Information Sources – Page 4

Sources of Detailed Instructions for Tumble Polishing Stones

The following are a number of sources I have found useful for the beginning (and also for the not-so-novice) rock tumbler. They share a number of things in common but also often have their own unique ideas or pieces of advice. (I will add to this List as I become aware of more sources).

1) RockTumbler.com “Rock Tumbler Instructions” – A reasonably detailed set of illustrated instructions. This site is based in USA and is the commercial site of a rock tumbler gone into business. It is noted that the owners of this site “publish what we believe is the largest library on the web of articles, videos and blog posts about tumbled stones and rock tumbling”. It is a mine of information – like stumbling upon a whole beach of colourful and already-rounded stones.

2) Alan Silverstein’s site “Collected Information on Rock Tumbling” – Sections on “Quick Start (Rotary Tumbling)” (updated 2008) and “More Detailed Advice on Rotary Tumbling” (updated 2011) – A no-frills but very informative set of instructions and advice. Alan is a software engineer from Colorado, USA.

3) Steve Hart’s book, “Modern Rock Tumbling” (first published 2008) – This whole book is full of useful information and advice on rock tumbling. The middle part of Chapter three is on “Understanding the 4-Stage Rock Tumbling Process”. Available from Steve himself and from all good online book sellers for about US$25.

4) “Professional Gemstone Tumbling” by Lortone (2011) – This is the 21-page booklet that came with my Lortone tumbler when I bought it. It is a set of basic reasonably-sound instructions, a very good starting point. I have not come across a copy of this online anywhere. Note that it is different from the “Rotary Tumbler Instructions and Parts List” that also came with the tumbler and is available online on Lortone’s website.

5) Lortone’s Instruction Videos – These consist of “How to fill a Lortone barrel” and three videos of how to change a drive belt on different Lortone tumblers.

6) “Rotary Tumbling Guide” from Aussie Lapidary Forum – A more cryptic and informal set of instructions and advice but valuable in how the author shares their rock tumbling experiences and experiments.

7) YouTube series on Rock Tumbling – Constructed by a US tumble polisher who uses his tumbler a handful of times a year, this series of six videos shows how he goes through the four stages of rock tumbling, using what looks like a 4lb barrel. The fifth video shows the resulting polished stones and the sixth video discusses what he does with his stones (he’s not into jewellery making). [Added 5 July 2019]

The Best Rock Tumbling Book Around – “Modern Rock Tumbling” by Steve Hart (2008)

In 2008, Steve Hart published “Modern Rock Tumbling”, sub-titled “The only complete and up-to-date guide to tumble polishing rocks and stones”. It has just become available as an e-book. I wholeheartedly endorse it. The author, from California, is a mechanical engineer in the mining industry and has a wealth of experience as a home-based rock polisher using both rotary and vibratory methods. He has a small web-based company, The Little Red Store, started in 2008, which not only sells Steve’s book and rock tumbling equipment and material but also contains some very useful technical tips for those new to modern rock tumbling.

I purchased Steve’s book from Fire Mountain Gems, a US beading and jewelry supply company, as I was not at that stage aware of Steve’s own website. I had seen the book referred to on RockTumbler.com where it is stated: “We have read every book about tumbling that we could find. From that reading we have found that there are only a few books that explain tumbling with great clarity and genuine knowledge. Of those, we believe that Steve Hart has produced the best one. It explains the tumbling process completely and provides enough detail that you should produce excellent results if you follow his instructions.”

“Modern Rock Tumbling” measures 23 cm by 15 cm and is 96 pages long. It sells for about US$25 and is great value-for-money. It is very well organised and the writing is clear and good humoured. There are colourful photographs illustrating key parts of the tumbling process.

The cover of “Modern Rock Tumbling”

1st page of Contents

2nd page of Contents

3rd page of Contents

Page 21, part of Chapter Two on tumbling your first batch of rocks

Page 55, part of Chapter Five on the materials used inside the tumbling barrel

The best attributes of this book are: it is very practical, dealing with the details of rock tumbling, and all advice is based on the author’s wealth of experience; it explains technical issues when of relevance, and Steve’s background in mining is useful here as is the range of people he has consulted in the preparation of the book; and it presents the various options available to the rock tumbler, such as types of tumblers, the various grit sizes, and the characteristics of the various polish powders. I read it after only a couple of weeks of my own tumbling venture and found it directly relevant, immediately useful, and the best I have come across.

(See the review from “Rock and Gem Magazine”, which agrees with me.)

“Rock-collecting sites in New Zealand” – An Online Map

In Te Ara, the online New Zealand Encyclopedia, is a map of beaches in New Zealand where you can find agates and other interesting stones. This is a very selective map and does not include, for example, Riverton at the bottom of the South Island, one of the best places for semi-precious stones.

sites

“Gemstones” by Jocelyn Thornton (1985)

“Although New Zealand lacks the commonly accepted ‘precious gems’ (diamond, ruby, sapphire, emerald), many local stones deserve our recognition” (from the Introduction to “Gemstones”).

This booklet, originally published in 1985 in the Mobil New Zealand Nature Series, is long out-of-print but now available online as a pdf file. The pdf file is 36 pages long (each of its pages consist of two of the original booklet pages when its comes to numbering – the original booklet numbered each side of each sheet, making 74 pages). It is a great source of information on the range of precious and semi-precious gemstones to be found in New Zealand – from greenstone to agate to jasper to petrified wood, and many more. It contains some great photos of the many different types of stones, supplemented with notes on where these specimens have been found (see below for the entry on “Carnelian”). Reference is often made to places such as Birdlings Flat, Rangitata River, Orepuki, Kakanui, Mt Somers, the Coromandel Peninsula, and Takaka.

Joyce Thornton also wrote the entry on “Gemstones” for Te Ara, the Online NZ Encyclopedia. This entry has some excellent photos of different types of stones, such as “Silicified Wood and Plant Material“. “Chert, Flint and Jasper“, and “Greywacke Pebbles with Quartz Veins“. In 2004, she received the NZ Order of Merit for services to Earth Sciences.

Source: https://teara.govt.nz/en/interactive/5124/silicified-wood-and-plant-material

Source: https://teara.govt.nz/en/interactive/5123/chert-flint-and-jasper

Source: https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/5121/greywacke-pebbles-with-quartz-veins

“The New Zealand Rockhound” by Natalie Fernandez (1981)

This is the second significant New Zealand book published on rock tumbling (after the Coopers’ book), though its scope is broader, “rockhounding” in New Zealand in general. I ordered this book through Amazon and they sourced it from Bookhaven, a second hand bookstore in Wellington.

fernandez cover13042016

“The New Zealand Rockhound” by Natalie Fernandez was published in 1981 by Boughtwood Printing and Publishing House, Auckland. The book measures 14 cm by 21.5 cm and has 191 pages. Beach stones, my prime interest, are only one form of rocks – they are very useful for stone polishers because they are already relatively smooth and rounded, already the subject of hundreds of years of “tumble polishing” in rivers and ocean. Rockhounds need to be able to identify rough and dirty rocks in the field – all I have to do is wet a beach stone and decide if I like the result.

“The New Zealand Rockhound” covers rockhounding in New Zealand in general. Chapter Six, “The art of the lapidary”, starts off with five pages on rock tumbling before going on to discuss cutting and grinding and other means of working with rocks and stones. Chapter Four on “Rocks and minerals” provides an introduction to the topic in the context of New Zealand’s geology, and Chapter Five, “Locations”, provides an annotated list of NZ places to find interesting rocks.

Fernandez’s book also has a delightful frontispiece of stamps with rocks and fossils on them:

fernandez stamps13042016

“New Zealand Gemstones” by Lyn and Ray Cooper (1966)

On the way home from our South Island holiday, once the seed had been planted that we would start polishing stones, in Wellington I visited three second hand bookstores in search of books on rocks and rock tumbling. I found this book at that time, probably the first New Zealand book on rock tumbling.

“New Zealand Gemstones” by Lyn and Ray Cooper was published in 1966 by A.H. and A.W. Reed, Wellington. It is a hardback book, 22 cms by 14 cms, 125 pages long and cost me $20 at ArtyBees secondhand bookstore.

The key chapter for me at this early stage was Chapter Three, “How to tumble-polish”. It is now a bit out-dated in parts, as new technology has since changed some aspects of rock tumbling, but it provided me with the basic ideas about what tumble polishing involves and what its key principles are.

Chapter Two was the next most interesting, “Where to find the stones”, the location of interesting stones in New Zealand based on the authors’ own expeditions to different places. Again, some of this information is now out-dated and is at least partly constrained by the authors’ experiences (there are some parts of the country they have not been to), but provides an invaluable starting point. (Their comments led me to take a trip to the Coromandel Peninisula beaches not long afterwards.) Chapter Six, “What to do with stones”, was on a topic that I realised I would need to pay some attention to sooner or later.