hddan's Full Review: California Creations Dp Rock Tumbler
I remember being a kid in grade school and one of my teachers had a rock tumbler in the classroom. I thought that the rocks that were tumbled in it turned out to be really cool looking and I really wanted to have one of my own.
A couple of months ago my girlfriend and I were at a local craft store where the DP Rock Tumbler caught our eye. We thought that this might be something that her seven year old who enjoy having and purchased it for $29.99.
The DP Rock Tumbler pretty much consists of two main parts. There is the tumbler itself, as well as a base unit that the tumbler is placed in to make it turn and polish your rocks. The base unit is approximately 12" by 12" square, and the tumbler is approximately the size of the 16 ounce bottle of soda, only a little bit fatter.
The base unit has a cord on it that is a few feet long that easily enables you to plug it in just about anywhere you want. It also has what they call a "safety dome" (or lid) that closes over the top of the tumbler. Closing the lid will start the tumbler in action, while opening it will stop the tumbler from rotating. There are also four buttons on the front that include an on/off button as well as three buttons that allow you to program the rock tumbler anywhere from a 1 to 7 day time period.
The DP Rock Tumbler includes the grinding powders that you need to place into the tumbler along with your rocks that will give them a highly polished look when they are done tumbling. Also included is a craft starter set for making pieces of jewelry out of your newly tumbled rocks. We have a boy at our house so we didn't make any jewelry when our rocks were done. A small package of different colored gemstone rocks are also included for you to try out in your new rock tumbler.
Using the rock tumbler is pretty easy. All you need to do his unscrew the cap of the tumbling barrel, place your rocks inside, along with the step one course grind powder, add some water to it, then screw the cap back on and place it in the base unit. After that all you need to do is close the lid and set the timer for a recommended 2 to 4 day cycle that will enabled the coarse grinding powder to smooth out the sharp points and edges on the stones you've placed inside the tumbler.
After your first cycle with the coarse grinding powder is completed there are still three more steps to go with the fine grind powder, the polishing powder, and the final polishing power. Each of these steps requires an additional 3 to 7 days of tumbling per cycle to finally give your rocks a highly polished look to them.
Obviously with rocks tumbling for days at a time I expected there to be a little bit of noise from the DP Rock Tumbler, but it seems like the one that we bought was much louder than I expected. As soon as I turned the rock tumbler on, the high pitched squeal that was emitted from the unit was obvious to everyone in the house. We decided to then place the unit in the laundry room and close the door so that we could not hear it. As we went to bed the first night it then had to be put out into the garage so we could not hear it. It was pretty darn loud, that's all I can say.
Another problem I had with the DP Rock Tumbler was that it kept stopping due to the fact that the "safety dome" (lid) would not stay completely closed. This resulted in the safety switch being tripped that turns off the rock tumbler are when the lid is opened up. I solved this problem simply by placing some weight on top of it to keep the lid closed. It seemed to work just fine after I did this.
Overall the process is quite lengthy and took almost three weeks of tumbling time to get the final results. The rocks that we tumbled were some of the included gemstones that came with the rock tumbler, as well as some of the rocks from the above mentioned seven year olds rock collection.
The final results of our rock tumbling process turned out to be pretty good. After all that time in the tumbler, the rocks came out looking pretty cool. The rocks came out nice and smooth, and had a nice shine to them. Some of the rocks were quite colorful, including some of our own from the rock collection. In the end we got what I expected. I just really don't know what we're going to do with them now.
It was mildly interesting to see what the rocks looked like from one step to the next as they were being polished up. To tell you the truth though, I think that my girlfriend and I were probably a little bit more interested in it than the child in our house.
In the end I'm going to have to give this a two out of five star rating due to the fact that the lid did not stay closed, and the high pitched squeal. The rocks do look pretty neat though.
Thanks for reading my rock tumbler review, Hddan
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 29.99 Type of Toy: Arts and Crafts
Age Range of Child: 9 Years or Older
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