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Home » Tumbler Rough » Beginner's Rough
Beginner's Mix Rock Tumbler Rough
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Beginner's Mix Tumbling Rough
Our "Beginner's Mix" contains a blend of rock materials that are specially selected for tumbling success.
This mix has been crushed and screened to have just the right particle sizes for a 3-pound tumbling barrel - such as the barrels of a Lortone 3A or 33B tumbler or the Thumler's A-R1 or A-R2.
The pieces range in size from about 1/4" (6 mm) to 1 1/4" (31 mm) in diameter. You will not need to add ceramic media when tumbling this mix.
Just fill your tumbler barrel a little over 1/2 full with rough, add water and grit, and you are ready to tumble.
Each bag of this mix is different. You will likely find pieces of colorful agate, jasper, quartz and other interesting
materials that tumble well together and accept a brilliant polish. If you order today and then again in a few weeks the material that you receive could be entirely different.
We recommend TXP polish - an aluminum oxide compound - for polishing agates, jaspers and quartz materials.
The mix in the picture above was photographed wet to show full color.
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The photo above shows a batch of Beginner's Mix that we tumbled. Here is what we did....
Step 1:
We loaded a little less than four pounds of Beginner's Mix into the barrel of a
Lortone QT6 tumbler with coarse
60/90 grit silicon carbide and the recommended
amount of water. We then tumbled for seven days. At the end of seven days we cleaned the rocks
and the barrel. The rocks were not rounded to our satisfaction so we tumbled seven more days
in coarse grit, cleaned the rocks and did a third week in coarse to achieve the desired degree of rounding.
Step 2:
We then loaded the Beginner's Mix into a single barrel
Lot-O-Tumbler. We included some large ceramic
cyllinders to bring the Lot-O-Tumbler barrel up to operating capacity. We then ran the Lot-O for 48 hours
with 150/220 grit, rinsing and adding new grit
after the first 24 hours.
Step 3:
We then ran the Beginner's Mix and ceramic cylinders for 24 hours in the Lot-O-Tumbler with
500F grit prepolish. The rocks were now
showing a slight gloss.
Step 4:
The final step was 48 hours in the Lot-O-Tumbler with
TXP aluminum oxide polish. We checked the
rocks at the end of 24 hours and they had a bright polish but it wasn't mirror bright throughout.
So we added one Lot-o-Tumbler cap full of water and allowed the tumbler to run another 24 hours.
Wow! They came out great. Total processing time was one week and five days.
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Large Ceramic Media:
Large ceramic pellets work great as a filler and for delivering grit or polish to difficult-to-reach surfaces. More information... |
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Small Ceramic Media:
Small ceramic pellets work great when you need small material for better tumbling action or to deliver grit or polish to difficult-to-reach surfaces. More information... |
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Plastic Media:
Use plastic pellets to cushion fragile stones when tumbling in a rotary tumbler. More information... |
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