What Not To Do With Your Tumbler !

[Andrew]

 Had a customer last week that had bought a Large Lortone for Tumbling Pewter products he makes. He decided to try a mixture recommended by someone that used Kerosine as the base.
 PLease DONT USE any PETROLEUM based products with any rubber linned Barrels as it wrecks the rubber,not to mention the risk of explosion
 Cheers Andrew

[gemseek]

Hi Andrew, well Alan & I are extremly happy with the pleasure our new toy(tumbler ) brings us . Our first batch of stones are in their final few days and wow how beautiful! 

[gammyknee]

I hope this is appropriate to add here?
I have a small Lortone tumbler and have run agate and some quartz through. A friend has some garnet from Harts Range, not much, and would like to tumble this(facet material has been picked out).
My question is, I do not have enough to get the tumble motion going, can I throw some agate chip or something similar in to 'fill' the barrel for a period to obtain the 'fall' required or should I tell my friend to go back to NT and get some more? I know the agate would be first to wear away due to hardness but I'm looking for a quick fix and do not want to have to build a smaller machine or the like.
Has anyone tried this? What was the result?

[Aussie Sapphire]

I imagine that would be quite ok.  Although all the books make a deal about not mixing hardness, there is not that much a difference between garnet and quartz (agate) that I would be too worried about mixing them.

You can use plastic pellets (or beads) as a filler media but if you have rocks that is always better as you get to tumble more material in your batch.  Tumbling a mix of sizes is also good to improve the tumbling action so agate chips will fit in well with the larger (??) pieces of garnet.

Caveat:  I am not an experienced tumbler so hopefully others will chime in here for a more authoritative answer.

I think that approach would work though.

cheers
Leah

[gammyknee]

The end result,
No problems  - if anything need to be careful as the garnet will 'wear' more than the agate. Check it daily when tumbling.

regards
Michael

[mehoose]

 
Hope you didn't lose too much?
Any pics to follow?

[gammyknee]

Let the daylight decide.
I will try to post a photo tomorrow - can you wait that long Merryn?

[mehoose]

  If I must.

[gammyknee]

wait i have more wine - its coming now not later

[gammyknee]

Happy now

[mehoose]

Wonderful!!
And look, you included a heart.