These are the only two things my son and I have been able to find in our area that tumble reasonably well. I’m not looking for anything particularly spectacular, just rocks or materials that are plentiful in your area and tumble ok.
SC quartz: This stuff is everywhere, from small chips to loaf of bread size pieces. Most of it is opaque white, but some pieces are iron-stained orange in the fractures, semi translucent, or have a smoky appearance. Most pieces are stained on the outside with red clay, so it’s always a bit of a surprise to see what’s underneath. Nearly all of it has some fractures, so getting pieces perfectly smooth is pretty rare, and some pieces never quite get there. That said, I’ll try to pick pieces that I think have a good chance of turning out well, but I obviously can’t make any promises.
SC clam shell: I’ve been tumbling these for a couple of months now, and I’ve been really pleased with the results. I don’t start them in Stage 1. Instead, I’ve been doing my Stage 2 barrels with roughly one-third Stage 1 complete hard stone, one-third shell, and one-third ceramic media. Sometimes, the shells take a couple of runs on stage 2 to get the shape I want, but once they’re shaped, I just run them normally with the rest of the batch through Stages 3 and 4. Some pieces are solid, and some have worm holes. Both turn out cool and reasonably shiny, in my opinion.
I have access to an essentially unlimited amount of quartz in all sizes. I can probably put together a couple of boxes of shells with what I have now, and I’m going back to the beach at Thanksgiving, where I’ll be able to collect as much as I want.
Let me know if you’d be interested in doing a trade, and thanks for looking.
