The relentless sea may not transform them the way she did, but it will transform them nonetheless.
Might be a worthwhile ritual taking a handful to the shore and launching them out into earth’s great rock tumbler in her honor.
Or not; grief wears a new mask for each of us.
But! One thing I have found interesting is that you can make your own "sea glass", by breaking wine or beer bottles, and tumbling the big-ish chunks. The thicker the glass, the better, of course. I'm experimenting with just using some sand as the grit material; the glass doesn't come out shiny and smooth, but it definitely wears down the sharp edges.
(And I run the tumbler thing in our detached garage.)
I like the glass idea, that sounds fun.
Thanks for this tip. I'm planning on buying a friend a tumbler for xmas, and if this works as advertised, I feel this would be a must have as part of the gift.
Edit: of course, TFA mentions this as well for those willing to click the link <facepalm>
Slightly older, I graduated to polishing cabachons on a grinder system.
Teenage me learned to solder gold rings to new sizes, which benefitted young electrical engineering me - gold and lead solder very similarly.
All of this, I now realize, was more-or-less a planned arc/quasi-apprenticeship training for the family store.
I’ve buckets of agates and jasper, among other things (like petrified wood) that I’ve found in fields while doing my ag job here in the willamette valley of Oregon. Oregon as a whole is amazing for rockhounding. There are some spots where I can’t go a several feet without seeing a 1cm or larger agate just laying there. Makes it hard to concentrate. I’ve mostly got it out of my system now though.
Cleaned up a bunch thanks to an ultrasonic cleaner, and one day will tumble a bunch to give away.
Among others, but this one is one that is well known among gemhounds/lapidarists.
We now have quite the collection of wonderfully polished rocks of all kinds from the places we have been. I do the cleaning and preparing each weekend but have it down to a quick 10-15 minutes in total time. It’s simple yet magical and I’m slowly seeing how my house is going to look come retirement
I built my own rock tumbler using some wood, hardware store bits, and an old geared DC motor... I also used commercial rock tumblers. Those worked better ;)
It takes a really long time to tumble rocks, you have to go through the grits like a week or two at a time, and they sort of come out without a lot of character. Hand polishing them (with power grinders and polishers) is a lot more satisfying and you can make them into your own. That does require more equipment though.
Just like couches and JD Vance.
[0] isn't one of them but at least I'm not entirely mad - it does happen.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VyRGoq5EnQ "The Secret Shine: How Vibration Polishing Perfects Stainless Steel"
Things to know: Get magnetic stainless steel rod type media. It's not free, but lasts a long time. Use a good surfactant and soften the water, or use distilled water in the tumbler, and rinse with the same. Very important: thoroughly inspect for stuck media in the brass; it will stick inside due to water tension, and primer holes are eager to cling. The clean brass will oxidize because the process removes whatever protection the factory used and exposes unoxidized brass: figure out some coating that works for your use case.
Apple must have been a noisy, violent place :P
Not so fun when particular rocks crumble into clay, and eat all the nice ones into concrete, but it happens.
Edit: Finally got to a PC to do some search-engine investigation and found this: https://rocktumbler.com/tips/how-much-noise-does-a-tumbler-m...
When I printed my "underground newspaper" on a dot matrix printer, back in high school, I thought I'd get away with so much printing without my dad knowing by putting a cardboard box over the printer to deaden the sound. It worked until it didn't. Luckily the printer had a thermistor on the printhead and just stopped versus continuing to brainlessly grind until seizing-up.
We didn't keep at it long, but that kept the noise from being an issue. It was a slow, messy process and we were too busy to pay attention to it over long periods of time.
A long time ago I had a brief rock-hounding phase and found some cool rocks. Polished them on a friend's polishing setup. That was pretty fun. I'd rather get back into that vs tumbling.
A tumbler is just a bunch of rocks and polish bouncing around for a week and you never know what you'll get.
I want to go and build a tumbler now. I'm imagining it is another good use for an old sewing machine (I hoard a few for projects)
Kudos to the Stoned Republicans of the High Frontier Panel and The Heritage Foundation for their groundbreaking earth shattering work on Smart Rocks!
[1] Brilliant Pebbles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brilliant_Pebbles#Smart_Rocks
>In March 1988, Teller and Wood were able to directly brief President Reagan on the concept, taking the model pebble with them and theatrically hiding it under a black cloth when reporters were allowed to take pictures. Teller reiterated that the price for the system would be on the order of $10 billion.
Photographic proof (not AI generated): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brilliant_Pebbles_present...
[2] Pet Rock Remote Control: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG0FAKkaisg
Featuring my Finger Flicking Pocket PC Pie Menus!
For those who don't understand I'd just point at the dietary habits of Discworld trolls.
Or something - "because I find it enjoyable" is a perfectly self contained reason as long as you aren't hurting anyone else (or yourself).
Unless you build a soundproof box for your rock tumbling - then you can run it 24/7.
I've also thrown a bunch into an aquarium as 'river stones', because it's illegal to take them from rivers here and buying them is way too expensive. Those are just bland, small pieces of dark granite to simulate the environment the aquarium is modeled after.