. You can polish stones from the beach or your garden or alternatively buy inexpensive semi-precious stones for a more colourful collection of stones. Choosing the right tumbler to polish your stones is important for your success in this hobby and this will article help you to make the right decision.
The first thing you need to do is decide what barrel size you want on your machine. I usually recommend that you buy a small barrel size initially. A barrel size of approx 2lbs is ideal. This size rock tumbling barrel will polish between approx 150 -300 stones per batch.
A rock tumbler needs to tumble each batch if stones for approximately 3 weeks. This puts quite a strain on the Tumblers motor, therefore I was recommend that you buy a rock tumbler with at least a 2 year guarantee for the motor in case of problems.
Polishing stones is quite a small niche hobby so it is not always easy to find rock tumblers. The usual place to buy them is in a specialist rock shop, a craft shop or online. Lapidary is the general term for stone polishing so if you see a shop or a website that says it supplies Lapidary equipment then they will almost certainly be able to sell you a stone polisher.
Buying a second hand rock tumbler is also a possibility but you need to check it out carefully before parting with your money because of possible wear and tear on the motor.
When buying your tumbler, check how much stone tumbling grit and polish come with the machine. Find out how many loads of stones the grits will last for. The grits usually costs between 5 - 10 for each load of stones so be sure to factor for this when evaluating the purchase of your machine.
More information about the type of grits you need to use in rock tumbling grits is available here - stone polisher grit information.