Yesterday I removed a few more stones that have smoothed out nicely.  Of the harder stones, the smoky quart and second ametrine piece are done with phase 1.   I left the chrysophrase and pink opal in to tumble some more, hing to get the big chips knocked out.  That pink opal still isn’t impressing me as much as I expect it to.  And the shape of the chrysophrase is just plain ugly at this point.  The ametrine is actually a pretty interesting stone…a cross between amethyst and citrine, it’s partly golden, and partly purple.

Harder Stones, Day 5

The softer stones still look like they need a bit more time.  The rhodochrosite is showing some beautiful colors and striping, but there’s still a lot of pitting on it.  I left them all in for another day or two to clean up some more, and smooth out.

Softer Stones, Day 5, 2nd View

Softer Stones, Day 5

The”yard quartz,” aka, junk I threw in there to see what would happen…I took a few of the smaller white ones out that were smooth, and something interesting finally happened.  The darker stones I have are showing some beautiful crystals and variation now that they’re polishing up.  They originally just looked like a lump of something with maybe some pink in them, but they’ve got a lot of color and variation happening now and could possibly turn out to be beautiful stones.  The white quartz isn’t that exciting, but I’m getting nicely rounded stones out of the mix.  I may just have to treasure hunt in the backyard again for some more of the darker stones.

Yard Quartz, Day 5