When I was a little kid, my dad had a contract with the Utah Museum of Natural History gift shop to supply them with tumbled rocks. He built a rack of four drums to tumble rocks for the contract. Each drum was about two feet across and they were mounted on a frame made with welded angle iron. The top was fitted with rubber coated rollers that were turned by an electric motor. The drums sat on the rollers and the rollers turned them. My dad designed it, made all the parts in his garage, and welded them for the finished product. It worked like a charm! My dad was SUCH a craftsman. I wish I had a picture of it now.
Anyway, I’ve still have a pile of tumbled rocks from that time. I give a few away every now and then when it seems appropriate. (I also have gold necklace chains and key chains for sale. If you want to mount your own tumbled rocks, send me a message!)
I can remember watching my dad break up rocks for tumbling on a concrete sidewalk. He would beat absolutely beautiful chunks of agate to pieces. One of the rocks shown here is a very small piece of incredibly expensive Yellowcat Wood. Larger pieces – eight or ten inches – have sold for thousands by high end auction houses. For Real!!! I can remember being horrified when I saw my dad break up such beautiful rocks with a hammer. He paused for a few seconds and then asked me, “Where do you think I should get the rocks for the museum?”
Since my dad was into “production” for his contract, he would just bash rocks for a while and then sweep up the pieces and dump them in a drum for tumbling. As a result, there are a lot of quite small rocks in the pile I inherited.
One day, while I was with my wife shopping at Joann’s (A chain store with goods for hobbyists.) I noticed that they had unfinished wooden tea trays selling at a quite reasonable price. “Hmmmmm!!!!” sez I to me. “I’ll bet I could make a really nice tea tray with one of those and the tiny tumbled rocks in my pile.”
And I did!
Like all recipes, this one starts with ingredients.
· One wooden tea tray purchased from a hobby store
· Enough tiny tumbled rocks to cover the interior of the tray
· Poured epoxy (This will probably be the most expensive ingredient)
· Metal tape (My dad had some in his lapidary shop.)
· Small wood screws
· Spray enamel
· Silicone bathroom caulk
The wood tray from Joann’s is a little rough when you buy it, so step one is to sand the rough spots so it will look nice after you spray paint it. Then give it several coats of spray enamel.
I added the metal tape and fastened it with small screws and 5 minute epoxy glue to give the tray more strength. The soft pine handles looked to me like they were the weak part of the tray and could easily break. Besides, it looks nicer with the metal tape.
I pressed the tape against the tray to form it into the right shape. Then I drilled holes for the screws in the tape and the edge of the tray. This can be a tricky operation because you need three or four hands to hold the tape in place and drill the holes at the same time. My wife helped me but people who are crafty probably know much better ways to do this. (If you’re crafty, leave a message and tell us.) If you’re not crafty, you might want to practice with some extra metal tape and a piece of scrap wood. Make sure you don’t drill the holes too large. You want the screws to actually hold when you screw them in. When you glue the tape down with epoxy, you will probably get some of the sticky stuff where you don't want it. You can easily clean it up with alcohol before it sets. After it sets, it's there permanently.
Two-part poured epoxy is a hot hobby item these days. But there’s skill involved in mixing and pouring it. I had never done it before and I watched YouTube videos for days before I felt like I was ready. I won’t cover that in these instructions because there is so much available that you can find on the web.
I was worried that pouring the epoxy on top of the rocks would move the rocks around so they wouldn’t look nice anymore. That turned out to not be a problem. Pouring slowly and carefully didn’t seem to move them at all.
But there were three surprises.
1. The tray leaked epoxy out of the bottom! I wasn’t prepared for that to happen. If I did this again, I think I would first seal the bottom with transparent silicone caulk. Hardware stores sell this for sealing around tile in your bathroom. In my case, it wasn’t hard to simply carve the worst of it off with a razor blade. But I did have to spray the bottom again.
2. The bottom of the handle hole was just barely below the surface of the poured epoxy when I had covered the rocks. You have to use really small rocks to keep the overall thickness below those holes. Although I didn’t anticipate this in advance, I got lucky here.
3. The surface of the poured epoxy turned out to be a “knobbley”. That’s because the poured epoxy only covers them a little bit. But I think it looks nice and if I had anticipated it, I would have done it deliberately. Again, I just got lucky.
I think the finished tray is really great and so does Roxy. The rocks and poured epoxy makes it a little heavier than most tea trays, but we like that too. We use it all the time now.
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