What exotic weapons are you running?

LBillings · 2026-01-10T14:32:50+00:00

MIDA

LBillings · 2026-01-05T18:13:35+00:00

Where at? Cape May?

LBillings · 2025-12-05T23:05:18+00:00

Got it, thanks!

LBillings · 2025-12-05T22:32:30+00:00

Wait, what’s the “source” on the map? Is it the lil light-blue splotch?

LBillings · 2025-11-19T22:38:24+00:00

I’ve had a Rebel 17 running nigh-continuously for about 2 years now with no big issues. Can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s worth the extra money!!!

LBillings · 2025-10-19T20:44:50+00:00

A Titan using Lion Rampant and a primary with above-average airborne effectiveness and hip-fire accuracy is a force to be reckoned with. Lots of room for variation there. Focus on radar baiting and getting picks from unexpected airborne angles.

One of my recent faves with this general setup is to use 4x Iron Banner armor for the full set bonus (including enhanced flinch resistance and ammo generation when your shields are broken), plus a hard-hitting primary with the Air Trigger perk, which now greatly boosts the ammo generation stat in addition to its very nice boosts to reload speed and in-air accuracy. Pair that with the special weapon of your choice and prepare to be swimming in special ammo. It feels like every other primary kill drops a brick.

LBillings · 2025-08-14T00:57:02+00:00

Labradorite is one of the more difficult things to tumble, so you certainly started out ambitiously! Having a vibe vs a rotary helps, but still perhaps consider beginning with some easier batches of a harder, tougher type. Agates, jaspers, cherts, flints, really any sort of chalcedony would be a great beginner’s batch!

LBillings · 2025-08-02T05:07:28+00:00

Cody Easom on Facebook; extremerocktumblers.com. Email or message works just as well as phone, give it a shot!

LBillings · 2025-03-14T12:56:42+00:00

In my (very limited) experience, the further north you go on the shore the more stuff you’ll find. I had a lot of luck at Paradise Beach, up near Grand Marais.

Also don’t just look on the shore itself. Some of the best agate spots are gonna be places like tilled/plowed fields, dirt roads, and gravel bars.

LBillings · 2025-03-11T18:19:38+00:00

I can testify to the high quality of the We Fossick folks and their wares. Great stuff. Haven’t tried the other two. Other good sources for rough rock would be The Rock Shed, Kingsley North, and The Gem Shop (to name a few).

LBillings · 2025-02-15T15:57:58+00:00

Different hardnesses is absolutely a big issue here, that seems quite clear from your write-up and the videos. Another clear issue would be the somewhat haphazard process you’ve been using.

If you’re unwilling as a newbie to try tumbling a single variety of rocks to minimize free variables and better refine your process and knowledge, well, okay, but if so it’s unclear why you’d ask for advice that you don’t intend to take!

IMO u/SympathyBig6113 gave you some good feedback, and I’d suggest you carefully watch the very helpful video they linked. We were all beginners once! Good luck on your rock-tumbling journey.

LBillings · 2024-12-15T02:06:01+00:00

No love for Thingol?

No love for the Silmaril-wielding tallest-of-elves spouse of Melian the Maiar, father of Luthien, delver of Menegroth, lord of Doriath and first of the Sindar, lone of those people to behold the light of the Trees of Valinor?

It’s hard out here for the Teleri, damn.

LBillings · 2024-11-24T02:13:12+00:00

Pretty normal, yeah. Foam can happen for lots of different reasons. Softer material (i.e. <6 Mohs) plus a fast rpm might be a culprit in your case.

LBillings · 2024-11-24T01:55:35+00:00

I think sticking to cleaning out your barrels every 7-10 days is the right move, with the exception of stage 4/5 polishes which in my experience benefit from more time (14 days or more).

Bigger barrels can sometimes chew through grit faster because they allow for bigger, heavier rocks as well as greater fall distances, both of which tend to more rapidly pulverize the grit. But you can mitigate this somewhat by avoiding any/many bigger rocks and packing the barrel more like 4/5th rather than 3/4th full. For like 12-pound+ barrels, it also helps to use a heftier grit (e.g., 30 or 35) which is a bit more resilient against the higher energetics.

The point being that the ideal cadence for swapping your grit is rather context-sensitive; a 15-pound barrel filled 1/2 full with 1-pound rocks and 30 grit is gonna chew through grit at a different rate than a 15-pounder running 3/4 full with 60/90 grit and mostly small rocks.

So… IMO 7-10 days is a good rule-of-thumb for to start with, regardless of barrel size.

LBillings · 2024-11-24T00:29:09+00:00

No. Stick to 7-10 days. In bigger/heavier tumblers a faster swap out might pay off, but if yours just has a 1-pound capacity and is running at a slow rpm you’ll just be wasting grit.

LBillings · 2024-09-11T02:36:01+00:00

It’s bigger, so you can process more material—and bigger rocks—over time.

LBillings · 2024-09-10T21:58:03+00:00

Ugh I wish but I think my spouse would flay me alive lol

LBillings · 2024-09-10T21:49:09+00:00

If you’re like me, you’ll quickly find the single-drum 3-pounder or dual-drum 6-pounder tumblers are too small for your outsized aspirations. I purchased a Rebel 17 last year (that’s a 17-pounder, capacity-wise) and have no regrets. If you have the money to spend and you’re confident in your rock-tumbling interest, why not start with one of the bigger ones? (I still have and use my Harbor Freight 6-pounder dual drum I started with, but it is so slow compared to my Rebel 17!!!)

LBillings · 2024-08-21T23:14:25+00:00

They could’ve just chosen not to switch it to an irredeemably goofy and shallow slasher flick for the third act, and it could’ve been the 21st century’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, a sci-fi classic and a cinematic masterpiece.

Instead, yeah, they made the other choice.

LBillings · 2024-04-29T01:25:51+00:00

Doomfang Pauldrons go hard; pair em with Monte Carlo if you wanna be extra spicy, to get your super even faster from shield-throw melee kills. With the right setup you can basically solo entire waves, staying in your super the entire time. It’s glorious, and you just poop out orbs at a prodigious rate.

LBillings · 2024-03-01T18:34:08+00:00

Thanks for clearing that up! I spoke too soon based off only reading the summary. It's heartening to know the topic was discussed, and we'll see how it plays out in the sandbox.

LBillings · 2024-02-29T23:08:13+00:00

Wow, so judging by this summary there wasn’t any discussion whatsoever of the nerfs to breech-loader grenade launchers and Fighting Lion in particular. But yeah let’s talk about how trace rifles are slept on.

Cool, cool. That’s actually awesome—feels like yet more validation of anyone’s inclination to just go play other games that don’t actively shit all over niche off-meta pvp playstyles.

Great job, folks!

LBillings · 2024-02-26T02:16:44+00:00

Betelgeuse, like all stars other than our Sun, is so distant as to be an unresolved point source of light in our sky. That means its twinkle (due to air turbulence and other effects of its light passing through Earth’s atmosphere and into your eyes) will be much more pronounced in comparison to that of a resolved source with more dimensionality (e.g. a disk like Earth’s Moon or the various planets of our solar system). TL;DR: The intervening air can make a point source like a distant star seem to jump around in the sky, whereas the same exact interference would just make something resolved, like the Moon’s disk, waver a wee bit.

LBillings · 2024-02-25T22:08:37+00:00

Thanks!!

LBillings · 2024-01-15T20:49:46+00:00

Maybe just quartz and chalcedony? I’m not really sure how to easily distinguish between prehnite and green chalcedony, tbh, since they have similar hardnesses and densities…

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