FrazzledApril's Blog

I have parts 1&2 in my blog -- with pictures of how these all started out.   When I started -- I had 6 pounds of rocks... after the first step (coarse grinding) only about half of them were prepared for the next step -- and they had REALLY lost a lot of mass... and so I added another pound and put the new ones in with the ones that needed further grinding and they started out the first step together again.  The other half moved on to stage 2 which is fine grinding.

After that... half went into fine grinding and half went into stage 3 -- pre-polish (which is really just the final step of grinding).

At this point... I am down to about 3 pounds of rocks!  about 60% of the mass has been ground away!!

So... I took them out to clean them today and to determine how "ready" they all were for their next steps.  Here they are -- the top half finished pre-polish and the bottom half finished fine grinding:

They are not shiney yet unless they are wet -- which is ok, that's just how they're supposed to look at this point.

Here are the first half again -- some have gotten SO tiny I don't even know what I'll do with them!!

And the bottom half -- these completed the fine grinding stage today and are ready for pre-polish:

Since there are so few left -- I decided to put them all together and run them all through the pre-polish stage.  Even though the first half have already been pre-polished, it will not harm them.  At the pre-polish stage it doesn't remove any further mass -- it just smooths them... so, I think it'll be ok.

They have to run through this stage for a week and then they can all go through the final polishing stage -- and they should be nice and shiny then!!  I can't wait!

If they are not quite sparkly enough by that point, I can burnish them -- which just means a mild soap/water solution in the tumbler -- it helps to shine them up a little more.