u/Peaceful-Thought31

My very first supply order from Rock Shed included some Mexican Lace that I wasn’t super enthused about. Their website says they’ve restocked with higher quality material, so I ordered 5 lbs of small to use as barrel filler. It arrived today and I must say I’m very pleased. I know from using their extra small mix as filler/cushion that the tiny lace pieces come out really well. They clean up well and don’t even have to be super smooth, as long as you’re happy with lots of character and bumpy botryoidal bits.

Some of my faves from this new supply. If this is an example of their larger pieces, I’d grab some as there is some great color and pattern here.

A pound of mini quartz points on their clearance page for $5.

My extra small mix had a lot of quartz points in it, even smaller than these. The minis are coming out really well when used as filler. Like tiny icicles.

I plan to throw these in as barrel filler when needed.

If anyone is looking for a coloring Bible in the New Living Translation Catholic Edition, Tyndale seems to be clearing out the brown cover right now. $18. That’s a crazy low price. Also good for gifting if coloring in your Bible isn’t your thing. 😄

The NLT is the successor to the Living Bible which was popular in the 70s. My mom had the old padded green version.

Since it’s a dynamic equivalent translation, I wouldn’t recommend it for one‘s only Bible. But I have it and enjoy reading (and coloring!) from time to time.

https://tyndaleonline.com/inspire-catholic-bible-nlt/

First pendant I’m actually keeping for myself. 😊

The lighter color rocks in pic 2 are the only ones I’m remotely happy with. None are scratch/pit free (the white streak on the larger one isn’t polish, but actually a stripe in the rock).

None have the exciting pattern I’ve seen from some of my fellow tumblers here. Although there’s still time to mail them to Feather River Lapidary for the contest, they won’t be competitive so I’m keeping them. The tear drop will become a pendant. 😊

The dark polished pile in pic 1 is just… blecch… I pulled it from Stage 1 way too early. On purpose because I didn’t want to lose pattern. Now I think I should have risked it 🤣

I’m putting these on the shelf for now, along with the remainder in pic 3 that I never finished. Some day, those “finished“ ones will get their second chance in Stage 1.

Wishing everyone who entered the best of luck!!!

I’m tumbling some larger bloodstone with various agates as filler, mostly Bahia. This is all still in Stage 1, except for the last two which I’m arresting in process to preserve pattern. The flatter one looks like a squashed planet Jupiter with the rings and red storm. They’ll go back in the barrel when Stage 2 begins.

Ahhhh….shiny jaspers… With dendrites and snowstorms inside.

I don’t know why I’m messing around with pesky softer rocks. 🤣 Jasper Shine is where it’s at! 💎

Adding one’s steel washer to the stage 3 barrel full of softer rocks, plastic beads, and rubber tile spacers kinda defeats the purpose 🤣

Raise your hand if you’ve done this!

Luckily, my Kona dolomite looks none the worse for wear and is now in a Dawn bath before beginning stage 3.5 with 1000 AO. Stage 4 dry polish with tin oxide and corn cob to follow.

This Dead Camel will be the death of me yet!

🐪💀🪦

Last week, after finally seeing some promising results in Stage 1 with this pesky stuff, I decided to return most of the Stage 2 ”reserves” back into Stage 1. At today’s cleanout, I decided to heck with it, and put most of it into Stage 2. 🤣

There are still cracks and pits, but I’m starting to see significant fading of the colorful pattern in places. Mobydickulous has observed the same phenomenon. Since I am not actually entering the contest, I’ve decided to live with cracks to try and preserve the color. Otherwise if I keep grinding away, I’m afraid I will end up with a barrel full of gray rocks. 🪨 🪨🪨🪨🪨🪨🪨🪨🪨🪨

From a geological standpoint, this stuff is quite interesting. Whenever a pit opens up, you can see it is surrounded with a band of color (see pics). Whatever made the void was there when the red mineral flowed in, only to disappear later and leave a hole.

I had already decided to buy the AP mid-tier, when another user pointed out what appeared to be a semi-yapp binding in the AP video profile of Royal Jongbloed. u/Ascension_Official confirmed it will indeed be semi-yapp. Oh be still my heart!💕🎉

Here‘s a short clip from Bible Reviewer Tim Wildsmith showing what yapp is. Tim is a Protestant, but gives respectful reviews of Catholic bibles, too. He doesn’t show semi-yapp, which is what our LOTH will have. But you can get an idea of how it will look as it will be in between his two examples.

What is yapp?

For a book of the small footprint of the LOTH, I think it will be absolutely perfect. I expect it to be comfortable, squishy, and not get in the way when the book is held in the hand.

So- quite unexpectedly! - I went with the Premium Natural Grain. If you checkout using Shop, you can make the payment in installments. There are a few options at the end of the process that let you do this.

I am continuing to have fun with this interesting ancient material. Some pieces are very different from the others, particularly in terms of hardness.

Yesterday, I removed some rocks after 5 days and added some new to fill up the space. This morning’s barrel check revealed at least one piece much softer than the rest (the dark purple.) I pulled it out, along with the small pieces of calcite that I had thrown in as filler yesterday. After only one day, the Mohs 3 calcite had rounded considerably.

I‘m not surprised at the calcite. They were so small the large dolomite chunks were bullies. I was surprised at how quickly that dark piece of dolomite rounded, however.

The rest of the material shows a variety of composition leading to various hardnesses. There is some undercutting. The orange bits on the green stone almost feel like Jasper in terms of smoothness. The pink, gray, and white stripey wavy stuff feels almost like sandstone still. Finer grits may help with that, perhaps.

With the exception of the purple piece, none of it is wearing down as fast as I expected it to in 60/90 grit. I may move to checking every two days since I removed the purple piece. I THOUGHT peeking in a barrel every day would be the key to impatience - EXCEPT keeping the barrel edges clean is a PITA. 🪥 I’m not doing a full clean out, but reaching in and pulling out individual stones for examination. It’s making a huge mess. I’m using a squirt bottle. Toothbrushing carefully. Going through lots of wet shop towels wiping the edges. Maybe daily barrel checks are NOT the fun I thought they would be…

Who am I kidding??? I wake up every morning excited to see how these rocks did. I DREAM of these rocks. 😴 I’m having a blast! 🤣

The adventure continues…

Fluorite at 6 days into Stage 1 convinced me I have decisions to make. Fractures. Lots of fractures. I have been super careful with cushioning (media, soap, barrel fill level), so I don’t think they are new fractures. I knew they were fracture prone, and I knew they were already fractured when arriving from Rock Shed. So I pulled the current batch and started the remaining 4 pieces of rough (along with a 5th piece that went into the barrel 2 days ago.) Stage 1 will continue with daily checks while I ponder options.

I could live with the fractures (I don’t mind them - UNLESS they are contaminated with grit). I do not expect perfection out of fluorite. I have an ultrasonic to deal with grit/polish residue, but have heard those can make fracture-prone material worse. To test this, I put a small piece into the ultrasonic for 30 minutes. An existing crack chipped off. I plan to try again with a different rock, for 5 minute increments at a time, taking before and after pictures for comparison.

I can cut these rocks into smaller, fracture-free pieces, but that would leave me with very small pieces. Likewise, continue tumbling to see if I can reduce the sizes enough to get past some of the cracks. This might work for some, but not all of them, due to the depth of the cracks.

I can Dremel polish some of the faces.

I can take a combination approach, based on each individual rock.

Stay tuned as the journey unfolds! 💜💚

Nothing earth-shattering to report yet. Unless you count the fluorite my husband hit with a hammer yesterday, inserting a cold chisel into a grit-trapping crack that had opened up. The main result is my peace of mind that the soft material is not going to disappear overnight in 60/90 grit. This is good to know!🤣

I considered moving at least some of it into the Stage 2 holding tub.

“Am I being impatient?” I asked him.

”Yes.”

So back it all went, along with a bit more ceramic to keep everything at 3/4 full, and we will check tomorrow on Day 4. 😊

I know it’s a challenging material for a newbie such as me to tackle, but I 💜 the stuff and was determined to try.

The rocks are all large, from Rock Shed. Their material is described as 1 -3 inches, but I think all of mine were three inches 🤣 The untumbled pieces in the cardboard box are three pounds worth. I wanted to keep my pieces as large as possible, so I divided the supply in half and filled the rest of the barrel with large ceramic cylinders. This was to fill the void and keep this fracture -prone soft stone as cushioned as possible.

After 24 hours in a Lortone 4 lb barrel filled to 3/4 mark with 60/90 grit, a generous squirt of dish soap, and water to cover, they are smoothing out. I returned them to the tumbler and will check again tomorrow.

I’m in love with the largest light green piece. It has internal rainbows!🌈 You can see the flash to the left of my thumb.

After 24 hours in 6 lb barrel filled to 3/4 mark with 60/90 grit, a generous squirt of dish soap, and water to cover. These rocks are big and soft, so I used about 33% large ceramic cylinders for cushion and fill, despite this being Stage 1.

Will check again tomorrow, but they are rounding nicely. The brown piece must be a bit harder, as it has more edges still. A piece of untumbled rough is included for comparison.

This is Rainbow Kona Dolomite from Copper Brook Farms on Etsy. He has wonderful stuff!

Long post ahead! 😊

In case this post persists in the future, long after we have good data on the offerings from the 2 publishers, let me preface by saying this is a comparison of the publishers’ current Bible offerings, Ascension’s Great Adventure Bible Premium Edition, and the Word on Fire Bible in Leather. I’m submitting it in absence of some current details from the publishers.

Since many on this sub are debating which publisher to use, and a pre-order deadline is coming up, I am hoping my post will help with decision making.

***LEATHER: First, Ascension states on their website that their mid-tier LOTH will be comparable in binding to the Great Adventure Premium (GAB). The GAB is on the right in my picture, in brown goatskin. It is very soft goatskin, luxurious to touch, and folds back upon itself very easily. It is edge-lined in real leather which contributes to its supple hand feel.

The Word on Fire Bible (WOF) in black on the left, has a binding constructed of what WOF identifies as “leather”. They do not say what kind of leather, but any publisher using a luxury tier of leather will specify what it is, aka full grain goatskin, sheepskin, calfskin, etc. Publishers will not miss the opportunity to brag, because it’s the quality of leather that largely drives price. UPDATE from WOF site:”The leather edition of The Word on Fire Bible features a top grain leather produced in Eppertshausen, Germany.” WOF has not yet said what kind of leather they will use for their LOTH, but the preview of the 4 volumes’ spines on their site appears the same as the spine on all 5 of my WOF bibles. Perhaps it’s just a mockup, but in the absence of other details, I will guess that the LOTH from WOF will be comparable in leather quality to their WOF Bible.

***LINING: As mentioned above, the GAB is edge lined in very soft leather (unspecified type but I suspect cowhide.) That lining is very thin and soft, making for a floppy, cushy feeling while holding.

The lining on the WOF is not leather. It is a synthetic material, I suspect vinyl? It is not sewn, but rather glued down. The glue gives it a stiff, almost crinkly feel. I‘m afraid that if I were to bend the cover too far back, it would crack due to that glued down plasticky feeling liner.

***PAPER: The GAB uses very nice Bible paper. It‘s bright, easy to read, and not too thin. The WOF paper is very thick, almost glossy, more of a coffee-table book type of paper. It’s nearly impossible to say which of these papers are “nicer”, because WOF is publishing what almost amount to beautiful sacred art books. They can use the thicker paper because their Bible is spread out over 7 volumes. If WOF used true Bible paper, their books would be thinner and lighter, and perhaps they could do the whole Bible in fewer volumes. Conversely, if Ascension used such thick paper for the GAB, their single volume Bible would be a boat anchor! ⚓️

***PRINTER: Ascension top-tier printer will be Royal Jongbloed in Denmark, mid and lower tiers unknown (GAB premium printed in China)

WOF, printer currently unknown, but WOF Leather Bible printed by unnamed publisher in Italy (LEGO?)

***BOTTOM LINE: I was moved to write this post because some on this sub have stated that WOF LOTH will be a premium book. I suppose that depends on your personal definition of premium. In the Bible publishing world, the WOF would be more mid-tier (my opinion only). Sure, the WOF is printed in Italy, with gorgeous type and pictures. WOF is undoubtedly a beautiful Bible, and I love mine. But if you compare the binding alone, the WOF is nowhere near the level of quality of the GAB, despite the GAB being printed in China. I can only imagine that Ascension‘s top-tier LOTH, being printed by Royal Jongbloed, in a quality of leather even higher than what they use for the GAB, will be sublime.

I hope my post is helpful as you ponder your decision. Price-wise, I think both publishers are offering books at fair prices, based on what I think their respective quality will be. Both books will be absolutely beautiful, I have no doubt, based on the Bibles they currently produce. I personally consider my GAB to be a luxury, and my WOF to be very nice. Lovely to look at certainly, but just ”very nice” in terms of quality.

I‘m glad there will be a variety of qualities from which to choose. I truly wish there would be a beautiful hardback as well, or even a nice paperback which could be put into a protective cover, to make the books even more accessible to those who desire to pray the new edition. One does not need a luxury book in order to pray the hours with the Church. 🙏 Maybe in the future.😊

UPDATE! After much thought, I am keeping the HPL to run with Lortone Barrels. 😊 Will update on how that works out.

It JUST arrived yesterday. And I was so excited about it, too! Sigh…

Return reason? Both barrels have leaked. Woke up this morning to the sound of LOUD rock thumping. If you’ve listened to rock tumblers long enough, you know when something is off. Yep, ‘twas loud because there was no water left and my beautiful Kona dolomite was banging around in there dry. And all had been fine when I went to bed last night.

Unplugged tumbler, removed both barrels, cleaned up the floor (bathroom tile so at least there are no issues there), and spent the morning scrubbing rocks and barrel. Re-loaded leaky barrel, checked non-leaky barrel, then let ‘er roll.

45 minutes later while in the kitchen toothbrushing the calcite that had been in the leaky barrel with the dolomite when… THUMP THUMP THUMP…

2nd barrel loaded with jasper/landscape rocks has now emptied its water all over the floor. I had been looking at that thing every five minutes, so when it decided to leak, it leaked all at once.

I at first thought it was that problem HPL has with the nuts unscrewing themselves due to the direction of the roll. But both washer and nuts were secure. The red aluminum lids, however, were not. They just lifted straight off as if they did not even fit.

I have been running their dual 3 pounder for months and that’s never happened. So I called HPL and they are sending me a return label. They offered an exchange but I said why would I do that? I don’t trust the design.

Meanwhile, I plan to order the Lortone. I went with HPL because of the DC motor. I have MS and my brain hates heat (and stress, and scrubbing the floor twice in a matter of hours…) As I live in a very hot part of the US, I’ve loved having the blissfully cool 3 pounder.

C’est la vie! 🤣

One of the things I love about buying mixed tumbling rock from the Rock Shed is sorting through the bag for mysterious goodies. 🔍 (I would dearly love to go out and dig in their treasure barrels!) 🪎

My DIL is a dinosaur lover, so I ordered a 6 pound piece of coprolite 🦖 for her Christmas gift. 🎄 To maximize shipping value, I added 5 pounds of their soft mix as filler/smalls for some softer rocks in my stash, including some beautiful Kona Dolomite.

Included with a bunch of red jasper, rose quartz, and assorted agate pieces (including carnelian - yay!) 🧡were various color calcites, some sodalite, a piece of what I think is fluorite, and about half a pound of hematite. And… some unexpected surprises. 😃

In the mix was a pale amethyst drusy 💜about an inch long, a small wedge of agate slab (both of these will go in my display collection), and a piece of already tumbled hematite that I stuck on a refrigerator magnet. 🧲 And this little mystery rock. It‘s sort of an olive green with speckles 🫒, and does not scratch with a nail.

The greenie looks familiar, but I can’t place it. I’m combing the internet rock sellers to see if I can figure out what it is. I’ll probably toss it in with the next jasper batch.

No tootsie rolls or lollipops, but still fun times! 🍭

In process chert I got from u/Remarkable_Royal_175

This rock is soooo interesting! I think all of the golden brown matter swirled throughout is sea lily material. Crinoids are embedded here and there, and some of the brownish shapes match those I have seen from the tops of sea lilies (fronds? leaves? flowers?) I imagine there was an ancient sea lily bed running right through royal’s property!

Pics 1, 3, and 5 are done with Stage 1. #1 because it really IS done (that crack is internal and smooth to the touch). 3 is done because I don’t want to grind down that interesting top surface with crinoid “spine.” And 5 has turned itself into a sweet little heart, so I will live with the holes💙