For the next several days I will be posting about the World Congress of Families. This year it is being held in Sydney, Australia.  Remember how we helped to raise funds for Angela to attend? She is sending daily reports of the presentations, interviews she is able to have, and more. I am excited to share with you what she is experiencing. There are so many around the world - politicians, religious leaders, community organizers, trained professionals, and others - who are dedicated to defending the family. I will try to post each day's events in order so you are not reading them backwards as you scroll down. I have broken up Angela's summaries into several posts so it isn't overwhelming to see a HUGE post. Remember, if you have any questions you would like her to ask when she gives her interviews, leave them in the comments and I will pass them along to her.

The Rock Tumbler

In the comments of the last post about our polished rocks many were asking what rock tumbler we used.

We purchased this, Model A-R1 Special Kit Rock Tumbler for Fudge. It is the perfect introductory model for the hobby of rock tumbling. The drum holds 3lbs of rocks. We put in about two cups of regular sized rocks but there was room for more.

polishing rocks 01

I realize I should have used a plain white towel each time we changed the grit and water to show the progress of the rocks better. Oh, well. Live and learn. The first week the rocks are tumbled with coarse grit and enough water to cover the rocks. The second week we used the fine grit.

polishing rocks 02

The pre-polish grit is only used for three days and then the polishing grit for another week. It was always exciting to open up the tumbler, rinse off the rocks, and see the changes that had taken place. In hindsight we should have saved the slurry from each step in labeled jars. We're pretty sure it could be used several times over. Instead we dumped it outside.  :( Now I have to order more grit for the next batch of rocks.

The tumbler is very simple. The drum just rests on top of two rollers which rotate thus turning the tumbler round and round. It was actually pretty quiet. It runs continually for the whole month. We put ours in the garage so little fingers wouldn't mess with it.

polished rocks collage 02

All of the rocks that are tumbled together need to be about the same hardness or else the softer ones will get pulverized in the process. There's a hardness scale in the pamphlet and simple tests you can do to your rocks before tumbling to determine the hardness. It really is a fun tool that can teach so many science and life lessons!


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5 comments:

  1. Wow! Nevada looks like that! Beautiful!

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  2. Thank you! I have been looking at tumblers for about 4 months and didn't end up getting one because there are so many options. This is one I had looked at. Good to know it works well. Did you buy rocks or are those all collected from around the farm?

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    1. This particular kit comes with rocks {which is the first batch we did}. Our next batch will be rocks gathered from around the farm.

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  3. Awesome. Thank you for the information!

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  4. i would never done polishing rocks, ive never seen how it is done at the home here in my country. it lookds interesting,.. and the finished product looks beautiful!

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