Does moss agate tumble very well?
Yes indeed it does. Also it usually has fewer inclusions or holes than many other agates. But not always. Some of the moss agate found in the Pawnee National Grasslands of northeast Colorado can be rather bubbly. • I add pellets to the medium and polish phases, but still find agates fracturing once in a while… Pellets are not needed for agates, only for stuff that frosts. Meanwhile, if the agates still fracture, it means either the barrel is too empty, or more likely that they were just fractured and the coarse grinding didn’t break them yet, but eventually they went to pieces under the continued gentle persuasion of the tumbler. I do occasionally see this too, I just shrug. My tire tumbler is so rough it tends to weed out the weaklings for me now. But then again, I literally screen the washed stones with a 1/4 mesh to separate out the gravel toward the end of sorting, and I get 1/4-1/2 cup of gravel for each load. I do save it and sometimes just polish it, looks nice in glass jars.
