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Rule of thumb for 3 pound barrel :
Fill the barrel
3/4's of the way to the top with rocks and add water to just below the level of the rocks. Then add the grit or polish
and 1 tablespoon tide detergent to your tumbler barrel. Run the barrel for 7 to 10 days on each step. Open and burp
the barrel every 24 hours to prevent leaks.
Steps 1 COARSE - 4 ounces (about 2 heaping
tablespoons)
Step 2 MEDIUM - 3.5 ounces (about 2 heaping tablespoons)
Steps 3 FINE - 3 ounces (about 2 heaping tablespoons)
Step 4 POLISH - 2.5 ounces (about 2 heaping tablespoons)
Burnishing is done after the polish step. Use (2 ounces) of powdered soap, Ivory Snow, TIDE, or equivalent.
DO NOT use liquid detergents.
HELPFUL HINTS!!!!
The quality of the material that you are tumbling will make a difference in the outcome. Garbage In, Garbage Out. You will
have much more success if you have nice colored stones to start with. Stones that are full of holes and cracks are much harder
to clean between grit changes.
Cleaning between grits is probably the most time consuming part of tumbling rocks.
However it is one of the most important things to do properly. You must clean all of the grit off of each stone and out of
the barrel before proceeding to the next finer grit. If you don't you will prolong the time it takes to tumble. The little
piece of grit you miss will keep on working -- scratching until it eventually breaks down to a smaller and smaller size.
Do not clean out your tumbler in the sink. Washing the slurry down your drains will lead to clogged drains. I use a spaghetti
strainer and a trash can, after everything drains into the trash can I let the water evaporate and then throw whats left into
the garbage.
Be sure to inspect each rock and you will usually find some that have a little slurry that didn't
wash off. Scrub these with the toothbrush to loosen grit and rinse. When you are through, then clean the barrel. Be sure to
thoroughly scrub the barrel for the next grit size. It's alot of work , but I don't know of any easy way to do this
part of the job.
The types of rock in a batch can cause problems that won't show up until you try to polish.
These may be due to different hardnesses. It's a good idea to separate stones by hardness before you begin. This can be
done with a simple scratch test. Scratch the different types of stones against one another, if one stone really scratched
another they should not be in the same batch. The Covington Double tumbler is a very nice machine as you can run two batches
of different hardnesses at the same time.