boo586
Member
A while back I was asking question about making a rotary tumbler from an old ice cream maker. Well, last week I scored a rock tumbler table from my wife's uncle. Big, old, noisy, dirty, but absolutely FREE!! It is missing the rubber barrel, but my uncle brought along one of those commercial size plastic mayonaise jars with plastic lid. Now comes the fun part.
The plastic jar fit the rollers great but it had no way to tumble the brass, so I duct taped a piece of cardboard inside the jar to make a flat spot that would cause the brass to tumble. Filled the tub up with brass and lymant reated corn media and put it on the rollers and turned the table on.....
Nothing!! The tub just sat on the spinning rollers and did not move. The rubber rollers were so old and the plastic jar was so slick, th jar would not rotate with the rollers. I needed some friction between the jar and the rubber roller so I (you guessed it, more duct tape) duct taped a 1.5 inch wide strip of sand paper around the middle of the plastic jar. Put is on the table and it WORKED!! The jar rotated like a champ and the brass and media was tumbling great. Sorry no pictures of my materpiece!!
I ran the tumbler for about 7 hours and the brass nice and clean. It wasn't really shiny, but longer in the tumbler and some car polish would probably help that. I was cleaning .45 ACP's and probably cleaned about 400 cases in that first time. I think more would fit, but I was trying it out.
I think I am going to take off the sand paper and either use skate board tape or try gluing strips of rubber inner tube to the outside of the plastic jar. The whole setup is pretty loud when it is running so I would love to find ways to quiet it down. Any suggestions besides covering it with a box?
I will try to take some pictures of f everything, because I think one could build a table really inexpensively if one could fine the right parts.
Boo586
The plastic jar fit the rollers great but it had no way to tumble the brass, so I duct taped a piece of cardboard inside the jar to make a flat spot that would cause the brass to tumble. Filled the tub up with brass and lymant reated corn media and put it on the rollers and turned the table on.....
Nothing!! The tub just sat on the spinning rollers and did not move. The rubber rollers were so old and the plastic jar was so slick, th jar would not rotate with the rollers. I needed some friction between the jar and the rubber roller so I (you guessed it, more duct tape) duct taped a 1.5 inch wide strip of sand paper around the middle of the plastic jar. Put is on the table and it WORKED!! The jar rotated like a champ and the brass and media was tumbling great. Sorry no pictures of my materpiece!!
I ran the tumbler for about 7 hours and the brass nice and clean. It wasn't really shiny, but longer in the tumbler and some car polish would probably help that. I was cleaning .45 ACP's and probably cleaned about 400 cases in that first time. I think more would fit, but I was trying it out.
I think I am going to take off the sand paper and either use skate board tape or try gluing strips of rubber inner tube to the outside of the plastic jar. The whole setup is pretty loud when it is running so I would love to find ways to quiet it down. Any suggestions besides covering it with a box?
I will try to take some pictures of f everything, because I think one could build a table really inexpensively if one could fine the right parts.
Boo586