We already owned a bunch of barrel rock tumblers which include a Lortone 33B, Lortone 45C, Lortone 3A, Thumler A-R6, and a vintage Lortone tumbler that will do 6+lbs. These all do a great job. But they are expensive to use as they use a lot of grit/polish. They also take a month or more from start to finish to polish a batch of rocks.
I had read that vibratory rock tumblers are faster, use less grit and also retain the original shape of the rocks better. All of these were advantages. While having smooth rounded rocks like those that come out the barrel tumblers is nice, there are other times when it might be nice to have the rocks retain a more natural shape, while still being polished smooth.
I originally bought a Thumler Ultra-Vibe 18, only to find that I needed the “Industrial” model to do rocks. Thumler’s website does not mention this at all. In fact the specs listed on Thumler’s website are identical between the Thumler Ultra-Vibe 18 and the Thumler Ultra-Vibe 18 Industrial. Still not happy with Thumler over this! So the Thumler Ultra-Vibe 18 I bought was useless to polish rocks with, unless I wanted to fry the motor.
I then started looking at the Berry’s Blue Tumbler. But looking at many websites, it seems like this model was being discontinued.
I finally decided on the Raytech Tumble-Vibe TV-5 rock tumbler. I ordered the starter kit which cost a little more, but came with an extra bowl, and four bottles of grit to start with.
The Raytech is easy to use. It uses WAY LESS grit than a barrel tumbler. Its will process about 4 pounds of rocks at a time. We start off a batch of rocks with only two teaspoons of grit. Then 12 hours later we add a couple more teaspoons of grit. From start to finish, we can polish a batch of rocks in a week or less.
We have found the vibratory tumbler extremely useful for polishing small slabs of agate that I cut on my tile saw. Where the barrel tumbler would round the edges heavily, the Raytech vibratory tumbler polishes them while retaining the nice slab shape. We have also found that we are able to polish much smaller rocks than can reasonably be done with a barrel tumbler.
The vibratory tumbler is louder than the barrel tumblers. But we have it running out in the garage. When it’s really quiet at night, we can hear it very faintly.
We noticed that when the temps dropped to near zero outside, and the garage got very cold, the tumbler seemed to not work as well. We found more unused grit in the bowl when cleaning out the rocks and recharging the tumbler. Not a big issue though.
Unlike the barrel tumblers, this tumbler uses hardly any water. Just four teaspoons. This makes it a little more work to clean the rocks when recharging as they are covered with a thick sludge. A strong sprayer attachment on a hose helps immensely!
We are very happy with the Raytech TV5 Tumble-Vibe rock tumbler! This thing really rocks! (Okay, bad pun).

Posted by Rob in Rockhounding on March 3rd, 2011 | No Comments