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New rocks vs Tumbled rocks (lemmy.today)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/cool_rocks@lemmy.today
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When I discovered the beige rocks on the left side, which had been in the tumbler for about two weeks, weren't going to be interesting, I switched them out for the smokey quartz and a few other things I'm not sure of on the right, which have been in for less than a day. The quartz in the middle were tumbled with the beige rocks. I included those in the new batch, too.

Rocks in three piles on a piece of white paper. The left are beige, unknown, the middle are white quartz, and the right are rougher smokey quartz with a couple darker and one reddish unknown rock.

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[–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

are there any (hard) rocks that don't tumble well? like i get that chalk or soft limestone or something might not be the brightest idea. but have you tried anything except crystals? i'd be interested how e.g. gneiss or granite tumble. i mean it's obviously dependend on the specific rock but still

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 7 months ago*

    I'm still new to this so my experience is limited.

    I did some lapis lazuli with the specific purpose of collecting the sludge to make paint, so I used steel balls instead of tumbling media - it worked but it was clear they would take a very long time. Lapis lazuli is a hard rock.

    Kyanite is another I wanted to destroy, a softer, mica-like rock, and it fell apart easily.

    I try to tumble similar size and hardness rocks together and just happen to have a lot of quartz right now. Jade and serpentine do well in the tumbler, too.

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