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I recently received a request from a friend to make a Jeep themed rock as a memento to a 1948 Willy's Jeep he's restoring. I don't know a ton about Jeeps and was scratching my head for what kind of rock would be a good fit. Maybe a inlay to the shifter thingy? Or olive green? I think we can do better than that. With all of my hobbies combined!!!!
First off I'm going to polish a few slabs. This takes a while so I'm going to do a couple in case one doesn't turn out.
But first, I'm going to shape it a little
Looks a little like the Punisher comic!
Hopefully one of these will turn out.
In to the tumbler they go. I add a lot of ceramics to help the tumbling action and to try and reduce chipping.
In go the rocks
I start with 120/220 grit. This is to help smooth things out and this goes for two days.
You need to adjust the water level to keep things moving.
Ok so I'm admittedly a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to rocks. See those little tiny grooves at 12 o'clock? Those are saw marks left over from when I made the slab. Those are probably not going to come out with this tumbler... but I have access to a lapidary grinder so let's just make some quick work of it.
Uh... that didn't work. At this point in the project, I made a donation to the charity known as the swear jar. Those scratches came from me accidentally hitting the side of the wheel and they are quite deep. Plan B, that's why we started with several pieces so let's keep going.
Continue on to 500 grit for several more days.
Fast forward a week and here we are at the final polish stage.
Test them out - can it be used as a review mirror...? Yep!
That is looking fiiiine.
Pretty nice
Yes yes yes
Ok that's great but what's this got to do with a Jeep?
Enter the next hobby - cutting vinyl. I grabbed a Jeep logo and cut a template out of vinyl.
The cutter is a bit of a fallacy because you actually have to go finish cutting and removing all the little pieces afterwards.
We're left with a Jeep sticker
I attached it to the rock
Added some etching compound. I've never tried this on a rock before so I hope this works.
Wash it all off after 20 minutes or so
Dry it off and the moment of truth! That worked really well!
When you put it under water, the design disappears.
Oh dang, that looks so good.
This one could be used as a sun catcher
I hope you enjoyed the process of etching a design on to a rock. I certainly did, and am happy it turned out really nice.
In other news, I recently was contacted by Google to receive a very prestigious award. I'm not sure how many of these they hand out, so I'm guessing only a few per year. Thanks to everyone who made this possible!!
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