Rolling Rocks

Two Christmases ago we bought Michael a rock tumbler for Christmas. The boys like rocks. They collect them. We have boxes of rocks in the house. They find cool rocks at the river (though I have discovered that "cool" is most certainly in the eye of the beholder), camping, even from in front of our house. Despite the number of rocks in the house, the rock tumbler sat in its box, unused. At the end of the summer we took a cabin trip. We found more agates than ever before on this trip. We decided to polish agates from our trip. The boys were excited. Heck, I was excited. We quickly learned that there are three stages to the tumbling process. The first takes 2-4 days. The second stage takes 12-14 days and the final stage takes 7 days. Considering that we thought it was going to take 1-2 days, 3 days tops, we stayed pretty enthusiastic. We chose the agates we wanted to tumble. We set the rock tumbler up in the basement, found an extension cord, and started it spinning. We shut the door to the laundry room and went upstairs to mark the calendar. It felt good to have the process under way, no more nagging voice in the back of my head saying that I really ought to figure out how to work that rock tumbler.
Later that day we realized the rock tumbler is quite loud. We can hear it pretty clearly on the first floor. We can also hear it on the second floor when all is quiet, like when we are going to sleep. We decided that next time we would put it in the garage.
The rocks looked better than expected after the first stage. I was surprised by what a difference the coarse grit had made. Spencer decided they were good enough, but I convinced him to continue the process.
Stage two was so long. The noise was getting to me. It was constant. Michael pointed out that the sound was coming up through the vents. Eventually, finally, stage two was over and we went to get the rocks and tumbler ready for stage three. However, there was a problem. The machine was on, the rotor was spinning, but it was not turning the barrel which contained the rocks. Michael showed me that the little rubber ring had broken. I thought I would easily be able to order a replacement part and so we prepared the rocks for stage three.
And there they sat. I discovered that this particular brand of rock tumbler does not sell replacement parts. Nice. The rocks continued to sit. I brought the broken ring into the hardware store. They did not have a replacement, but suggested that if I brought the whole tumbler in they could find something that might work. Well, I thought, perhaps I could rig something up that would work my own self. I tried masking tape first. That worked for about 45 seconds. I tried string. That worked for about 1.5 minutes. I tried a rubber band. That worked for six hours before the rubber band broke. I replaced it. Rubber band number 2 worked for about 5 days. I decided that was good enough. We opened the tumbler, rinsed the rocks. They look good. I would like to get a new (better, quieter) rock tumbler and try again.