Rock Tumbling
When we were young (my siblings and I), my father bought us a rock tumbler.
It would be great to be able to hunt for rocks out in the wild, but when that's not possible, there's always Amazon. I bought 12 pounds of this "Fantasia Mix" on the left for $75.
For $80 (plus $20 shipping), I bought this 20 pound bag of "Super Rough Mix" (on the right) from RockTumbler.com.
I bought other mixed rocks sets on eBay from Sister's Rocks.
From eBay, I bought 1/2 pd mixes from India, Brazil, Africa, and Mexico, and a 1 pd bag of Tree Agate for $45.70 plus $4.59 shipping.
I then went directly to their online store where each bag of rocks was almost half the price of their eBay store.
I ordered the same sets for just $22.05 That was great until shipping cost $14.70 and there was some "processing fee" of $5.41.
It was still cheaper than eBay ( 42.16 vs 50.29) and then the seller sent me a shipping credit of $6.16,
so buying direct ended up saving me $14.29!
The tumber (Lortone 3A single barrel), an extra barrel, four bags of grit, and ceramic filler cost $183.
I've spent about $500 for this project/ experiment in teaching, so let's hope it turns out well.
(I'll add pictures of the actual rocks when we start tumbling, a month-long process.)
6/30/19
One thing I've read over and over is to NOT mix rocks of different hardness. The softer ones will get ground away before the hardness can get smooth.
However, I want the students to be able to pick whichever rocks strike their fancy rather than limiting them to choosing all the same type.
So I picked out 25 rocks from this batch, added four tablespoons of ceramic filler pieces, put in two tablespoons of coarse, stage one, grit ("60"), and turned on the tumbler.
