Every time you open up the tumbler to clean and inspect the rocks, be it going to the next stage in tumbling, repeating that same stage for another week, or bringing them out of polish for the final time, it’s like opening presents at Christmas.

Sure, you know what you put IN the tumblers, so it’s not such a surprise you don’t know what you’re going to see, but how they look is almost always a surprise. And with two twelve pound tumblers running almost all the time, I get that excited feeling of discovery almost every weekend of the year.

Yes, I’m lax in taking and posting photos, so I’ll try to fix that this weekend during the cleaning. But the fun part really takes on meaning during Stage 1. That’s when you’ve put rough rock, or rough cut freeforms into the tumblers for their first week. This is when the shaping happens, when you find amazing color coming through that you didn’t even know was hidden inside.

Right now, I have one tumbler filled with beach rocks gathered at Fort Warden in Port Townsend, WA. There’s some beach jade, and a few jaspers, but for the most part it’s full of rock that caught my eye. When tumbling beach rock that’s already mostly rounded, you don’t always have to do more than a cursory one-week stint in stage 1. And in the past, that’s what I’ve always done.

But a few weeks go, at a rock show in Everett, I found some beach rocks tumbled to such an amazing shine, my previous tumbles were put to shame! These babies were glistening! They were amazing. And the only thing I can fathom they did that I haven’t done was be more patient. So this time, since it’s still winter and too cold to spend much time cutting in the garage, I’ve decided to try my best to replicate that shine.

So these rocks are back in stage 1 for a second week. Already the colors and patterns coming out are breathtaking. And the second tumbler, filled with sliced Brazilian agates and cut freeforms also put me in awe. We did some cutting last month and had to set the forms aside because there weren’t enough to fill a tumbler – and in that time, I’d completely forgotten what was there. So, when I had the Brazilians ready to go and needed to fill the tumbler a bit more, I put these cuts in with them.

Sunday afternoon was Christmas all over again! Finding cuts in the slurry that I hadn’t remembered, seeing colors and patterns that I’d forgotten all about – it’s hard to describe. Suffice it to say, I saw quite a few pendant-potentials in there that won’t be put up for sale, but they’ll be available for viewing around my neck!