When I was a kid, my parents gave me a rock tumbler. It was so fun! I loved rocks already and was always bringing rocks home in my pockets. We lived in the country and I would find neat rocks in the cornfield behind our house, in our tree row, and on hikes we took. The rock tumbler itself was a heavy-duty thing that sounded like a semi-truck rumbling in the garage.

A while ago, I stopped at a rummage sale with my daughter and a friend of mine and we stumbled upon a rock tumbler for sale. I paid five bucks for it and it came with pretty much everything. It’s a National Geographic rock tumbler…it is smaller and much quieter than the one I used as a kid. This one basically rotates a cylinder in which the rocks, grit, and water are placed. My old one was a big rubber cannister that just shook like crazy and made one think they were standing at a rocket launch pad! Perhaps it was faster in getting results, but this newer one seems to be working well.

We ran a small batch through the first cycle but didn’t have appropriate grit for the next cycle. After ordering more grit online, we added some of the rocks we’d already started to some that we had picked up in the yard and some that came with the tumbler.

We’re a few days into running the first cycle. After a week of tumbling, we’ll rinse the rocks, have a look and see what kind of changes we notice, and then add finer grit and begin cycle two. I’m very excited to see what some of these stones look like after their first week of tumbling!