Reulet Wholesale
A Premium Source of bulk wholesale supplies
& materials ;including rocks, minerals, fossils crystals agate slices, geodes, tumbled stone, gemstones ,amethyst and more.
www.reuletwholesale.com
www.reuletwholesale.com
The Magnificent World
of Tumbled Stones
Rock tumbling began millions of years ago when waves and
streams mixed Earth’s first sediments. These natural processes shape and smooth
the rocks, but they rarely produce a highly polished gemstone.
Indigenous people observed this natural tumbling and decided
to create some controlled “rock tumbling environments” where carefully selected
stones could be tumbled through a sequence of abrasives to produced brightly
polished gems.
Tumbled Stone
Popularity Explosion
The early success of Swoboda Jewelry and Craftstones fueled
public interest in tumbled stones throughout the United States. This inspired
many other native people to develop rock tumblers. By 1955, at least one dozen
companies were offering tumblers, "polished baroques", bell caps, and
tumbler plans through ads in Lapidary
Journal magazine. By the 1960s, rock tumblers were being manufactured in
the United States by a large number of companies.
Almost any issue of Lapidary
Journal published during the late 1950s and 1960s had ads offering rock
tumblers from a variety of manufacturers. The April 1964 "Rockhound
Buyer's Guide" issue of Lapidary
Journal listed seventy-eight companies as tumbler manufacturers [7]. Most
of these tumblers were small rotary machines that processed a few pounds of
rock. The first vibratory rock tumblers were also produced in the 1950s.
