While many folks just love collecting a wide range of rocks to hold and display proudly, there are lots of other reasons why people get into rock tumbling. You’ll find that people love rock tumbling for a number of reasons. The more well-known brands are National Geographic and Smithsonian. In addition to the professional-grade tumblers, there are a few brands of ‘toy’ tumblers that are perfect for kids. While the industry started with dozens of manufacturers, only two were able to rise to the top and become the brands of choice: Lortone and Thumler’s.īoth of these brands still exist today and cater to both rockhound hobbyists and lapidary professionals. By the 1960s, dozens of companies in the U.S had begun to manufacture tumblers.īarrels of tumblers were first made out of paint cans and eventually evolved to use better materials like rubber and plastic. The process of rock tumbling gained popularity very quickly. It was a way to take uncut rocks from nature, and turn them into gemstones that could be made into jewelry. While nature has been tumbling rocks for millions of years, rock tumbling machines have only been around since the 1950s. Then every couple of weeks, you’ll move on to a slightly finer grit until you reach the final stage where the grit is almost like a fine powder.Ĭheck out our in-depth article all about rock tumbler grit. A brief history of rock tumblers When you start your project, you’ll want to use a very coarse grit to knock down the sharp edges of your rocks. Grit comes in several levels of coarseness. The grit is what makes your rocks smooth and acts as the sand that nature uses to smooth and polish your rocks. Inside the barrel are your rocks, water, and grit. It’s a small machine that turns a barrel round and round non-stop for weeks at a time. The thousand years it would take nature to tumble a rock can easily be done at home in a matter of weeks. Rock tumbling as a hobby is the exact same process. That’s a rock that has been ‘tumbled’ by mother nature (water and sand) over the course of hundreds and even thousands of years. Have you ever picked up a rock on the beach or a river bed that was perfectly rounded and smooth to the touch?