We have tumbled some very fine batches of rocks, and have also (s)tumbled along the way so we are sharing our rock tumbling advice with the world.
Here are our tips and observations on rock tumbling best practices:
We use an MJR Tumbler with a 20 lb barrel. The 20 lb barrel allows us to tumble large (fist size) rocks. Ours has worked great for 5 years, and while we do keep it cleaned, and oiled per the MJR instructions, the maintenance is easy, and it’s how we tumble LARGE ROCKS!
We use 4 stages of tumbling grit, one week each = coarse grit, fine grit, pre-polishing, then polishing.
We also BURNISH! Burnishing is when you tumble the stones in an ivory bar soap flakes bath for 2 days. We always have foggy stones after the last polish, but then the burnishing process removes any films, and lets the polished surface shine. It really makes a big difference and we have never not had to do it. So our time for tumbling is 4 weeks and 2 days.
Not for any metaphysical or spiritual reason, but just because it is cool, we try to collect rain water and use rain water for our tumbler. It is not easy, but if we are going to tumble and storms are coming, we collect as much rain water as we can in 5 gallon buckets. Some people use distilled and filtered water to ensure no particles at all are present, but if you can collect rain water, it adds a nice touch and a great story.
If you have questions about our MJR Tumbler (https://mjrtumblers.com/), or the stones we use, or anything at all, please contact us for further rock tumbling advice or rockhounding questions.
This was a special invitation to rockhound for garnets in South Carolina for American Geode to explore the private property of a collector and rockhound who owned acres of forest land, some cleared, in Seneca, South Carolina. This had been relatively unworked, so almost virgin land for rockhounding, which is very exciting and a rare opportunity. The owner of the property, a serious collector as well with excellent taste claimed to have found epidote, garnet, quartz (in its various forms), arrowheads, actinolite, hematite, magnetite, and other iron minerals.
Wow! Was this area full if iron, aka Rust! These kinds of rockhound excursions are most fun for American Geode because so many gem and mineral sites are exhausted and over-mined, or seeded if they are commercial, but this gentleman just wanted some semi-professionals to look over the land and see what they find. There is never enough time!
We did find plenty of garnets, when we found the right veins. We saw a tree that was uprooted and that is always a good place to hunt as you are already at least one foot below the surface. That was how we were able to recognize the edge of a vein that we uncovered and chipped at for the garnets. See the photos of the kinds of areas we were digging around. We needed all our shovels, pick axes, rock hammers, and chisels. These are good looking garnets, not too tiny, but holy moly they are covered in rust.
We will follow up with a video and photos of the garnets when we get them cleaned, hopefully without using acid! We used to use a stone cleaner called Mex, and it was awesome and it was safe! Sadly it was discontinued for some reason, but this stone cleaner was excellent at removing rust and oxidation from your rocks and stones: https://x.com/AmericanGeode/status/716694283089264641
Until then, please enjoy all our rockhounding stories and tips, tricks, and advice, and contact us with any questions.
American Geode was honored to be the monthly speaker in March 2025 at the Northeast Georgia Mineral Society, negms.org. We are members of the Northeast Georgia Mineral Society, in addition to other clubs and societies, so this was a friendly and warm crowd of rockhounds and geology enthusiasts. The society was nice enough to record the talk and lecture, and here is their record of our fascinating lecture about the gem and mineral wonders of the Midwest.
Charles grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, but lived in New York City for many years. His love for Indiana geodes started with a trip to rural southern Indiana (the Bedford / Bloomington area), as an adult, to visit with friends. He went for a walk one morning in a wooded area along a creek and saw geode after geode embedded in the creek banks and the dry creek bed. Many of them were basketball sized or larger. The area had experienced drought that year, so the geodes were more exposed, than usual. Charles managed to lug some geodes out of the creek bed to take back to New York in his luggage…airport TSA was full of questions, which led to a 15-minute geological lecture. Later, he returned to the area to get more geodes but drove his car so he could take back more and avoid TSA altogether.
Indiana used to be covered by shallow seas filled with crinoids, sea lilies, and sea urchins (during the Mississippian time frame). In addition, glaciers once covered Indiana and created the flat terrain, provided the rich soils, and exposed the limestone outcrops and geodes. Most of the geodes Charles brought back are fossilized crinoids heads / crowns that were buried under sediments, swelled with gases during decomposition, and finally were replaced with calcite and silica. The fossilized crinoid heads are called “popcorn” by locals. They use them for landscaping and building decorative mailboxes. Since the Midwest geodes are sedimentary and not volcanic, they do not contain bright colors like the western US and Mexico geodes and are not gem grade. However, some of them do contain blue chalcedony and large calcite crystals. Most Indiana geodes are located on federal, state, and private forest and farmlands, which remain unstudied.
Charles visited the Indiana State Museum, http://www.americangeode.com/blog/gem-and-mineral/ which has a geology room. He spoke to the museum curator to learn more about them and donated a couple for their display. When he returned to New York, he took the geodes to a car wash to get them cleaned up, which was very smart. He sold some of them to interior designers and at flea markets, in New York City. At 6AM he’d pull his wagon to the flea market site at 48th street and set up a table. Most people who stopped by had no idea what they were, and he gave them mini-geology lectures and he managed to sell some. If he was there early enough, he even caught people leaving the nightclubs and managed to sell a few to them as well. He jokingly said that the people leaving the nightclubs had probably over-indulged in alcohol or stronger things and found that once they sobered-up, they were confused as to why they now possessed a rock, and their wallet was $30 lighter. Ha-Ha. Charles also sold them at rock and gem shows. If you wish to see videos of his geode rockhounding adventures, they can be found at americangeode.com.
Knoxville Gem & Mineral Society 2021 Annual Gem Show
Rothchild Conference Center 8807 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37923
Friday, October 15, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm Saturday, October 16, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm Sunday, October 17, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm
As a precaution for Covid masks will be required for admittance.
The show will feature 23 vendors with a wide variety of jewelry, fossil and mineral specimens, meteorites, gemstones, and decorative objects. There will also be educational activities and gem and mineral ID tables. Admission Adults: $6.00 Run of Show Pass: $10.00 Children Under 12: Free
Through one of the gem and mineral clubs to which we belong, we were invited to rockhound for lace agate, banded agate, moss agate, and druzy quartz from a private mining site near Summerville, Georgia.
I arrived and was lucky to have the entire mining area to myself except, over the course of the morning and afternoon, 2 different couples stopped by to collect agate, and a family was out on a rockhounding trip.
American Geode takes that attitude that if you can, take a lifetime supply. We filled up every bucket and bin we brought, and also picked up many large and heavy agates. The stone was plentiful. The only time we used our tools was to break apart a behemoth stone into more manageable sections. We found moss agate, lace agate, banded agate, and our favorites had druzy quartz pockets.
The beauty of these stones were not easy to see without being splashed with a little water, but we ran out of water, so started collecting more than enough to overcompensate as we expected to have some stones better suited for the garden. On a recent gem and mineral meeting over Zoom, when I was showing off these fine agate specimens, I learned that the agate, and the stone formation containing covers a lot of Northwest Georgia, even into Tennessee, but it is on private land, or federal park land, so not available or accessible to the general public.
This agate tumbles well, but it loses a lot of surface area during the tumbling. It is beautiful however, and we are sure that a cabochon or lapidary person would have even more fun with this agate.
