The plastic barrels on my little rock tumbler eventually wear out. After a couple months in the course grind they start to weaken and show signs they need replacing. In the past I have always been able to catch them right before they went. This time however, I wasn't fast enough. I knew the barrel was reaching the end of its life but I thought I could stretch it out a few more weeks, I especially wanted to because replacement barrels are no longer available. One day I went down to the basement for something and noticed that my tumbler was making some strange noises (it always sounds like it is in pain but this was different). I lifted up the cardboard box I have over it that I use to dampen the sound and saw...
Losing the barrel was a blow because it left me with just two barrels when I like to use four (one for each stage), but the worst part, as you can see, was that all that nice abrasive slurry had leaked out and gotten into the tumbler itself. Now instead of my rocks being coated with mud that ground them down every time they moved, it was the moving parts of my tumbler. I tried to clean it out as best I could but the damage was already done. I nursed the tumbler along for a few days and used all the spare parts I could to fix it but in the end it was a lost cause, my little tumbler was dead. It's very quite in the basement now.
