When we picked the kids up from school last Wednesday, Mason was very excited. “I got something from school,” he said. Mason is always getting little trinkets from school for either being a good helper, making good grades or going above and beyond on his reading lists. Usually he gets things like pencils or pencil erasers or leftover Happy Meal toys. When I asked him what he got, he said “rocks”.
When we got home, Mason pulled out his rocks. They barely even qualified as rocks — “dirty gravel” was more like it. As the rest of us kicked off our shoes and began the post-work unwind, Mason dumped his handful of rocks out onto the kitchen floor and began sorting them into different piles using some rock-sorting algorithm that made sense only to him.
“My friend and I got most of the ones that are probably diamonds,” he said. I decided not to tell him that there weren’t any diamonds in his little pile.
“Can I take my rocks outside and play with them?” he asked. Sure. Soon, Mason was outside on the front porch, playing with his pile of dirty gravel. Just to put this in perspective, when Mason’s friends ask him whether we have a PS3, an Xbox 360 or a Wii, I’ve taught him to answer “yes”, because we have all three. All three sat untouched Wednesday as Mason sorted, counted, resorted and recounted his rocks.
I went about my business and later I saw he had talked Sue out of a strainer and had washed his rocks. Suddenly, a thought popped into my mind.
“Hey, don’t we have a rock tumbler around here somewhere?”
“Second cupboard from the left, above the washer,” Sue said, without getting up.
One of the wonderful things about being a pack rat is that should a random thought pop into your head (“Do we have a rock tumbler?”), odds are the answer is yet. Granted, not all items are located as quickly as this one was, but this time it happened to work out. Do you have a rock tumbler sitting in a cupboard in your utility room? No? Then I win.
Mason and I opened the box and skimmed the directions. I was disappointed to discover that rock tumbling takes a long time to do — like, days and weeks. The rock tumbler came with four little bags of powder, two for sanding and two for polishing. With each one you put the powder in the tumbler, add water, add rocks, and let it run for a while. The first step said “2-4 days”, so I picked three. The instructions warned that “rock tumbling can be loud,” so we carried the whole thing out to the arcade, plugged it in, programmed it to tumble for three days, and walked back to the house.
(Fast forward to Saturday.)
“Are they ready yet? Are they ready yet?”
Around 9pm, Mason and I threw on some shoes and walked out to the arcade. The tumbler had stopped. We carried the tumbler inside and drained the formerly clear water into a cup. The water was now muddy and grimy, but supposedly it’s reusable. After rinsing all the muck off Mason’s gravel, I am surprised to report we found a pile of smooth and impressive looking stones.
Mostly I was surprised that almost all of them are white. I should have taken before and after pictures because I’m sure they were all black and gray going in to the tumbler. What once looked like plain ol’ gravel now looked like pebbles from the beach — smooth and clean, like little white and off-white jelly beans.
At some point during the last three days I was informed that Mason’s rock-collecting partner at school was none too happy that Mason hadn’t brought the rocks back to school. Rather than continue the polishing process for another 2-4 weeks, we agreed that he can take the rocks back to school on Monday, and he and his partner can decide if they want to continue the process. I can’t believe they would get much better with further polishing, although to be fair I didn’t believe they would look as good as they do now.
We’ll have to wait and see if the rock-collecting business takes off. If so, he can run the tumbler and I’ll set up the website.
Rock tumbling! that brings back memories of my childhood. I got a tumbler when I was a kid. I put all sorts of rocks in it and waited the required period of time. Fortunately, we had a basement and the tumbler was put there and we didn’t have to hear it all night long.
I put all sorts of rocks in it. Most of them came out really nice and polished. I put a lump of coal in there too. It was already a little shiny but I figured it would look really nice and shiny. After the first cycle, it disappeared! :D Go figure.
I remember getting some jewelry mounts from the Tandy Leather Co. and made key chains out of one or two of the rocks. I may still have those key chains. I’ll have to look.