http://imgur.com/a/InCDb
Hello All!
After hand trimming my first crop, I knew that I couldn’t do that ever again. I immediately began looking for alternatives.
I needed somehting that wouldn’t ruin the trim for making concentrates, something that would save me time, and most importantly, I needed something that would clean my final product without destroying it.
I tried out a few of those expensive electric trimmers and I wasn’t happy with the end result. A friend suggested Tom’s tumbler and so I looked into it.
I was extremely skeptical at first, especially after watching the youtube video of it in action.
It’s basically a bingo machine rigged with a mesh net, all being held up by some pvc pipe.
It looks cheap and unreliable, and it definitely didn’t look like it would do a good job of cleaning my meds. However, per my friend’s constant annoyance of how well it actually worked, I gave in and purchased one.
It cost somewhere around $500 bucks total, which is not cheap by any means, but it’s way less expensive than any other alternative I came across.
So I gave it a shot.
It arrived on time and undamaged. I opened up the box, assembled it, and it was remarkably unremarkable.
It looked just like it did in the videos, a big mesh bingo machine held up by pvc.
But, I decided to give it a shot any way. (I’ll be posting an imgur link with before and after pics of my most recent crop)
I guess I should begin by describing my drying/trimming/curing process before I delve into the specifics of the tumbler.
I cut my plants, branch by branch, and let them hang in a room of roughly 55% RH until dry. I leave all fan leaves and sugar leaves on at this point.
After my crop has dried I deleaf and denug. By this I mean that I pluck off all of the fan leaves, these are the big ones that don’t get frosty, and I throw them away. Once the fan leaves are off, I cut off each individual nug on each branch.
In comes the tumbler. At this point I take my untrimmed nugs and dump them in the tumbler, somewhere around a pound to a pound and ahalf at a time. I’ve find that the more you have in there, the better of a job it seems to do.
From there you literally zip the tumbler closed, and turn it until you’re satisfied with the trim job, usually takes about 5-10 minutes per pound and half.
I really was blown away at how well the tumbler did it’s job.
The buds were not damaged at all and were nearly spotless. You do get the few stragglers of sugar leaves, but I think they looks pretty and I leave them on. However, if you’re really anal, you could pick through your entire batch in a fraction of the time it’d take you to hand trim everything.
But again, I think the tumbler does a satisfactory job on its own. Excellent even.
I also purchased the other net Tom has available which has smaller holes. I tumble my weed with the mesh with bigger holes, then I take the trim caught in my trim bag, and tumble that. The end result is a bunch of baby nugs that fell through the first mesh net. You can keep them in your trim and make super fire wax with them, or just mix them in with the rest of your weed.
After using the tumbler on a few more crops I found there’s a happy medium in how dry the product is before you tumble it. I find the product comes out of the tumbler a little cleaner when I dry it longer than I usually do.
But, after it’s tumbled, I throw my stuff in a jar with a boveda pack and It’s all gravy.
My one gripe with the product is that the zippers on the mesh net sucked. The keef would get stuck in the zippers and make them get stuck and eventually fall off.
HOWEVER, I called the number on the site and was surprised to be speaking to Tom himself. He was very apologetic about the inconvenience, acknowledged the faulty zippers, explained how he knew of the problem, fixed it, and was going to send me nets with the new heavy-duty zippers on them.
Not only was I thoroughly impressed with the product, but I was even more pleased with how helpful and kind Tom was. He did everything to make sure I was satisfied with the product and my experience.
If anybody has any questions I’m more than happy to answer them!
Thanks guys
Bobby BigLeaves
TL;DR: Bought a tumbler from Tom to trim my weed; it does a great job.