Morning Glories: Mechanical seed coat breakdown, 1 by ByndeweedBeth

ByndeweedBeth wrote:
Moving forward....I went and bought some tumbling grit for the seeds. I'll be experimenting on my purpurea seeds since I have a million of them. There are all kinds of grit, and since the intended substance to be polished is rocks, I don't think I can use too coarse a grit or it would tear the seeds up too fast (seeds being softer than rocks). There are also plastic beads for polishing and some kind of grit for polishing brass.

Are there any current or former rock polishing hobbyists out there that will admit it? (I know rock polishing must be one of the nerdier hobbies to be involved in, but surely a step above stamp collecting, yes?)

I chose a prepolish grit that seems to be pretty fine. The experiment will be tumbling seeds with the grit each day and examining them under a microscope to see if the seedcoat has been breached. I'll then note how many hours that takes and back off on that total so the seedcoat is thin, but not broken.