Some years ago - when my wife and I were trying to raise a family and live on just my salary as a law enforcement officer, I built my own case tumbler.
I used the drive mechanism from a Texas Instruments Commercial Dot Matrix printer I got for free, a couple of material positioning rollers, some lumber and a glass bottle. I later replaced the glass bottle with a plastic coffee can, but the whole rig worked surprisingly well. Across the last 25 years, all of its operating time comes up to just under 18,000 hours; almost three years solid. Well, the plastic reduction gearing finally gave up and the tumbler I built for less than $12 is no more.
I plan to get a small Harbor Freight cement mixer and assemble it with gaskets on the seams to use as a wet or dry bulk tumbler when I retire, but in the interim, I got a Frankford Arsenal vibratory tumbler from Amazon for about $30.
I set it up and used it to tumble (vibrate?) some bullets I had gotten from American Reloading that were lightly tarnished. Overnight in walnut media and they came out looking quite nice. So, I'm happy with it. Anyone got any suggestions about things to watch out for with vibratory tumblers in general or the Frankford Arsenal ones in particular?
I used the drive mechanism from a Texas Instruments Commercial Dot Matrix printer I got for free, a couple of material positioning rollers, some lumber and a glass bottle. I later replaced the glass bottle with a plastic coffee can, but the whole rig worked surprisingly well. Across the last 25 years, all of its operating time comes up to just under 18,000 hours; almost three years solid. Well, the plastic reduction gearing finally gave up and the tumbler I built for less than $12 is no more.
I plan to get a small Harbor Freight cement mixer and assemble it with gaskets on the seams to use as a wet or dry bulk tumbler when I retire, but in the interim, I got a Frankford Arsenal vibratory tumbler from Amazon for about $30.
I set it up and used it to tumble (vibrate?) some bullets I had gotten from American Reloading that were lightly tarnished. Overnight in walnut media and they came out looking quite nice. So, I'm happy with it. Anyone got any suggestions about things to watch out for with vibratory tumblers in general or the Frankford Arsenal ones in particular?