Quickie Tire Tumbler

Works well, will be slowed down a little more though. This is cleaning local turquoise. Notice the rolling action, a lot depends on getting the slurry right, and not overloading it.....it will throw some material sticking to the inside of tire, use a drop cloth or board to catch until the load adjusts itself.....b

High Grade New Mexico Rock For Sale

White Tiger Orthosiderite, $1.00 per gram rough.  WRITE LUXEFAIRE@GMAIL.COM.   This finished bead is sold.

White Tiger Rough, water wet.  $1.00 per gram.

White Tiger Orthosiderite, rough, dry, $1.00 per gram

Hachita Turquoise, with or without brown matrix, natural stone,  $.30 gram, rare hard to find stuff. WRITE LUXEFAIRE@GMAIL.COM

New Mexico Pyroxene Feldspar, cuts like jade, very colorful, $30.00 per pound.  These are finished beads not for sale, showing the materials attributes, very nice to work with takes super polish with diamond.  Lots of  patterns.

White tiger beads, and Tiger King beads, the brown is tiger king, dendritic psilomelane, 5.0 hard, works like turq, $40.00 per pound.  Below are more examples of the finished white tiger orthosiderite. 
WRITE LUXEFAIRE@GMAIL.COM

White Tiger Orthosiderite, $1.00 per gram rough.  WRITE LUXEFAIRE@GMAIL.COM.   This finished bead is sold.

White Tiger Rough, water wet.  $1.00 per gram.

White Tiger Orthosiderite, rough, dry, $1.00 per gram

Hachita Turquoise, with or without brown matrix, natural stone,  $.30 gram, rare hard to find stuff. WRITE LUXEFAIRE@GMAIL.COM

New Mexico Pyroxene Feldspar, cuts like jade, very colorful, $30.00 per pound.  These are finished beads not for sale, showing the materials attributes, very nice to work with takes super polish with diamond.  Lots of  patterns.

White tiger beads, and Tiger King beads, the brown is tiger king, dendritic psilomelane, 5.0 hard, works like turq, $40.00 per pound.  Below are more examples of the finished white tiger orthosiderite. 
WRITE LUXEFAIRE@GMAIL.COM

WRITE LUXEFAIRE@GMAIL.COM

WRITE LUXEFAIRE@GMAIL.COM

Latest Beads

The diamond core bits on ebay are real cheap from china and some work well.  I used them to punch these beads out and drilled the holes by eye, some you can tell, some not.  The material is stuff I collected in Hachita.  I then used pins in small pin vises to hold the bead against a vertical 6" diamond flat from Lopackis rotating at about 600 rpm to rough them in and homemade sanding wheels of the flap design to sand down to level where I could finish with diamond powders.  See his bead tutorial at lopacki.com for information on how the bead works.  The bottom pix is before polish at about 200 grit sanding level....b

Rotating Tire Tumbler

This works very well, providing a few things are considered....the shaft, when wet, will cause the tire to lose its grip, and stop spinning, so the slurry/water amount is critical, keep it on the dry side.  One shaft can run more than one tire.  Use shaftstops and washers to keep separate, and also plastic separators can be made to ride between tires as splash guards and to reduce contamination of grits.  The speed of the shaft should not exceed 100 rpm, and you have to get that right by adjusting motor speed and/or pulley size.  One of my better innovations is attaching motors to cinder blocks so they can be hefty enough to pull and they can also be clamped easily, but can be moved around as well.  This tumbler was a lot easier because of that kind of set up.

Improvements To My Vibrating Tumbler Design

     Buyers of my book know that the vibrating tumbler design is a good one, and can be easily and cheaply made, even though it took me years to get right.  I have built another tumbler just recently, to handle larger loads, and wanted to add some improvements I made for the users of my instructions. 

     First thing:  When using hose clamps to fasten the motor in place in its sling, consider replacing at least one of the hose clamps sets with one of those cheap ratchet straps that you can buy for very little money, just about anywhere even the dollar store.   You trim off the excess strap, and then hook the ends together and you have an adjustable clamping strap that is cheap and can be reused or adjusted when needed.  This is best to tie around the motor and the suspension strap.  In the picture it is the red strap down around the motor, holding it together with the suspension strap -- the ratchet is in back of the motor.  Remember to get it very tight when you do it, but it works well.

     Second:  I left one of the tire tubs whole, instead of cutting in half, and was able to then secure it better by putting a strap across the entire top of the tire, fastening at the top of both posts.  In the picture the strap is not fastened yet, i just nailed it into the top of the posts before I used it, and I then move the strap itself  back and forth to remove the tub.  I also made a very tight fit for the tire between the posts, please notice that as well.    You will have to make some adjustments, but a whole tire seems much better than a half tire for several reasons.  It saves the labor of cutting the tire in half, it can be used to secure the tub better, and also it keeps edge splash down.

     Finally, instead of using a small fan to cool the motor, I bought a used high powered hair dryer which really puts out the airstream, choose the cold setting of course.  It keeps the motor cool a lot better than regular fans, especially when directed through the motors windings. 

Making Saw Blade Shaft Adaptors

One thing everyone has had to come to grips with are saw blade adaptors, now that the majority of the diamond tooling we buy is made in China.  There have been problems with consistency and other things, things like arbitrary shaft hole sizes in the same lot, et al.   Sometimes, even most of the time, a Chinese item will work ok, as long as you fix it first.  Remember that natural law, rocky-san.

When you put your new sawblade up to the shaft of your saw, and the hole in the blade is too big for the shaft, you are in need of a shaft adaptor.  There are some commercial adaptors available and if you can find those that work (Good Luck!) stick with them.  Otherwise, fashion your own from thin cut cross sections of pvc pipe, sanded and/or filed and/or cut down; or punched out of leather or plastic with round punches of varying sizes.  That last I have been recently successful with.  Tape your adaptor into the blades hole from one or both sides of the blade.  Lighters can come in handy during these operations as well.

You want the blade to rotate without wobble, so it has to be centered on the shaft pretty closely.  It can be done, perhaps not easily, but correctly.  When doing these make 4-6, use the best one.

Cost Savings

I happened to pick up a catalog from the most well known manufacturer of lapidary equipment here in the states, and it was driven home to me once again the value of this book I sell, and I am glad to do it.  When I first began cutting rocks, it was long before the net, and there were no alternatives to buying the equipment as it was manufactured, usually used, though I have bought a new machine or two in my life, and they were not worth the money.  Some of the old timers built their own machines, and I owned a few of them over time too.  Mostly though, I began experimenting early with my own devices.  It was because of things like I saw in this catalog I picked up:  6" trim saw with arbor $270.00+ (see the photo-plans in this blog where you make one of those for about ten dollars),  10 pound capacity vibrating tumblers start around $500.00, Bench Lathe Electric Arbor Systems $700.00 and up,and even a flat lap near 2 grand!  Some people might think the 50 bux for the plan sets/lesson plans/how-to book is steep, it is not.  It will get you working stone quickly and cheaply, and perhaps even inspire you.  That is the wished for result.