As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Marc and I collected beach rocks to put in the rock tumbler.
Yesterday, Marc dumped them into the laundry room utility sink and rinsed them.
Tonight, I loaded them into the drum of the tumbler, along with the "coarse" grit and water. They'll tumble 24 hours a day for a week before I dump them out, rinse them and put them back in for another week with water and fine grit. After that, it's "pre-polish" for a few days and finally polish.
The whole process takes a few weeks. So, as I type this, a little machine is tumbling beach rocks in a corner of our basement office.
It takes patience to see what kind of results we'll get. I never was a very patient person, but I have to be for this. Actually, patience is one thing this process taught me as a kid. Some things just can't be rushed.
6 comments:
A few weeks... I may be patient, but I'm not that patient! LOL
That brings back memories--I had one of those as a kid! I collected lots of rocks, some that were really interesting, and I couldn't wait to see what they would look like. However, my mother threw it away before the rocks ever got finished, saying that she hated the noise.
It would have been a better memory without that last part.
Eh, I have no patience. That's why I just skipped the whole tumbling thingy and bought some at the local nature store.
I had one of those, too, as a kid. Man, those were so cool.
So...what is the tumbler for? I don't quite understand. Does it turn them into gold or something?
Sam--it smoothes and polishes them. What happens with many rocks is that stripping away the outermost layers and polishing them reveals colors and textures you can’t see at first, so they turn out very pretty.
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