Hi everyone, I got a lot of requests on my last video where I tumbled rocks for an entire
year to see the rocks up closer, because I didn't really show them up close in that
video, so this is an answer to those requests
These are the ones I did in silicon carbide for a year, these I did in the aluminum
oxide for a year, and these I did in the normal way that I usually do them, I
started them in a rotary tumbler and then finished them up in the vibratory tumbler
So these are the carnelians, the next video I do next week, I'll show you the
Bahia agates up close.
Before we look at the rocks that tumbled for a whole year, let's look at the ones
that just tumbled in the normal way.
They shined up nice, but there's some stuff that I didn't understand about these
rocks when I got them
They were sold as Moroccan carnelians and I just thought a carnelian was a
carnelian, and that it didn't really matter where it was from. So in the past
carnelians that I've tumbled have just been an orange chalcedony
and they were orange all the way through. These are different.
Before I go on, I just want to point out that part right there, it looks like there's
an eye kind of hiding in behind there.
Pretty cool rock.
So, what's different about these is they seem to be a very thin layer of carnelian
over top of a whole lot of quartz.
So look at that one, it's - that's all quartz in there. Kind of dirty looking,
it's not that exciting. I cleaned that out the best I could with a toothbrush,
sprayed water in there, there's some kind of nice crystals in there I guess,
but overall I'm not real thrilled with that. And you can see the quartz right
here.
Here's another one, where I tumbled off way too much of the carnelian, it's almost
down to white quartz. You can see just a little bit of the carnelian left on there.
Really cool eye on this end.
So if I ever tumble this again, I'll tumble it way less than I usually do.
Looks like this one has one of those
voids in it also
not quite as big as that one you saw in the other video, I'll show you that one
again in a little bit here. But uh, yeah I like to tumble all the little holes and
stuff out of my rocks
and in doing that, not knowing there was quartz underneath all of them
I just overdid it a lot.
This one stayed orange, nice little bands right there
A lot of neat eyes in these rocks, like that one
But then there's a whole bunch of quartz, and this is all kind of pitted and, I don't
know if you can see it, but - there you can
so I'm not a big fan of the quartz, I noticed a lot of people that watch my videos
love the quartz parts of rocks
but I like the agate part better.
This one's cool, it's just eyes all over the whole thing
Fortunately I didn't tumble them off of this one
I like that one a lot. So they're certainly interesting rocks
I'm not complaining about them, I'm just saying I didn't understand what I had
here
and I didn't tumble them quite right.
That's got some nicer crystals in the little pocket there. I think this one
broke in half, but I'm not sure where the other half is
more eyes on this one
and this one
so another hole on this one here, and that one's not very deep
not sure what the black markings on this one are but they sure are interesting,
and again it's got a really nice eye on the end
there's a nice one
cool looking rocks. Now here's one where I tumbled all the orange off, and it's
just white quartz underneath.
That one's all quartz on that side. Once I realized what was happening I stopped
tumbling these so much
Here's one that stayed orange
another eye right there
That one's a good one
You can see all the quartz center right there
Alright, a few more here
don't think we need to look at every one, there's another eye. I love eyes
Alright, so now let's look at the ones I did in the silicon carbide
and you can see, look at the difference between the aluminum oxide and the
silicon carbide
see how more of these are white, because I tumbled all the orange right off of them?
There's still some neat eyes and things in them though
and I had a lot of people ask me if I was going to re-do these or finish these up
or tumble them some more. After having these in the tumbler for a year, I kind of
want to keep them this way.
That's that one with that big void in it, in case you missed the first video it's
all hollow in there
So I'm going to keep these the way they are, even though I could make them
look nicer
I just kind of want to remember them how they looked after an entire year of tumbling
Here's some cool eyes
Nice eye there, but all the orange is gone, but I like the orange, so
I don't know if any more of these have eyes
They kind of all look about the same, so those are
silicon carbide with all the orange tumbled right off
and here
are the ones that were done in the aluminum oxide, where the orange
didn't get tumbled off, but neither did all the pits, so
I tried really hard to clean these pits out, I scrubbed them with a toothbrush
I probably worked on these for an hour, just this little pile of rocks, because it
didn't want to come out very easily, so just ran under water and scrubbed away
but I'm sure there's some dried grit in there
that's why I don't like - one of the reasons I don't like pits, I just don't like them
in general, but they also hold grit in them, and it looks really bad when it
dries in there.
I've had some people suggest that I soak them in mineral oil
and then the dried grit kind of doesn't show up as much, but
I don't really like to put mineral oil on my rocks, other than some Lake Superior
agates that aren't tumbled
It's okay there I guess, but in general I like to just have them polished up by
shining up the rock and not adding anything to it or coating it with anything
so these got - you know, if you look at, let's see, let's take that one maybe
that shine and the shine I did for
the normal method, and the one I did for a year without changing the grit
at all, is pretty close. This is still shinier, but not by a whole lot
So once again, this is why you use silicon carbide for the first step, to get rid of
all the pits and holes and stuff, first couple stages usually, and then you switch
over to aluminum oxide to shine them up
and I like doing aluminum oxide for the last two stages.
Alright, so there you go! There's the rocks up close, and I'll take a few
pictures of them and show you a little slideshow at the end here, so stick around
for that, and I'll see you next time!