and just circle the ones that could be ground up so in a
lot of cases this one little spot that I'm tumbling this whole Rock down the
whole rocks getting smaller but I couldn't just be working on that one
little spot so I can tumble it there do that one little spot throw it back in
the tumbler for a week and next week I'll have a bunch right that's my plan
with these so these all had potential go on and reinder and be ready by next week
someone won't be but a lot of them will be these are still too rough so I
decided tumble those a little bit more I like to tumble first and then grind
later after I can kinda see where the bad spots are so that's my plan with
this so I'm going to take it over the grinder and show you that I mean all right so this is called a flat lap and
I've got a bad spot right in here and then I forgot this whole back is rough
also it looks like maybe the outer part of the rock or something so I'm gonna
take off the whole back this is a 60 grit disc
we're just gonna drip a little water on there it's a brand new disc so first
time I've used it should work really well I'm just gonna this this going to
be loud so stop talking I've already taken off a little bit I'm
gonna have to take off that whole end there almost there a little bit more then
what's pretty good like to round off the edges alright I'm gonna work on the back alright so that's all ready to go that's
gonna look good after another week the reason I go one more week is because I
get little ridges and things along here they didn't try really hard to get rid
of them so that'll just round everything and shape everything a little more so I
think that's ready to go later on next you can tumble softer rocks so on the
Mohs scale of mineral hardness these are a seven but they seem harder than a
southern from my experience telling they just went really slowly tigereye I can't
remember what a lot of hardness is but it tumbled up really nicely three or
four weeks and these were ready to go to the next page so it says 17 weeks three
or four weeks I don't produce off though here's obsidian and obsidian shines up
nice and a lot on tumblr it's really hard to tell what a rotary tumbler so
this is I think five if you start to get into rocks that soft then it gets to be
difficult in so maybe a little bit softer than these but don't get carried
away I can definitely recommend tigereye so the next thing we're going to do was
oh this involves am I gonna get that over here let me just do this alright so
this is a rotary tumbler like we've been using for this batch we're going to
continue using this is a vibratory tumbler this specific one is called a
while there are other brands also this is going to take us four to five weeks
to finish up the rest of our match after after one more week I'm riding those and
then put them in here one more week and then four or five more weeks after that
this would take one week after so this uses less grit
it's quicker it's easier to get a good shine this takes more grips much slower
a little bit harder to get a good shine what if she
so that's how you can shave some time off this so I'm gonna finish grinding
those rocks throw them back in the barrel and then we'll throw them back in
the tumbler and see you next week last week after I turned off the camera I
spent some time writing the bad spots off that pile of rocks I put them in
these the big 12 pound tumbler and all these are ready this week this one
that's got that really cool pattern on it still isn't quite done there's a
crack in here and I can feel a crack on the back it's really close and it's good
enough and cool enough rock that I want you to see it at the end I'm going to
put it in there I might after polishing the whole thing put it back in the rough
stage and grind out the little bad spots we'll see almost when we get done so got
all these done these ones were done from before I'm gonna finish them up here
continuing with the small barrel so that fills it about that much for a boat like
that throw that one in there that's pretty cool already I'm only using
ceramics here to fill all the gaps if that's actually maybe a little bit
too full but I'm just going to go with it
so what the ceramics do is they fill the gaps they make more grinding contacts
and then they also just sort of cushion it because things aren't bouncing around
so much everything goes a little smoother in there so they keep things
from getting shoved up too badly I'm gonna pour water in here okay I can just
see the water on the top there a little bit everything go for just a little bit
back up so the waters you can see it down here the bottom maybe I want to
just pull the surface here just a little bit so in top my top of there I'm going
to put in three tablespoons of what 220 grit and I forgot to get that out so
I'll do that after after I turn the camera off but there's me three
tablespoons of 220 grit I'll button it up and throw it back on the tumbler for
another week so I'll see you again next week all right so I just pulled this off the
tumbler it's been rolling for one week in 220 grit that's what it looks like
I'm just gonna dump it in here we'll just give it a rinse all right so the nice part about this is
all the ceramics can just move right along with the rocks they get rinsed off
they're not gonna carry any grit along with them or anything like that so
they're gonna be good to go with the rest of the batch it's not a
good idea to get these or let these dry out right now
I think this yeah this is the one with some cracks in it so if they were to dry
out and I happen to have some grit stuck in those cracks they harden right up
like concrete so we don't really want to dry them out but since you might be
wondering what they're look like dried out take one that I hope doesn't have
any cracks and just show you what it's looking like so it doesn't look shiny
that really doesn't look a whole lot different than it does in the last step
but this is smoother if you were to look at it under a mega think making a fire
or something the scratches are gonna be a little bit smaller now and that's all
we do from here I know it is just keep to making the scratches smaller and
smaller and smaller until then she looks all shiny so I'm gonna rinse these off
just a little bit more and then we'll load it up for the next run next one's
gonna be ten days and it's gonna be 500 aluminum oxide but let me just rinse
these off a little more and then I'll show you that alright so the rocks have
been rinsed really well and I'm just gonna put them right back into the
barrel like I said this railings are gonna go right in with them and at this stage you can you either use
aluminum oxide or you can stick with silicon carbide and I like a little
oxide because I think it's better for polishing aluminum oxide when it breaks
down breaks down into little rounded off pieces where so it kind of carbide when
it breaks down it actually breaks and breaks into little sharp pieces so it's
better at cutting and grinding and this is better at kind of polishing and
smoothing things out so I put in three tablespoons of this I always hold it
right back on so it doesn't get contaminated by anything and I have six
ounces of water here I'm gonna pull it for the Sun and see how it looks you
know I'm gonna go a little bit more about the water just a little bit under
that out layer of rocks so I'm watch kinda down in here and see
if I can see the water give me about there so I could just barely see the
water so this will go back onto the tumbler for another ten days week and a
half and then we'll be on to the last step all right so this has been running
for two weeks and the 500 grit looks like that inside somewhere else dump it
in here and rinse these off really well all right so I'm gonna rinse this a
little bit more and then we're going to put borax in it and it's going to run it
and borax for about six hours and actually it's kind of late in the day so
I'll probably just let it run overnight so I'm gonna rinse this a little more
and I'll be right back to show you all right so I have these all rinsed off
I've already added the water in here and I'm just gonna dry one off even though I
shouldn't just to show you what it looks like these should be kept wet just in
case you have any grit that's in there cracks it can dry in there that's one of
the reasons I try not to move any rocks on with cracks that I don't have to
worry about that but it's got getting a slight sheen to it I think you can see
there if this was done a vibratory tumbler after the 500 stage this would
be super shiny but in a rotary tumbler tumbler not so much
so that's they look like and what I'm gonna do now is add some borax so this
is our box of borax looks like you can find this in the laundry section of
their grocery store and I'm just gonna add in a couple teaspoons here and the
idea here is to just wash these off really well so I really only need to run
this for about six hours but it's kind of late at night right now and I'm not
gonna be up for another six hours so I'm just gonna let this run overnight so the
idea is to really clean these up good so that there's no grit left in these at
all and then I'll put them in polish in the morning so just run these overnight
we're almost there I should have shown you when I rinsed these out just after
that six hour wash and borax the water came out quite dirty so I know that did
some good got some gun thought of some a couple
little cracks that I left behind it a couple rocks
so now we're just gonna put some water in here and I'm filling this up just so
I can just barely see the water right there so much below the surface a little
bit and I'm gonna use three tablespoons of polish so this is just a finer grit
than the other stuff this is still aluminum oxide and I also switched to a
polish Bera so this barrel I only used for polish and I don't know how
important that is I think it's the most important thing but if you're gonna have
a dedicated barrel this would be the stage to have it for I'm just gonna the
top down there and throw this on for two more weeks and next time you see these
they will be all polished up I'll probably do a burnish run right like I
did it before for several hours with 4x again but we're really close to now so
hang in there and wait for the end all right this the moment we've been
waiting for these actually just ran for three weeks in Polish instead of two
weeks because I kind of got busy with some other stuff and just hanging it
around it okay so here goes right I'll rinse them a little bit
better in the sink but let's just take a peek because I can't wait any longer that's looking pretty shiny I think we
got a successful batch on our hands here so I'll rinse these off just a little
bit better in the sink and then we'll take a look at him up close well that
took a while but we're finally done so at this point a lot of people would do a
burnishing stage that's when they put the rocks back in the Barrow and then
usually use some sort of soap so Ivory soap just kind of shaved off into the
Barrow I'll use borax something like that and
then you just run the rocks for a few hours like that a lot of people claim
that gives them a better polish I don't really do that very often at all the
only time I'll do that is if there's cracks or holes in the rocks you do not
want the slurry drying and cracks and holes because it'll drive this like
concrete you'll never get it out but we made sure that these were a really nice
before they went in so they don't have any cracks and holes on so there's
nothing to worry about there so I'm not gonna bother with the burnishing stage
as far as I'm concerned they're done so when you pull the camera a little closer
on take a look out all right so here they are let's take a peek at them up
close so here's an example of something I should have tumbled out all that time
tumbling would look better if I would have gotten that little guy out of there
but that would have taken you know maybe two more weeks to tumble that out of
there this bigger crack there was no way to avoid that
that's I could have cut off the whole edge of the rock I guess but that's
about the only way that one looks much deeper but if you can tumble off those
little guys it's a good idea to do it so that's the reason for me taking so long
being so fussy with everything is there's trying to get all those kind of
things out of there I really haven't looked at these without
you so we're looking at them for the first time together it's a really pretty
Rock the Cheyenne these is excellent I'm very happy with it so I really don't do
that much rotary tumbling it's good to try it one smile just to make sure that
I know how so this is the one with a really cool pattern here and it's got
some it's got a little crack there it's not too deep or anything cracks up here
it was just never gonna be perfect either so at some point you gotta move
mine or just tumble away to nothing your rock riffs are all pretty rocks help the
best ones here and look at them up close that reminds me a lot of crazy lace
agate these are really cool rocks not the
easiest tumble can't say was super happy with the amount of fractures in these
things but they look nice now it's kind of weird shape one no I forgot the
Scottish pressure to scrub that out a little better it's got a little bug
right there it's Lapland more plain-looking one what a variety of colors in these things it just couldn't be any happier with the
shine on these though sure is quicker in a vibratory tumbler but you can
accomplish the same thing in a rotary tumbler almost like crazy Lysol so I'll make a
slideshow for you and look at them all that way thanks a lot for sticking
through this video you know it got really long but hopefully it was
informative if you're trying to tumble on your own I figure the more details I
can give you the better and if you just like looking at the polished rocks if
you're not familiar with my videos I have a series of videos comes out every
Tuesday night called rocks in a box where I take rocks out of actually this
cabinet right here and just show them off like I'm doing right now so if
you're just looking for pretty rocks check those out there's a lot of them
already recorded and I'll be doing a bunch more too well thanks for watching
and I'll see you next time you
Really chill video, man is just tumbling rocks
I tumbled rocks when I was a kid. It was at least a little fun.