The Rock Tumbler...Now We Know

So, J saved up all his Christmas money to buy a rock tumbler. We thought, This is great! No little pieces to get lost and he's actually spending his money on something meaningful. He loves to collect rocks, so what better to get than a rock tumbler to turn his collections into little works of art. Fast forward 10 days later...I can still hear that tumbler in my sleep. 24 hours a day for 10 days straight!!! That tumbler just kept going and going and going and going... Technically, it was supposed to run for more like 2-4 weeks straight, but Shhhh! we ain't tellin' Jase that. The rocks aren't as shiny as they should be, but we had no idea what we were getting into.



It was positioned in the corner of our dining room. Mistake! NEVER posistion one of these things inside your home. My husband put a chair over it and covered the chair with the thickest, heaviest blanket we could find. It sorta worked...just a teeny tiny bit.  We thought of moving it into the laundry room, but our old cat was scared of it as it was and her litter box is in the laundry room. Putting that thing in there with her litter box was like asking for little surprises (if ya get my drift) to be left all over the house. We thought of moving it into the living room, but that room has tile floors and it echoes terribly, so putting it in there would just amplify the noise. We wanted to put it outside, but the weather and operating conditions didn't match up and it would be too cold at times to run the tumbler outside.

Our only option to make the noise go away sooner was to shorten the time by half. So, if the instructions said 4 days, we did 2, if it said 7 days, we did 3. Well, the rocks are finally finished. J is happy and still excited about the tumbler, but wonders why the rocks aren't as shiny as he expected. Hmmmm...

He wants to try to tumble some of the rocks he has collected over the years. Now those rocks are not the fancy pre-packaged kind that came with his tumbler, so shortening the time is out of the question. We'll definitely have to run those the full 2-4 weeks. We'll get started on that just as soon as it warms up a bit and the tumbler can go outside.



Before



and after :)