NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Starter Rock Tumbler Kit - Complete Rock Polisher Kit, Durable Leak-Proof Tumbler, 227 Grams of Rocks, Grit, 5 Jewellery Fastenings

Ths was a replacement gift for a cheap rock tumbler, far better quality and eaiser to use, it works and is easy to use. It is also far quieter than the cheaper tumbler. It turned out to be an excellent and well received gift, well worth paying more and getting a product that works.

One of the best gifts I have ever bought for my daughter... She is 8 and very much into all kinds of rocks and crystals, she has quite a big collection of ready polished stones but now she enjoys tumbling them herself. She has even added some other stones and sea glass to the tumbler.The tumbler comes with a good amount of raw rocks in the set but it does not really say how many of them to put inside the barrel in one go. We have added half of the rocks but then realized there is only one sachet of each type of the grit. Therefore once we're finished with each of the grits we have strained them through coffee filter papers and dried them out on the heater to save them for the second batch of the stones.It would be really useful if the set was coming with more grit or at least for it to be available separately to top-up. There are National Geographic tumbler refill packs that come with the grit but there are only two types of refills (gemstones or jaspers mix), and once you have all of the stones you want just grit alone, not the same rocks.Keep in mind that the tumbling may take weeks, it took us 3 full days for the first grit to lose all the rough edges, 3-4 days for grit #2 and then 5 days for grit #3 and lastly another 5-6 days for the last fine grit. It all depends on the effect you want to achieve and the type of rocks, harder stones like the hematite take longer than rose quartz for instance.Nevertheless, this is a great set, comes with everything needed to start tumbling the stones, there are even strainer and some jewelry findings included in the set to make use of the stones. Recommended.

Hard to open, but a good device. Sounds like rain on a roof window (only louder), so you might want to leave it in the garage, or turn it off when you’re home. Supplied with everything you need to get started other than electricity and tap water. Supplied with a power cable and transformer for insertion into the UK mains supply.

Arrived on the correct day, albeit late evening. I got this for my young boys, oldest being 9 years (also allow me to have a 2nd childhood). We'd collected stones from a holiday just past with the theory of using these. However the rocks supplied are pretty nice and you know that they'll come up super, so we ended up using the supplied stones.At the moment we've been running it for a week and have moved onto stage 2 (you have 5 stages to work through, so you are looking at a month or bit longer to complete the cycle of polishing your rocks/stones). So I can't really comment on how it fully turns out - however after the first cycle they really do start to shine. you do get some bits in the box to put it on a ring and necklace - so we are hoping to make some jewelry out of these, with the hope of flogging them to granny and aunt's to make some money backYou only get 5 sachets of grinding powder, so it will only do what is specified in the box - so if we want to continue with others, you'll need to look at purchasing more powder. I have saved the left overs from the grinding in a bottle - so might give that a go (who knows it might still work). the only downside to this is we have to switch it off over night, as we have a small house we can hear it running during the night - not an issue for us, if you've got a garage or shed with power - then it'll be no issue.

My order arrived on time and well packaged. This was a birthday present for my 9 year old daughter who has been fascinated with 'shiny' stones since she was tiny.On her birthday we opened the box, read the instructions, and proceeded to get up and running.The product is well made, it is very simple, looks to be pretty robust, no complaints.My only slight criticism is that there are not many rough stones supplied with the kit. The instructions say the tumbler works best half to two thirds full and the supplied material barely met the minimum criteria. I purchased a top up kit at the same time as this on the basis it is described as a starter kit.We were up and running in just a few minutes. As expected, once running the tumbler is quite noisy but that is the stones rattling together, not the actual tumbler whose motor is silent.After 5 minutes my daughter was keen to 'see the results' so I had to reiterate that the whole process would take several days.The tumbler will now be consigned to the garage, to tumble away to itself, with reminders set to check progress periodically.I am sure this is going to bring a lot of long term fun and pleasure to my daughter and no doubt will result in even more pockets of stones being collected on country walks in the future.

To say "disappointed" is the politest way I can think of to describe what I really want to say.This product is bargain basement tat that fails to deliver and is not in the least bit user friendly.I am literally stunned that anyone could give it higher than one star.For sixty quid I'd expect much better than something made from a bit of cheap plastic, a lid that is almost impossible to fit or detach, leaks, is noisy as hell, only works/rotates with about three or four stones at a time, and still doesn't polish the stones!(The stones do wear down to something that is close to smoothness, but they didn't polish up no matter how long I tumbled them for).

Why did you choose this product over others?:Seems like a good starter kit with the reputation of National Geographic behind it, BUT leaks badly as the top is warped (put some tape around the seal once closed and in use and it'll be OK though shouldn't be necessary) others than that seems to do what it says.

The seal leaked. Even my husband who is an engineer said it was awful. Luckily we took a picture and spoke to an amazon rep, who were amazing. Hopefully this is a one off as National Geographic is highly regarded.