When I was out in Nevada and California, I collected many pieces of agate and chalcedony. Many of the pieces were small, but some of the pieces were larger. Too large for my wife to use for making jewelry. I considered breaking the pieces with a sledgehammer to make them smaller and more usable for jewelry. But I decided that if I cut the pieces down into the thin slabs, that would make much nicer pieces.
I started investigating rock saws, but found they cost a lot more than I could justify spending. But I found that some people had used tile saws to cut rocks. These were much less expensive. But would they hold up? I started reading reviews of various tile saws. I could get a 4 inch tile saw, but it wouldn’t cut as thick of rocks as I wanted. So I started looking at the 7 inch models. There were various brands available, many for less than $100. One of the saw that actually had the best reviews, at least in the cheaper price range for which I was looking, was the Chicago Electric 7 Inch Portable Wet Cutting Tile Saw from Harbor Freight. At 3/4 horsepower, it sounded like it had a pretty strong motor. I could get the saw for about $60, and would have to buy the diamond blade separately for $20. I was a little leery after having such bad experiences with the Harbor Freight rock tumbler. But reviews of the Harbor Freight tile saw mentioned people using them for years.
I decided to give it a try. I bought it using the 20% off coupon from the Harbor Freight mailer. I also bought the extended warranty which saved me when I bought the HF rock tumbler. The first saw I bought was DOA. The motor wouldn’t turn. This didn’t give me a good feeling. I returned it to the store. They said they sell lots of these, and they never had seen a problem like this. They gave me another saw and I took it home. This saw worked. I got it put together and the blade installed.
There is a water tray that slides underneath. I think this could have been designed better as it is difficult to put in and take out when it is full of water.
The saw worked great for cutting rocks up to a little over an inch. The motor has plenty of power and I have rarely had issues with it slowing down even when pushing the rock into it with pressure. It is important to keep the water tray full. Water tends to splatter around a lot. You need to keep the tray topped off so the blade stays wet. If the blade starts to dry out, it cuts much more slowly and the blade will wear out faster. You will also need to empty the tray every once in a while if you are doing a bunch of cutting as it will fill up with sludge.
You will want to use eye protection as water with rock dust will be flying all over the place. Also use ear protection as this can get loud when cutting rock. My ears were left ringing after spending close to an hour cutting rocks one night.
One limitation of the Harbor Freight tile saw is that you are limited to using the diamond blades from Harbor Freight. The arbor on the saw is 1 inch, and this seems to be unique to the Harbor Freight saw. But I have cut a lot of rock using the one blade so far. The blade was $20 and if I use the 20% off coupon, I can get another one for $16. Maybe they go on sale now and then too. I don’t know.
The blade is kind of thick, maybe over an 1/8th of an inch thick, so you will lose a bunch of material in cutting.
You will want to use this outside, or in the garage where you aren’t worried about things getting wet. A lot of water will splatter around this saw. I have been using it on my work bench in the garage and it has left puddles of water underneath that I have to soak up afterwards. I am now waiting for warmer weather so I can use it outside in the driveway.
But I have gotten some very cool slabs of agate and chalcedony by using this saw. These have turned out to be some of the nicest pieces from the stuff I brought back. We just polished them using our Raytech vibratory tumbler and they are amazing! My wife is having fun making jewelry from them!
We already owned a bunch of barrel rock tumblers which include a Lortone 33B, Lortone 45C, Lortone 3A, Thumler A-R6, and a vintage Lortone tumbler that will do 6+lbs. These all do a great job. But they are expensive to use as they use a lot of grit/polish. They also take a month or more from start to finish to polish a batch of rocks.
I had read that vibratory rock tumblers are faster, use less grit and also retain the original shape of the rocks better. All of these were advantages. While having smooth rounded rocks like those that come out the barrel tumblers is nice, there are other times when it might be nice to have the rocks retain a more natural shape, while still being polished smooth.
I originally bought a Thumler Ultra-Vibe 18, only to find that I needed the “Industrial” model to do rocks. Thumler’s website does not mention this at all. In fact the specs listed on Thumler’s website are identical between the Thumler Ultra-Vibe 18 and the Thumler Ultra-Vibe 18 Industrial. Still not happy with Thumler over this! So the Thumler Ultra-Vibe 18 I bought was useless to polish rocks with, unless I wanted to fry the motor.
I then started looking at the Berry’s Blue Tumbler. But looking at many websites, it seems like this model was being discontinued.
I finally decided on the Raytech Tumble-Vibe TV-5 rock tumbler. I ordered the starter kit which cost a little more, but came with an extra bowl, and four bottles of grit to start with.
The Raytech is easy to use. It uses WAY LESS grit than a barrel tumbler. Its will process about 4 pounds of rocks at a time. We start off a batch of rocks with only two teaspoons of grit. Then 12 hours later we add a couple more teaspoons of grit. From start to finish, we can polish a batch of rocks in a week or less.
We have found the vibratory tumbler extremely useful for polishing small slabs of agate that I cut on my tile saw. Where the barrel tumbler would round the edges heavily, the Raytech vibratory tumbler polishes them while retaining the nice slab shape. We have also found that we are able to polish much smaller rocks than can reasonably be done with a barrel tumbler.
The vibratory tumbler is louder than the barrel tumblers. But we have it running out in the garage. When it’s really quiet at night, we can hear it very faintly.
We noticed that when the temps dropped to near zero outside, and the garage got very cold, the tumbler seemed to not work as well. We found more unused grit in the bowl when cleaning out the rocks and recharging the tumbler. Not a big issue though.
Unlike the barrel tumblers, this tumbler uses hardly any water. Just four teaspoons. This makes it a little more work to clean the rocks when recharging as they are covered with a thick sludge. A strong sprayer attachment on a hose helps immensely!
We are very happy with the Raytech TV5 Tumble-Vibe rock tumbler! This thing really rocks! (Okay, bad pun).