Smithsonian Rock Tumbler STEM Kit Includes Charm Accessories for Charm Bracelets, Rings & Key Chains

In this time and era, (Coronavirus) this is the perfect gift for a busy child at home! This was given to a friend who has a child who loves rocks! She is tickled to death and I am so thankful I was able to give her this gift!

We bought this for our nine- and seven-year-olds because they are way into rocks. We have bins of rocks they've collected so we figured, why not polish them?This kit comes with rocks to polish, three packets of grit (one for each step), the polisher itself, and various pieces to make jewelry/keychains/etc.The quick guide instructions are easy to follow. Parental guidance was needed for my kids. The process can get messy and you want to make sure the lid to the tumbler gets on tightly.This process takes a long time (about a month to get through all the steps). Patience is required. But the kids have been excited at the end of every step to see how the surfaces of the rocks have changed.This thing is noisy. The instructions say to put it somewhere where you won't be bothered by it and that's wholly accurate. The noisiest part is not the rocks but the motor. Since you have to run it continuously for weeks, be prepared for that. We have it in the garage and you can hear it lightly in the kitchen. It drives my wife nuts. But after a while it just sounds like background noise to me.Also be aware that you will have to buy extra grit to do more than one batch.The noise factor and the little bit of leakage from the tumbler container are why I give this four stars. It has made a nice polished rock product for my kids. That's all we wanted.

My daughter (10 yrs) is an avid rock collector so we bought her this for her birthday! She loves it! She does not mind the long process at all, in fact she finds it very interesting!

I had to reset the motor to eliminate drag. It was broken when I received it. 6 screws later the brushless Motor works like a champ. Any company that sells any kind of Brusless motor, flaws are to be expected. Manufacturing is putting low torque brushless motors in things with power turn down to low. I left this motor with same torque and gear ratio for safety concern. But more R&D needs to be applied

So far so good we're still in the process of doing her first set of rocks, but the first phase alone (48 hours) smoothed them out well. We're still in the second phase, so I may come back for an update. (it takes 2 weeks).

I should have read the negative reviews more closely before purchasing this product. It is truly the worst toy I've ever purchased for any of my kids. My son was so excited to get this toy for his birthday. Upon opening the package, we saw that there was no o-ring. So, I contacted Customer Service and was informed that they could send me one in three days - disappointing, but no biggie. Three days later, we received the o-ring but it was the wrong size. No matter what we tried, the barrel still leaked. Instead of contacting customer service again, we headed to a big box store & purchased a few different size o-rings to see if we could make it work - unfortunately, they all leaked. Even if we could have stopped the leaking, we noticed that the mechanism to spin the barrel had stopped working - this is about one week after we received it. We really tried to get this $60 piece of crap to work for the sake of my son. Please spare yourselves the trouble and look for something else. Smithsonian, you should be ashamed of yourselves. I'm staying away from any of your products in future.

Exactly what we were looking for and made of high quality parts.

I bought this for my son's 6th year birthday. He had seen this in a catalog and consistently wanted to have it for a gift throughout the weeks leading to his birthday. There was one error in the instructions we think - it said to use 1/2 bag & elsewhere mentioned 1/2 lb... we think the 1/2 lb is true and the entire bag should/can be used.We've taken pictures of the rocks before we started, at the end of step 1 and at the end of step 2. Step 3 ends this weekend, but the rocks are already looking quite nice. I enjoy that my son and his older sister are interested in the process.The tumbler is a bit noisy (loud white noise) as others mention, but we've kept it in an unused room or garage with the door closed. I hope we will use it again for more rocks - but will require us to buy grit.