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The Rock Professor has provided you with a mineral
information card. Print on stock paper, and cut out to
enhance your rock and mineral products.
To print: with your cursor, highlight the entire card below,
right click and select print, then click on "selection"
and print.
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THE ROCK PROFESSOR
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Rock Tumbling Kit
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TUMBLING ROCKS FOR FUN AND PROFIT
ROCK TUMBLERS move rocks against each other while mixing with slurries of abrasives and polishes. The result, if done properly, are highly polished gemstones.
Tumblers fall into 2 categories: rotary tumblers and vibrating tumblers. Rotary tumblers use rubber barrels which rotate and slide the stones over each other in a mixture of water and polishing grit. The entire process takes about one month to get through the four different abrasive cycles. The cycles progress from 1) shaping, 2) smoothing, 3) sub-polish, to 4) final polish. The process is quieter than vibratory tumblers.
Vibratory tumblers do what the name implies, and the process is substantially faster but noisier, and must be watched more carefully than rotary tumblers. Vibratory tumblers are also used with dry abrasives in order to polish silver jewelry.
Different size tumblers are available to satisfy users ranging from beginners to hobbyists to commercial users.
Click here to download a PDF file of tumbling instructions from the Lortone website.
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