Comments on: Stone polishing

By: tumulus

tumulus — Wed, 30 Jun 2004 15:05:03 +0000

In reply to Thomas.

Does the tumble-polishing make it much smaller?

No, hardly at all if it's a material which polishes well. But whether it polishes well depends a huge amount on what kind of material your pebble is. Most polished stones are hard minerals. Softer stuff or fragile stuff wouldn't survive so well.

"Lava" covers a lot of possibilities...fine grained basalt to dense almost glassy rock to actually glassy obsidian to lighter puffy rock to crumbly tuff.

I've polished almost glassy basalt before, and you can buy tumbled obsidian so I guess that will tumble polish quite happily. Grainier stuff or weaker stuff...I wouldn't like to say so confidently.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Wed, 30 Jun 2004 14:50:33 +0000

In reply to tumulus.

It's the size and shape and want, just polished up I think. Does the tumble-polishing make it much smaller?

Thanks for the link by the way - it's tempting!

By: tumulus

tumulus — Wed, 30 Jun 2004 14:07:21 +0000

If you don’t want it shaped in any way, just want it the same shape it is now but smooth and shiny, then you want it tumble-polished. I have a tumbler from when I used to make stony jewelry (I only tend to do silver work now, and not even much of that!). Took about 4 weeks of constant tumbling with progressively finer grades of grit.

Manchester Minerals sell a tiny tumbler for about 50 quid:
http://www.manchesterminerals.co.uk/acatalog/Tumbling_Machines.html

You might be surprised how many people have these things – worth asking around at work or in the band or wherever.