Tumbler on the Cheap

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 source of the noise is the bras and media tubling in the plastic jar. I never though of using thin carpet. That will likely work and then I can shove foam cut out in the ends as caps to totally encase the plastic drum.

I am also going to try and find some old rubber barrels or using old go cart tires to make rubber barrels for it.

Thanks,

Boo586

Upon some further thought I am going to make myself a new barrel for my tumbler. I have been thinking about two designs. One design would involve PVC piping and end caps an would allow me to dry tumble and wet tumble since I could use the screw in end caps and make the think water tight. Again i would have to put paddles or flat areas inside the barrel to cause tumbling and I could line the inside with rubber sheet possibly.

The other design utilizes old worn go-cart tires. A friend at work also owns a go-cart track and I was thinking that I could cut the sidewalls off a couple of tires and adhesive them together and put caps on the ends with two pieces of wood, wingnuts and a threaded rod. This design would not be water tight but it would be the most quiet.

I will probably go with the tires because it won't cost me a thing because I have everthing already except the tires which I will get for free. It also offers the most challenge. I am such an engineer. I have to figure out posting pictures and once I do I will post some for everyone.

Boo586