Rock Tumbling and Lapidary 101 Sites Created

Minneapolis, Minnesota-based firm, Joanies Rocks, has recently published two new websites to help people new to the hobby access some of the many better YouTube videos available online.

Co-owner Earl Netwal, explains that while the business had been interested in producing a series of “How To” videos on Lapidary and rock tumbling topics, they were aware that tons of such material already exists on video sites such as YouTube.

So rather than spending the time to produce similar videos, they decided to curate appropriate existing videos on a variety of Rock Tumbling and Lapidary topics.

“There is a wealth of information on YouTube, but it can be a bit of a challenge to find the better ones," Earl explains. “Plus there really is not a good way of searching categories on YouTube within a relatively small niche like rockhounding, tumbling, or other lapidary topics.”

To start, they have created two sites, one for rock tumbling called rocktumbling.info and another called lapidary101.com.

The Rock Tumbling site, (Rocktumbling.info) includes basic how-to videos as well as discussions on the relative merits of rotary vs vibratory tumblers, and key tips such as how to safely dispose of the rock and grit slurry left over after a tumbling session. Along with the how-to videos are a number of videos on specific types of rocks and stones such as Lake Superior Agates, Crazy Lace Agates, Petoskey Stones, and many others.

The second site, Lapidary 101 focuses on the cutting, grinding, and polishing of similar stones but with a focus on saws, grinders, drills, and alternative approaches including the use of handheld tools such as the Dremel Rotary Tool.

There is a lot to learn, and particularly during the Covid outbreak, it has been hard to get hands-on instruction from skilled mentors. YouTube has helped fill that gap. Joanies Rocks hope its collection of videos will serve as a useful place to gather the better such videos in one place.

“We hope to improve the site as time goes on by adding and subtracting videos from the site,” Earl continues. “For now we have included a number of videos that might not be as complete or comprehensive as we might like, but that will improve over time.”

Among the topics on the Lapidary 101 site are videos discussing using a flat lap, drill presses, cutting and shaping stones, how to use dop wax, various lapidary tips, and tricks, how to polish agates and jasper, how to make rings, pendants, and other jewelry with cut and polished as well as tumbled stones, how to cut geodes, watering systems for lapidary grinders, how to use Diamond paste and much more.

Joanies Rocks intend to grow the collection of such video sites in the future, once it is able to judge the general public's response to the initial two sites.

“This is a new venture,” Earl concludes, “but one we hope with be both useful and serve to make the hobby accessible to many more people.”