QUOTE (Mrs.CP @ Nov 19 2009, 04:00 PM)
Your post reminded me Scott, that I forgot to put a picture in of the finished stones.
Picture shows dry polished Apache Tears.
Click to view attachmentI think they turned out pretty good. I was nervous at first because they say polishing Apache Tears is for the more advanced rock tumbler.
I have been giving them out to the adults, they seem to love them!
Good luck on your tumbling batch Scott, hope they turn out great!
We look forward to the pictures.
Hello Denise,
I am having issues with polishing my Apache tears, actually I think they should be called tumbler operator tears after the amount of time I have spent between the prepolish & polish stage...ha :). I have had the same struggles before with obsidian. I usually run them to a nice satin finish with 600g then wash everything with soap & water really well then on to the polish stage (alumina Oxide 1000g). First time polish was a week of operation using plastic pellets, all had a slightly rough look to them with what looks like leftover alumina powder on them even after a good wash. So I backed up to 600g to get that satin finish then polished for another week in alumina again. Same results. So I did a little research and noticed that the preferred media among successful obsidian tumblers was the ceramic media. So this time, since my last run was with alumina I did 2 more weeks with alumina again and the new ceramic media. Same results. For the life of me I can't figure it out. I wash really well between grits, as my current system works well for everything else harder than obsidian. Its a struggle for me to believe that running in clean water for half an hour would do better than me washing everything with a bristle brush and soap until the rubber is squeaky clean literally. But at this point I am willing to change my whole process to get my Apache tears to look like yours in the earlier pics. Any suggestions or preferred process that I should be doing to get them to that high gloss like yours would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
EchoBravo