Quote from: ChrissyRyan on Yesterday at 06:33:08 PMI have seen similar displays of rocks for sale. I wonder how much time and money it costs to make maybe a dozen of these rocks ready for sale that you might be able to cram into a small bag.
The rocks need to be quite a bit larger because polishing them rounds the edges and wears down the surface. They need to be sorted by hardness, too. Hard rocks, like the quartz varieties (chalcedony, jasper, agates, citrine, rose quartz, and amethyst), take longer to shape. Softer stones like Sodalite or Sunstone can skip the shaping stage and move straight into the smoothing stage.
I run all of the rocks through five stages, each lasting about one week. The first stage can take from one week to a couple of months for hard stones. I now use a more aggressive grit for the first stage to know that down to a week or three.
I run each stage simultaneously, so all my machines are running at the same time. Then I move the rocks to the next stage, empty the final polish stage, and refill the first. I haven't calculated the cost of grit and polish, but it is not expensive. Even with the added cost of jewelry wire, the cost is less than $3 per piece. A small bag like that would be a good way to get rid of the rejects that are not very nice for jewelry due to flaws.
