Getting ready to fire up my first barrel of Meeko's serpentine. With a Moh's hardness of only about 6.0, any tips out there for a successful result?
I have vibratory tumblers but in the dead of a Minnesota winter, I prefer not to use them - they're messy, noisy and labor intensive so I'm hoping to do this with rotary only. That may be a non-starter for some of the experienced tumblers out there. If so maybe they need to wait a few months!
Advice? Thanks! 😊
I'm in the polish stage now for my serpentine. It's been a bit of a journey. Their surface was pretty gritty all the way to Stage 3 so I ran them through a burnish stage with Ivory soap and Borax before going to the polish stage which seemed to help some. Lost a lot of volume on them through the early stages - I guess not too surprising with a Mohs hardness of 6 but I've had less issues with sodalite which is softer. Anyway hoping for a good polish on these in a week even though I'm going to end up with much smaller rocks than I thought at the beginning.
Live to learn.