I wonder how long it would take to clean up a larger stone, say one the size of your fist?
I’ll try to answer the questions with a little more detail.
The suggestion to let the dog pee on the monkey grass to kill it is good but takes too long. Shovel works best to just dig it out.
polishing from raw to finished takes 4-5 steps.
I’m using a commercial grit from Amazon. There are 4 grades. Coarse, medium, fine and polish.
The tumbler has 3 speeds. Coarse grit mixed with water goes 6-7 days at high speed or until the rocks are rounded on the corners and relatively smooth like one would see with a river rock.
Medium grit at medium speed for 5-7 days. they should be really smooth upon completion.
Fine grit at the slowest speed, also mixed with water takes another 5-6 days. The polishing grit mixed with water tumbles on slow for 6-7 days or until they are shiny.
If a really high polish is wanted like I did, there are some foam pellets impregnated with something like jewelers rouge for a 5th step at low speed for as long as one wants to tumble them.
So it pretty well takes a month to complete the process.
The suggestion to let the dog pee on the monkey grass to kill it is good but takes too long. Shovel works best to just dig it out.
polishing from raw to finished takes 4-5 steps.
I’m using a commercial grit from Amazon. There are 4 grades. Coarse, medium, fine and polish.
The tumbler has 3 speeds. Coarse grit mixed with water goes 6-7 days at high speed or until the rocks are rounded on the corners and relatively smooth like one would see with a river rock.
Medium grit at medium speed for 5-7 days. they should be really smooth upon completion.
Fine grit at the slowest speed, also mixed with water takes another 5-6 days. The polishing grit mixed with water tumbles on slow for 6-7 days or until they are shiny.
If a really high polish is wanted like I did, there are some foam pellets impregnated with something like jewelers rouge for a 5th step at low speed for as long as one wants to tumble them.
So it pretty well takes a month to complete the process.
It is suggested to mix rocks of different sizes in the tumbler as well as equal hardness. My tumbler isn’t big enough to polish one that large though. They will reduce in size by almost 50%, so if one wanted a finished stone the size of a fist, they would have to start with one big as a softball.
What tumbler are you using?
We are actually in OKC today as my sister had to get a heart procedure done which turned out successfully.
Can’t hang out in the hospital with the Covid rules so we drove around to the different landscape rock companies finally finding everything we need at Decorative Rock and Stone at the tinker diagonal. Now just need to bring a trailer next week to pick up 3 tons of colored river rock from Colorado and the big centerpiece rock that has already been drilled to create a fountain.
Showed the owner pics of the finished stones and he loaded me up with all kinds of gemstones and other interesting rocks to polish.
It’s a 3 lb model from Amazon sold under the National Geographic trade name. I got the one with three speeds which was more expensive but everything I read said you need to vary the speeds in the process.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Rock Tumbler... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DL95CWL?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
Rock Tumbler Grit Kit and Ceramic... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075MZ36FF?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
Prayer & best wishes for your Sis, Dennis.
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There’s a minnick just north of memorial on Santa Fe also
WoW! That's a beast!
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