Dan&Darci Advanced Professional Rock Tumbler Kit - with Digital 9-Day Polishing Timer & 3 Speed Settings - Turn Rough Rocks into Beautiful Gems : Great Science & STEM Geology Toy for Kids All Ages

The media could not be loaded. I'm in the middle of step 3 (there are 4 steps total). The one thing you need to be aware of is that it takes about a month to run the entire cycle for one set of stones. After completing steps 1 and 2, I'm very pleased with how it works and how the stones look so far. It's fairly quiet overall; however, I run it in the garage and cannot hear it in the house, don't think you'd want to have it running inside the house.

Work well and are fairly quiet son uses in apartment bought two

The tumbler works well enough, it's very reasonably priced, and generally a good kit. The rocks that come with it are a good starter; there are some findings included for finished rocks; and the instructions are reasonably good (accepting some significant caveats below). There's also an included strainer, but we found it much too small, and just used a small colander from our kitchen.Accepting the good points, there are a few important things to consider:1) The kit comes with a paltry amount of grit. We followed the instructions to the letter using the small grit packets provided in the box, and just couldn't get a good polish on the included rocks. However, we had also bought a set of additional grit at the same time, so we re-ran exactly the same rocks with proper amounts of grit and got a beautiful polish. The additional grit was exactly the same grade and composition as the original, but its instructions called for 2-3x more grit per run. So, I expect a lot of people will be underwhelmed at the polish they get, not realizing that the minimal amount of grit is likely the problem. Since grit is a consumable that you'll need more of anyway, you can save yourself a wasted month of tumbling by buying more grit and just topping off what comes with the kit (2 tbsp for stages 1 and 2, and 1 tbsp for stages 3 and 4).2) The tumbler runs fast, even at its slowest speed (seems at least twice as fast as the tumblers I'm familiar with). This means it's on the louder end (we kept it in the garage) and it doesn't seem to do a good job on more angular or larger rocks, because the tumbling action is just too aggressive. Anything under 3/4" diameter and/or mostly round will polish up great—which mostly included the rocks that came with our set—but anything outside that ended up with some unpolished edges (although the smooth/flat parts still polished up well). That stated, you can cheat and use mineral oil to mostly hide the rough edges, but they still won't look as good as they do with a proper polish. (Although, I haven't yet tested if ceramic media or poly pellets could improve this situation by cushioning the rocks during the final polish stage.)3) The instructions could be better with respect to cleaning, and don't cover burnishing at all. For cleaning between stages, after a thorough rinse I strongly recommend putting the rocks back in the tumbler with warm water and a drop or two of dish soap, and then just running it for an hour on its lowest speed. This will clean out all of the grit from the last stage. Then just re-rinse (the sink is fine in this case, since there's so little grit) and start the next tumbling stage.You may want to burnish as a final step, to get a better shine. There are a number of good guides available, so I suggest just searching for the term "rock burnishing".

The media could not be loaded. Instructions were easy to follow. The box had all the pieces and grits - no missing parts. It seems yo be functioning well. It’s loud-ish. I have it on my screened-in porch, but we can’t hear it inside. Almost like a white noise. My kids and I were on the porch playing with cardboard boxes and the sound didn’t bother us at all. We could easily hear each other over the sound.

Comes with only enough grit for one set of rocks, must purchase more grit for more rounds.The tumbler pushes the barrel towards one side such that it pushes constantly against the washers on the rollers that keep the barrel in place. It started to wear down a groove in the rubber on the barrel, so I turned it metal cap side towards the washer it was pushing against. This caused wear on the washer. For grit 3, I angled the barrel by propping one side of the base up so gravity would pull it away from the washer as the rollers pushed it towards the washer to balance it in the middle. This was a little better, but I started you see wear/divets on the rollers. It seems like this just isn't build for the repetitive motions needed for days of running for each grit. It takes about a month for each round off new rocks.We have it running in the garage on the other side of the wall as the master bedroom and we can hear it through the wall. My husband thought it was water leaking at first until he found where the noise was coming from.

This rock tumbler let's you put in days of tumbling and speed to tumble. I've run it for 7 days with the coarse grit, now working on second cycle. Happy with the tumbler.

Still rumbling on!

Great machine. It is a little noisy but I just put in another room.