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).
I found this spot listed in both Gem Trails Of Nevada and Rockhounding Nevada. There was supposed to be fluorescent chalcedony. I made the drive by myself. It was a pleasant drive listening to an audio book. The place is just off of 95, about 4.5 miles north of Beatty (GPS coordinates are 36°57.61800′, -116°43.01040′). There is a dirt road blocked by a gate. I just opened the gate and drove through, and closed the gate again. There are some low hills a little ways in. I parked and walked over the tops of the hills. I just walked around picking up small pieces of agate and chalcedony while listening to my Harry Potter audio book. I wasn’t sure if it was fluorescent or not. I just picked up all the pieces I found and put them in a plastic bag. I shipped all the rocks I collected home to New York in a flat rate priority mail box. When I got home from vacation I tried a long wave UV light, but got no reaction. I ordered a shortwave UV light. When it came I looked at all the rocks I collected. Most of the chalcedony/agates that I collected in the Death Valley area seemed to glow green under the shortwave UV light.
p.s. BE CAREFUL driving through Beatty! It’s a total speed trap! The speed limit goes from 70 to 25 in a very short distance. And there are a bunch of cops just waiting there to give you a ticket! If you go through there err on the side of caution and slow down way before you need to!
I read about this site in both Gem Trails Of Nevada and Rockhounding Nevada. According to the book, there is a pale blue chalcedony here. I had planned to come over to this location with my dad who lives in Pahrump. But I was in Las Vegas on Saturday and had some time to kill. I thought about how I was about an hour away, but the site was a two hour drive from my dad’s house. I decided to go check it out to see if it was even accessible using my rental car.
I drove out I15 to exit 75. Then I took 169 for a few miles when I hit the dirt road. The road wasn’t great, but it was drivable. I drove the 4.5 miles to the Buffington Pockets sign. The road was rough, but doable in my Suzuki economy rental car. I made it about another mile before the road got rougher. At this point, the dirt got to the point where is was too rough for me to try to take my rental car over. I was worried about getting stuck in the middle of nowhere. I was within about 4 miles of where I needed to go. I turned around, and drove back to Las Vegas. I considered renting an SUV and going back. But I ended up not doing this. Next when I go to Las Vegas, I might try renting an SUV for a day and go visit this site. Or maybe I will park the rental car, and hike in and out. I will have to research this.
I was visiting my Dad in Pahrump, NV, and I wanted to do some rock collecting. Last year we headed up to Scotties Junction, and collected Apache Tears. This year I wanted to go down into the Death Valley area. It was actually much closer to Pahrump and we didn’t have to spend as much time driving. After hitting the Amargosa Borax Works and attempting Sperry Wash, we headed to this place. There was a brief mention of it in Rockhounding California. It’s about 9.4 miles south of Death Valley Junction. GPS coordinates are 36°11.64114′, -116°22.11432′. There is a little spot on the side of the road convenient for parking. The book mentioned agate with orange banding and white chalcedony roses. We figured it would be worth a shot. We first tried up on the hill on the west side of the road, and found nothing. Good thing. After checking Google maps, I noticed the west of the road is part of the Death Valley National Park, where rock collecting is prohibited. We didn’t find anything over there anyway. We had a nice walk up on the hills though. But on the flat area on the east side of the road (which appears not to be in the park), I found lots of agate and chalcedony chunks just lying around on the ground. I also found some pinkish rock that I think might be quartzite, but I am not sure. I collected some of the pink rocks, and we will polish them up to see what it looks like. I made a couple visits to this area, and enjoyed some nice relaxing collecting while listening to Harry Potter audio books on my MP3 player. Much of the agate and chalcedony fluoresces under shortwave UV light.
After spending a bunch of time collecting rocks at the Amargosa Borax Works, we decided to try the Sperry Wash area. This spot is written up in both Gem Trails of Southern California and Rockhounding California. There is supposed to be agate, petrified wood and fossils here. We drove through Tecopa, CA. There was a sign on Furnace Creek Road saying it was closed. But it looked fine, and we could see by tire tracks that people had been driving on it. We drove back carefully, and had no problems on this road. A little over 9 miles along, we turned off on to a dirt road. We follow this for about 4 miles and then the road got too rough to attempt in my rental car. The road up to this point had be doable if we drove slowly and carefully. I suppose we could have parked and walked back, but I didn’t want to make my dad walk that far. Plus we would have had to carry the rocks back to the car. We just turned around and headed back out.
On the plus side, we did make a detour and visited the China Ranch Date Farm and had some Date Banana Milk Shakes. Yummy!
I may come back and visit this area again on my own when I can go ahead and do the mile long hike back in to the collecting area. But then, there are other places to collect agate that are easier to get to.
