My Rock Tumbling Story

When I was a kid I got a rock tumbler for Christmas from my grandparents. I had never seen nor heard of a rock tumbler before but it sounded cool so I tried it out. Well, like most little kids who try rock tumbling I was soon a little disappointed. The process takes a long time, patients is something kids seem to have in short supply, and the results were not that fantastic, certainly not like the pictures on the box (the directions that come with tumblers seem to be designed to guarantee failure). So after a few attempts, the rock tumbler was set aside and largely forgotten for a few years.

Some time towards the end of high school for unknown reasons, I began to have a renewed interest in tumbling, but again had disappointing results. This time however I had access to the Internet and was able to find lots of great ideas to improve my tumbles. Unfortunately, I was not able to put these into practice then because the time had come for me to go to college (for some reason, roommates don't seem to appreciate the 24/7 noise of a rock tumbler). So once again the rock tumbler got packed away, not before I was able to get my hands on some decent rough (unpolished rocks) and grit though. There it sat unused but not forgotten for a year of college, two years of a mission for my church, about three more years of college, and a year while I was working and living with relatives. During this time I also got married, had a son, and my wife became pregnant with our daughter. Finally, at the start Dental School we found a house to live in with a basement where I could set up my rock tumbler again. So, once we were sort of unpacked I dug out the old tumbler and have had it running ever since, probably about 9 months or so.


Here it is, the classic, much maligned rolling stones rock tumbler. A lot of serious tumblers hate these things, but with a fair amount of baby sitting, they will polish rocks and besides, since on a student budget with a family of four we can barely afford the electricity to run the ten watt motor, any tumbler that I already have is a good tumbler. It is also nice because it is very small and so it doesn't cost much to keep it full of rough and grit. Of course the small size also means that my pile of rough to be tumbled grows a lot faster than what my tumbler can keep up with. My biggest problem right now though is that the manufacturer seems to have gone out of business and these things do require replacement parts to keep them running. Perhaps the time has come to rebuild my grandfather's old tumbler.