Polish Rocks

By Bruce MacLellan
STEP 1
Fill your barrel 3/4 - 7/8 full of broken or beach rock (no larger than 1/5 the width of the barrel & smaller). You’ll get the best results if you make sure that there is a good mixture of sizes with more in the medium size range. Hardness is important. A load with rocks that are all harder than a knife blade or carpenter's nail will polish better than a mixed load or one of softer stones. Unless they are very pretty & warrant a lot of work, eliminate any stones with cracks or pits as these may hold grit between stages & contaminate the next stage.

Once you are happy with your load (hardness, size, etc.) put in enough water so that you can see it between the top layer of stones. Do not cover the stones. Add your grit. Generally, in Steps 1 & 2 (of the 4-step process) you should use 1 ounce of grit for every pound of rocks & a little less in the pre-polish and polish stages (Steps 3 and 4). Using the measuring cups we provide, per pound of rock, you need:

Step 1 Coarse (60/90) 1 tbsp.
Step 2 Fine (220) 1 tbsp. + 1 dram (5 drams)
Step 3 Pre-Polish just over 2 tbsp.
Step 4 Polish 2 tbsp. well tamped down

Let the tumbler run for 1 week (for each stage).
STEPS 2, 3 & 4
At the end of each week dump your rocks (gently) into a screen or colander & rinse them thoroughly. Don't do this in your sink - the grit will clog up the drain. Pick a corner of your garden or yard in which to dump the water. Make sure you get every corner of your barrel & lid clean & every stone. Use a small brush (old toothbrush) on those stones with cracks or pits. Put the stones back in the barrel with enough water as in Step 1 & the appropriate grit & repeat.
HINTS FOR BETTER RESULTS

1. After each cleaning, but before putting in the next grit, use water & soap** for a good rinse cycle. Let the tumbler run for an hour or so. This will make sure that the stones & barrel are clean. Dump the soap and water, rinse & proceed with the next grit. Make sure that you do this after the polish step at the very least, as this process cleans the stones & gives them a final burnishing.


**DO NOT USE DETERGENT. Detergents will interact with the rubber of the barrel, laying black stuff all over your rocks.

2. If your stones do not take up at least half of the volume of the barrel after the second step, you can add a filler - such as plastic pellets - to bring the volume back up to 3/4 and proceed to Steps 3 & 4. The plastic pellets available from Mountain Gems float. So. Add a step to your process -- throw the slurry (grits, rocks & pellets) into a bucket of water & float the pellets off. The pellets are reusable in the same grit. Do not use the pre-polish pellets in the polish cycle.

3. A better way is to run two loads of stones for the first two stages & then combine the two loads, choosing the best & filling your barrel to the 3/4 mark. Proceed to Steps 3 & 4.

4. Rejected stones might be improved by retumbling them with another load of rough stones.

5. For more rounded stones, run your coarse Step 1 for two or more weeks. Putting some fresh grit in at the end of each week will help.

Tumbling Jewellery By Barrie Edwards
As a jewellery maker, I was truly frustrated when it came to finishing jewellery on a buffing machine for many reasons. Primarily it was time consuming & I couldn't reach the more intricate areas. Then my husband discovered that we could tumble polish our jewellery in our rock tumbler (every good rockhound has one!). Now. There's no fuss, no muss, just great looking jewellery every time!

This method utilizes a burnishing effect caused by the tumbling of polished steel shot with your jewellery pieces, bringing them to a dazzling sparkle. The major benefits of this method are:

1. No more dust & particles flying around the room.
2. No more half-polished pieces flying around the room (go on, admit it - everyone's had a piece ripped out of their hands by a buffer!)
3. No more burned, black fingers!
4. And most importantly ... this requires none of your valuable time - you can sleep through the whole process if you want!

The only disadvantage I can think of is that you can't get a 'mirror' finish on very large flat surfaces.

Okay, so what's the secret? First, you will need the following:

* Small rotary tumbler & barrel (separate barrels for jewellery & rocks, please).
* Enough polished steel shot to fill the barrel at least half full.
* Ivory Soap flakes (laundry soap - Ivory Snow - the kind that say’s it’s 99-44/100’s Pure Soap). Yes, you can use the small Ivory bar soap instead. NO - don't use Ivory dish soap - too many bubbles! And, no, you can’t use DETERGENT or everything will go an icky-icky BLACK.

It's very important that you make sure the piece you are going to tumble is emeryed as smooth as possible - just as if you were about to take it to the buffer. If you take extra care at this point, making sure you've removed any file marks & heavy scratches, you will save lots of time after it's tumbled.

Now, put the shot in the barrel. Fill with enough water to cover the shot by about ¾ of an inch. Add one tablespoon of soap. Put your jewellery in the barrel. Pop on the lid--tightly. Put the barrel on the tumbler & leave it to rotate for 6 to 8 hours. Remove barrel from tumbler, then remove pieces from barrel & rinse very well with water. That's it. You're done! Now you can set your stones, if there are any, and you have a beautifully polished piece of jewellery!
HINTS FOR BETTER RESULTS

1. Always (and I mean always!) leave your shot in the barrel covered with water & soap. Even just a few hours with no water can cause rust to set in. Then you'll start to find your sparkly jewellery isn't so sparkly anymore. The soap (and this is why soap is the key) will prevent rust from forming on the steel shot by keeping air out of the water.
2. Tumble polish one chain at a time. It's okay to add other jewellery, like rings & earrings etc. We have found though, that more than one chain tends to cause massive knotting.
3. You will find that you can tumble even the most delicate pieces (I've successfully tumbled a 30ga sterling wire miniature tree). Only experimentation will show you how many pieces can be tumbled at once. As long as it fits loosely into the barrel, you can tumble it.
4. If your piece has been antiqued with liver of sulphur or silver black, gently scrub it with a toothbrush under running water before you tumble it. If any of the blackening solution is left on when it's tumbled, you end up with green deposits in hard-to-reach spots.