Mrs. Homie has taken an interest in tumbling and polishing rocks, for creating jewelry and other assorted hobbies. I’ve a notion to buy her a tumbler for Christmas. Here’s the thing: in looking at these on Google, I see prices ranging from 40-50 bucks well up to the thousands (obviously professional models).
I want something that’s designed for adults (obviously some of these look they came from the Natural History Museum’s gift shop and are aimed at children), with an upper price point of about $150.
All I can say is get one with a rubber drum to cut down on the noise. Harbor Freight has some inexpensive units. Probably equivalent to other ones of around the same price. Before you spend even $50 dollars on one look into how many pre-polished stones you can buy for the same amount.
We had a fairly inexpensive one, about upper-level kid to Harbor Freight level, and ran it three or four cycles (in a far front corner of the garage). Worked great. I wouldn’t spend any more than that unless and until the recipient’s interest extends past a few uses.
It was great fun to open the drum and see the polishing progress.
I’ll second the rubber drum recommendation and further suggest a basement setup. The biggest impediment to my rock-polishing ambitions was family members unplugging the thing due to noise.
Rotary tumbler – Creates round–ish polished stones. Takes the longest time, measured in weeks. You can have multiple barrels with different grits tumbling at the same time on the better units. Never had the patience to try one of these.
Vibratory tumbler – smooths edges and polishes stones but the shape of the final product is similar to the rough stones you started with. If you use an inexpensive tile saw to shape the stones first you can polish them and control the shapes pretty well. Takes days to shape and polish stones I have a Thumler’s Ultra-Vibe 10. I haven’t used this machine much since I bought a cab machine…
Cabochon machine – Has multiple abrasive wheels to shape and polish stones. Most expensive option but very versatile. Takes about an hour to shape and polish a stone, I still use a tile saw for big cutting jobs. I have a Diamond Pacific Genie.
If I wanted stones for jewelry making I’d consider buying them. My wife likes this site.
Actually, that’s three options. But who’s counting?
Anyways, the last one brings back childhood memories. I was an Air Force brat, and there were always a lot of hobby shops on-base at overseas locations (to give the troops something to do besides drinking and whoring, I guess). One of the hobby shops had an extensive lapidary hobby section, including a few of those cabochon rigs. I just just a wee youngun, but I thought it was so cool to watch dudes cutting and polishing agates and such into lovely jewels.
ETA: Definitely, rubber drum. I have an ancient Thumbler two-drum tumbler, both all-rubber drums. I guess the basic tumbler machine was compatible with metal drums (with rubber inner liners), but I suspect that would be as noisy as hell. The rumble of the motor rattling through the steel frame was already noisy enough, in a mid-frequency-droning kind of way. (“Whirr-whirr-whirr”)
1 Rotary.
2 Vibratory.
3 Cab machine.
4 Save lots of money & buy finished stones.
Actually the counting error on my part was not noticing the upper price point of $150.00. That brings me back to #4.
