Rock Polishing

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For the last few months the dog and I have been walking out in the desert near our house. Today the Rio Grande River runs west of the Franklin Mountains in El Paso, Texas, but many thousands of years ago it ran on the east side. Very near to where I live now.

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Where we walk is desert sand hills, but where they have been eroded by water running from thunderstorms the old bed of the river is exposed. And there are zillions of stream bed polished rocks.

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So over the last few months on our walks I have been picking up pretty rocks. I now have enough to go to the next step and polish them. Basically what I have picked up can be divided into black stones - Apache Tears (nodules of obsidian or volcanic glass) and tekties; and various colors and forms of quartz. You are supposed to tumble rocks of the same hardness, so I have two tumblers running. Yesterday I started the first batch with coarse grit. After 3 or 4 days I will wash that out real good, put in some fine grit and then tumble with it for another week or two. After that there are two more runs, the pre-polish, and the final polish.

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So hopefully in a few weeks I will have some pretty little self-collected, self-polished stones. After that If I get ambitious I also got a kit to make one's own jewelry. Necklaces, rings, etc. Time will tell. Should be fun.

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