Progress on polishing my marble.............

Fred (S.Indiana)

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Apr 8, 2007
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I bought an inexpensive tumbler to polish the german swirl I found some time back, I would like to know exactly what I have here, I believe it is a submarine core swirl, from my searches, it has a bi-color core with what appears to be an incomplete onionskin panel, mica flakes, the interior of the onionskin is a different color than the exterior, really a pretty piece of glass, measures at better than 25/32, not quite 13/16, it has been tumbling for eight weeks, nice surface, but I would like to get the small fisheyes to disappear......................fred
 

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duffytrash

Bronze Member
Jun 10, 2006
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ohio river
not real sure...ive heard those tumblers turned the mibs to footballs....i think the best way is to polish them...you can get different grit sand paper like stuff and polishing compounds to do it by hand...sure would be alot faster than 8 weeks...but i would practice on a cheap marble first....did the pontils polish off that german??
 

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Fred (S.Indiana)

Fred (S.Indiana)

Full Member
Apr 8, 2007
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Evansville
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The marble is staying nice and round, it had ground pontils but they are now smooth, sandpaper wasn't the way to go, I'm using final polish compound with airsoft pellets as media, big improvement, if you scroll down you can see my initial post on the marble.........fred
 

duffytrash

Bronze Member
Jun 10, 2006
1,143
197
ohio river
thats kewl fred...i wasnt sayin sandpaper but glass polishing sheets.....you can retain the ground pontils that way . from what i learnnd from other polishers is once you get the hits all removed with the sandpaper like material then you polish the marble back ......theres folks i know that has made polishing machines...its great that you refinished this un....
 

Marbleguy

Sr. Member
Nov 2, 2008
300
12
Tried that. Lost my marbles.

If you run one marble thru a tumbler it might come out okay. A year ago I did a dozen marbles and all I got were pea-sized pebbles. There are professionals available online at antique marble collector websites that will re-surface old marbles.
 

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