I am very excited to write this post and share with you my new adventure of rock tumbling! I have been in the process of rewriting my story, living day to day from a context that excites me and has me look forward with anticipation. My context is treasure hunting. I love shiny things, polished gemstones and rocks – always have! I loved geology since I was a kid and got a geology kit for one of my birthdays. I would take my little hammer and go to the beach, chiseling big rocks of granite. It was fun to explore and name the different elements. I also had a rock tumbler that was turned off due to the noise. But my love for rocks and gemstones never left me!

This love for rocks and gems was reawakened on my recent trip to Iona. You can find really great stones there, including Iona marble which contains serpentine. A treasure for sure! For more about my trip to Iona, lovely photos, and how it helped me rewrite my story and choose Treasure Hunting as my context, please refer to the post below, also containing a podcast featuring Gregg Braden speaking about rewriting your story. It’s quite inspiring!

The cover photo for that post (Rewriting Your Story) was the result of a pilgrimage I took in search of my favorite rock cove on Iona. I made it to the top cliffs to get that shot! What kept me going was knowing with every cell in my body that I am a treasure hunter in search of treasure, and this photo is certainly one of them, as was my experience trudging through bogs up to my knees. Seeing the polished rocks weeks later – it sure was worth the effort!

I returned back from my trip and ordered a rock tumbler, and within a couple of days I embarked on my rock tumbling adventure. While I was waiting for delivery, I watched loads of rock tumbling videos. There are some real experts out there! I’d like to thank Michigan Rocks and The Stone Crafting Workshop for some great advice. One of the issues I had was that I live in the UK where supplies are very limited. The USA has a lot more choices for machines and grits. But, since Steve from the Stone Crafting Workshop lives in the UK, he was a great resource for supplies.

I ordered the National Geographic Professional Rock Tumbler Kit. It has a 2 pound rubber barrel and comes with a small amount of grit and starter gemstones. I learned pretty quickly from watching videos that following the instructions included with the machine would lead to disappointing results. So I took the advice of the pros and so far, so good! I have to say, waiting 4 -5 days for a batch to complete the first round of grit is torturous! You really need to be patient! Some rocks can take up to 5 -6 rounds (weeks) just to move onto the next stage of grit.

I live right near a river so I thought I’d try tumbling some river rocks. I found a bunch that I thought would be a good size and proper hardness. At first I wasn’t impressed, just cleaning them off with a toothbrush, but as the stages progressed along . . . WOW, was I ever delighted! So many treasures live under that dirty river bed! It was fun to explore in the different areas along the river. I spent a lot of time rock hunting and found myself with a load of rocks wondering – when will they ever get done? So many rocks, so little time!

So what I did was buy another machine! This time I purchased a tumbler made in the UK. It’s a Beach 3 pound plastic barrel tumbler. I also purchased two 1.5 pound barrels (shown in the photo below on the right tumbler) – so I have options. It’s good to have a dedicated barrel for polishing. If one tiny piece of a larger grit from a previous tumble gets into a polish run, the whole thing can be ruined. So I’ve dedicated one of the smaller barrels for polish.

The Grits

There are mainly four basic stages of tumbling. First we have the 60/80 grit stage. This can continue for weeks. One run will last 4-5 days in length. Each rock is examined after the run to see if there are any craters, scratches, cracks, etc. If there are any – they go back into the barrel for another run. The National Geographic tumbler above contains the 4th run of river rocks at 60/80 grit. The Beach tumbler contains 1 barrel of 400 grit and the other a polish – both containing stones from Iona. I’ll share the photos of the completed runs below. Some people like a bit of character, others want a perfectly smooth stone. Basically, I’d prefer a very smooth stone except when it comes to compromising the size. Some stones get quite small and if they were to go through another round, they may disappear all together.

Once they pass the 60/80 stage, next is the 240 grit. Usually there’s one round at this stage, lasting 5-6 days. After this round each rock needs to be critically inspected, making sure all grit is washed off and they are perfectly clean because the next stage is the pre-polish stage – 400 grit. This stage can go up to 7 days. Finally, there’s the polish stage which can last for up to 10 days. If you’ve been counting, you can see that going from raw stone to polished can take many weeks to months to accomplish!

This is where the ‘art’ of rock tumbling comes into play. Along with how many days to tumble, there are quite a few variables: including the hardness of the stones themselves, and what grit you’re using. There’s so much to learn. The stones I got from Iona are fairly soft compared to say quartz, agate or jasper. The first batch of Iona stones got pretty small from going through all the grit stages. The next batch of Iona stones I took the very smooth ones and put them straight into a 400 grit stage, hoping to spare them shrinkage. On the other hand, the river rocks ready for 240 in the above photo had been tumbling for 3 weeks. They could actually go for another round but I decided to push them through as I believe the 240 stage will iron out most of the remaining wrinkles.

So, here’s some photos of rocks at different stages. I was bad about taking lots of photos as I was so excited to move the rocks along to the next stage! Anyway, I managed to take a few. The river rocks are very hard and therefore need many passes through of the large grit. I love seeing all the colors appear even after one tumble! It’s incredible really! (Click on a photo to see each one larger.)

I couldn’t be more pleased with the results of my first rocks tumbled to polish. They certainly are spectacular! Rock tumbling is lots of fun and has given me something exciting to look forward to. Taking the cover off a barrel after it’s been tumbling for a week is always an exciting treasure to behold! I love it and so glad I invited this transformation into my life. I actually feel younger, maybe it’s the kid in me so happy to be playing with rocks again!

The featured image I took is about 5 seconds from my door! It’s the path I take to the river to look for rocks. I am totally blessed to live where I do, thank you God!

I have started a new blog website strictly for rock tumbling and my creations! Click here to see it!