Rock Tumbler

27 Dec 2016
Submitted by themaker

I love to go to the beach and find little beautiful stones known as agates. They are pretty awesome. I'm always amazed by the fact that you can find them among the other beach rocks that wash up. These little gems are going to be the objects of future neat little projects. But when you find them they are pretty dull and tarnished after they dry. The trick is to polish them up. But to do this I needed a rock tumbler. And being as I am, I didn't want to buy one, they are expensive anyways... So looked around online for ideas how to build one. I found this great page http://www.instructables.com/id/Affordable-Rock-Tumbler/ This guy has done a great job designing a cheap easy to build model. 

I had most of the parts already so just used those. And off to the hardware store for the rest. Couldn't find the PVC pipe he used for the barrel tho... So I just used this kimchi container that fit perfectly. Loaded it up and let it run for a few weeks with the various stages of grit. Had some pretty great results. This worked pretty well. I did eventually end up with the lid getting cemented on tho. And I think it might be settling too much due to the shape of the container I used. So the sloped walls like he used might be a better design. But it did work. The rocks I ran came pretty decently clean!