When the rubber band belt broke on our cheap Harbor Freight tumbler, we had a load of rocks in it. These were some of the rocks we collected at the Emerald Hollow Mine in North Carolina. Mostly pieces of agate, jasper, and misc rocks. When the vintage Lortone rock tumbler came, and I got it going, we went to load the rocks into it. The first thing we noticed was that this thing was much bigger. We ended up having to add a bunch of beads into the tumbler to fill up the space. We figured out that while cool to have a large commercial type tumbler, we aren’t always going to be wanting to tumble such large loads.
So I started searching for smaller Lortone tumblers. I found the 33b which was Lortones dual barrel rock tumbler, similar to the Harbor Feight peice of junk. I also found a model “3-1.5″. In the pictures it looked like the dual barrel but with 3 barrels. And the price was about the same. I thought, what a deal, and was ready to buy one. But after reading more, I realized that the barrels are smaller, like half the size of the dual barrel model’s barrels. So I decide to get the 33b modeal withe dual 3lb barrels.
I started seaching and found prices from $95-$117. But I found a metal detector place that had it listed for $80. $80? I kept reading the page to see if I was missing something. I did a search on the company and didn’t find anything bad about them. Still $80? Why so much less than everyone else? I decided to take a chance.
The tumbler came today! It was brand new in the box, and was a Lortone 33b just as advertised! Everything these, no problems!
So I think I got a great deal. We wont get a chance to play with it until we get back from digging Herkimer Diamonds though.
could you email me the link to where you purchased the lortone 33b rock tumbler. I would like to purchase one, but could not find the site you were referring to. Thank You for your help in this matter.
Comment by lisa — August 18, 2008 @ 11:25 pm
Lisa, I just emailed you. But we found it at a place called Discount Detector Sales. They specialize in Metal Detectors. But they sell the Lortone 33b under coin cleaning tools.
http://www.discountdetector.com/lordualbartu.html
Comment by Rob — August 19, 2008 @ 6:26 am
I am thinking about getting one of these tumblers (the Lortone 33B), but I have also read good reports of the Thumler A-R2 model, which appears to be the same capacity. Has anyone out there used both brands of tumbler (not necessarily these exact models) and can comment on the relative quality and features of Thumler vs. Lortone?
Comment by Jeff — November 14, 2008 @ 10:09 pm