NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Starter Rock Tumbler Kit with Grit and Rocks

My order arrived on time and well packaged. This was a birthday present for my 9 year old daughter who has been fascinated with 'shiny' stones since she was tiny. On her birthday we opened the box, read the instructions, and proceeded to get up and running. The product is well made, it is very simple, looks to be pretty robust, no complaints. My only slight criticism is that there are not many rough stones supplied with the kit. The instructions say the tumbler works best half to two thirds full and the supplied material barely met the minimum criteria. I purchased a top up kit at the same time as this on the basis it is described as a starter kit. We were up and running in just a few minutes. As expected, once running the tumbler is quite noisy but that is the stones rattling together, not the actual tumbler whose motor is silent. After 5 minutes my daughter was keen to 'see the results' so I had to reiterate that the whole process would take several days. The tumbler will now be consigned to the garage, to tumble away to itself, with reminders set to check progress periodically. I am sure this is going to bring a lot of long term fun and pleasure to my daughter and no doubt will result in even more pockets of stones being collected on country walks in the future.

One of the best gifts I have ever bought for my daughter... She is 8 and very much into all kinds of rocks and crystals, she has quite a big collection of ready polished stones but now she enjoys tumbling them herself. She has even added some other stones and sea glass to the tumbler. The tumbler comes with a good amount of raw rocks in the set but it does not really say how many of them to put inside the barrel in one go. We have added half of the rocks but then realized there is only one sachet of each type of the grit. Therefore once we're finished with each of the grits we have strained them through coffee filter papers and dried them out on the heater to save them for the second batch of the stones. It would be really useful if the set was coming with more grit or at least for it to be available separately to top-up. There are National Geographic tumbler refill packs that come with the grit but there are only two types of refills (gemstones or jaspers mix), and once you have all of the stones you want just grit alone, not the same rocks. Keep in mind that the tumbling may take weeks, it took us 3 full days for the first grit to lose all the rough edges, 3-4 days for grit #2 and then 5 days for grit #3 and lastly another 5-6 days for the last fine grit. It all depends on the effect you want to achieve and the type of rocks, harder stones like the hematite take longer than rose quartz for instance. Nevertheless, this is a great set, comes with everything needed to start tumbling the stones, there are even strainer and some jewelry findings included in the set to make use of the stones. Recommended.

Great little tumbler, only has one speed, seems very resilient. Hardy, and compact can be a bit loud. Value for money definitely all in all its worth the money x

Gift for my 12yr old daughter. She is very happy with this tumbler, and I'm happy that it's nowhere near as noisy as I was expecting it to be! It's set up in the utility room, and when the door is shut it's hardly noticeable, especially with normal household noise. She started the tumbling process pretty much as soon as she opened it, and can't wait to see the finished product - though obviously, she WILL have to wait, as to get the best results takes a LONG time (around 4 weeks or so if you follow the recommendations in the leaflet to the letter - so might not be the best gift for an impatient child!) After two days of tumbling with the #1 grit, we are already seeing some good results from the original rough stones. I like the fact that there is the option to use some of the finished stones with the jewellery and keyring mounts included in the pack.

I bought this for my 9 year old for Christmas and it's been a really big hit. We read on some other reviews it's quite loud so we set it up downstairs, not in his bedroom. Very glad we did! It's quite a loud constant rumble but doesn't bother anyone downstairs. So far he's done one cycle and even then he was delighted with the results. Nice to get him interested in something a little different!

My son got this for Christmas and to begin with it seemed good. We knew it would be really loud and take a few weeks to polish the rocks so he was resigned to it being a long term project. We kept it in the garage and it rolled away noisily, slowly smoothing down the rough rocks provided. It didn’t produce the brightly coloured, totally flawless, shiny rocks promised in the picture but it was fun seeing the results nevertheless. However as time went on it became increasingly difficult to open the barrel after each tumbling stage to the point where several times I was close to abandoning it after almost breaking several fingers and a wrist! But still I stuck with it for the sake of my son. However I discovered today that the groove the barrel rolls around on in the main unit has completely worn away so it is unable to turn at all. We are halfway through the second out of four stages with a tumbler only 6 months old so this is not ideal. I would not recommend this product at all.

Why did you choose this product over others?: Seems like a good starter kit with the reputation of National Geographic behind it, BUT leaks badly as the top is warped (put some tape around the seal once closed and in use and it'll be OK though shouldn't be necessary) others than that seems to do what it says.

Arrived on the correct day, albeit late evening. I got this for my young boys, oldest being 9 years (also allow me to have a 2nd childhood). We'd collected stones from a holiday just past with the theory of using these. However the rocks supplied are pretty nice and you know that they'll come up super, so we ended up using the supplied stones. At the moment we've been running it for a week and have moved onto stage 2 (you have 5 stages to work through, so you are looking at a month or bit longer to complete the cycle of polishing your rocks/stones). So I can't really comment on how it fully turns out - however after the first cycle they really do start to shine. you do get some bits in the box to put it on a ring and necklace - so we are hoping to make some jewelry out of these, with the hope of flogging them to granny and aunt's to make some money back You only get 5 sachets of grinding powder, so it will only do what is specified in the box - so if we want to continue with others, you'll need to look at purchasing more powder. I have saved the left overs from the grinding in a bottle - so might give that a go (who knows it might still work). the only downside to this is we have to switch it off over night, as we have a small house we can hear it running during the night - not an issue for us, if you've got a garage or shed with power - then it'll be no issue.

It's ok

Volevo qualcosa per lucidare le piccole pietre che raccolgo al mare e questo buratto lo fa ad un prezzo accessibile.

My 12 year old daughter bought this and absolutely loves it. She has run it through the first grit and is onto stage 2 now. The selection of rocks she received had a great variety. The jewellery accessories that came with it looks to be good quality too. We are in the process of ordering more grits so she can run a couple more batches after the one that came with the product. While it runs it is a bit more noisy than a pan of steadily boiling water. Probably a good idea to have it running in a powered shed or outdoors under cover. Ours is in our shed. Photos attached of the rocks when we received them and after running 5 days in grit #1.

Très bien pour la verre.

Todo un descubrimiento para mi hijo de 10 años, un fan de los minerales. Solo tengo una pregunta: dónde se puede conseguir más gravilla de los distintos tamaños que vienen en los sobres?