6 Lb Rotary Dual Drum Rock Tumbler Lapidary Polisher

i am a jeweler for 45 years and i know tumblers. this is easy to load and unload, its quiet, and most of all does a great job !!! i now only cut and polish stones. one of these tumblers ive had and still using for ten years, the one i just bought 4 months ago is going strong even though the belt broke after one week but they give you an extra and very simple to replace. im writing this review because i saw some very negative reviews on this item and im here to say that either they got a faulty unit or didnt have the patients to work out any details. harbor freight is a great company and the prices are wonderful. this is a fantastic little unit. have fun rockhounds ! the motor is designed to run continuously for days and days, but for safety reasons i turn my motors off when i leave my home.

My daughter has been using the tumbler since 2 days after Christmas 2014. So far it seems to be tumbling away with no problems. We did have to change out a drive belt within the first 24hrs of using. The rock tumbler came with a bag of extra belts. I'm hoping they don't break too often. After we put the belt on, we have had no other problems and it's been tumbling away for 17 days now. One word of caution, the tumbler does move a bit and the directions advise not to place on a table or workbench. This is true. My daughter has hers on our garage floor. Every few days I have to scoot it back closer to the wall because it eventually moves around a bit. It's not excessively loud but it is a rock tumbler and so it's definitely something you will want to place in your garage or somewhere other than inside the house. Also, having dual tumblers is a plus. Waiting 30 days just for a handful a beautiful rocks is brutal. It's best two start tumbling in one tumbler and 2 weeks later, start the 2nd tumbler. That way you're producing beautiful rocks every two weeks instead of once a month.

This rock polisher did an incredible job for my situation. i really put it to the test too. I had thousands of dollars worth coins that had been burned in a home fire. the banks would not take them because there were so many. they said i had to bag them and send them into a Minting facility. For us to have used the coins sparatically while shopping would have left us with the messy things for years to come. It dawned on me to think about a rock polisher. Prices for the bigger one's just was not posible not knowing the outcome. This dual tanker was the best and about only option to try. it did amazing. Granted it made lots of noise and went through at least a couple of the rubber band things and even bore through much of the drums themselves. It still performed all through the job. it was still lots of work but without this little nachine who knows how long i would have been sitting on these at a worthless state practically. Thanks Chicago Electric Power......I will try to add a photo later.

This is my first rock tumbler. For the cost, I was expecting something more durable. It is efficiently if sparsely designed. Making it from higher grade steel would keep it from warping and bending so easily.The nature of rock polishing requires that you leave these machines running for days on end. I simply could not trust this machine to run overnight… Or even without supervision. The belts break constantly. (Replacements come with the tumbler.) Worse, the drums will misalign and stop spinning. When I let it run overnight a few times, the drums would get out of alignment and stick. Friction from the rollers would cause the rubber coated drums to erode and even melt. Once this happens, the drums never roll right again. The bearings require frequent lubrication. Without it, they would screech loudly. A polishing session that should've taken seven days took 30+ because I would shut it off when I was not around.The lids have thumb screws, But I had to use pliers to unscrew them. The lid construction is thin and warps easily, though I have to admit, the seal never failed -- not even once. This was my first foray into tumbling and I never did completely finish my first set. Mostly because I would forget to turn it on for days on end - ruining the sediment.

This tumbler works great! I wanted to order another one of these, but couldn’t find it on the website.

Must've gotten a good one, a lot of reviews were bad for this one, Been running for about two months straight with only stopping for an hour so every week or two for lookin' and then again about a week ago to oil it up. Still on the belt that was on it when it came in. I did make sure it was straight when I got and they sent extra belts just in case (probably because of the poor reviews about the belts not holding up). Love it.