Thumlers Tumblers

[JohnM]

My Dad was big on rock polishing, cutting, etc.

I knew there was a big tumbler out in the storage shed so I dug through a bunch of that old stuff.
I found one made by Lortone, but it's pretty small, doesn't look like it was designed to hold more than a few pounds.

Then I dug out the big one. It looks just like the Thumler's Model B, but all the dimensions are bigger, maybe at one time they made an even bigger model than the B.

It needs a new motor though. I noticed they have a low and a high speed motor available. No specs I could find though. The motor for the model B would probably work fine.
For brass I wonder if the higher speed would be better?

That big sucker would hold a LOT of brass

 

[bigedp51]

The high speed motor cleans and polishes the brass "faster" than the slower motor.

All you need now is a five pound bag of stainless steel polishing media.

Stainless Steel Media

http://www.stainlesstumblingmedia.com/

Brass Cleaning with Stainless Media

http://www.accurateshooter.com/technical-articles/reloading/brass-cleaning-with-stainless-media/

 

[JohnM]

Hi,
I did some more looking around, internet sure is great for that.
Looks like this big Thumlers is sold for brass polishing at a number of places.
And also found a 5 pound load of stainless media is the charge, I was expecting it to be much more.

This one is a little different than the ones I can find now.
It has 2 separate rubber sections and 2 end covers. Looks like they could hold stuff up to about 3 1/2 inches long.
The steel covers are 9" OD and double thickness, but it just about has to be the 15# model I think.

I'll call them before I order the new motor.

Too bad I didn't think about looking at this stuff years ago.
I've been using my 30 year old vibrating bowl.

I filled the barrel on that little Lortone unit half full of walnut and threw in a 100 pistol cases.
I looked at the progress after an hour of running and was surprised to find it looked as good as I usually get with 2 hours in the vibrator.

 

[JohnM]

I did some more looking at pictures of the new model B tumbler.
This thing I have must be a real old one.
It has 5/8" shafts covered with heavy rubber running in standard pillow blocks with an "A" belt pulley.
There's a big plywood platform where the motor would sit.

I found a nice 1/3 horse 1725RPM motor I had stashed away.

Tomorrow I'll clean this thing up and swap pulleys around till I get the barrel rotating about 40RPM and give it a run.
Got lots of pulleys and belts to mess around with.

 

[HK SD9 Tactical]

Look around on the net more. There is a place to obtain SS media for 1/2 the price of what stainlesstumblingmedia sells it for. I can't find the link right now, but will continue to look for it.

 

[Seedtick]

Look around on the net more. There is a place to obtain SS media for 1/2 the price of what stainlesstumblingmedia sells it for. I can't find the link right now, but will continue to look for it.

Is this what you were looking for?

Check out post #5

Seedtick

 

[Hanshi]

My model B was purchased about 1974. The main difference I notice is the price is now 5x higher.

 

[JohnM]

My model B was purchased about 1974. The main difference I notice is the price is now 5x higher.

What color is it?
I'm sure this is a Model B, but it's painted a bronze looking color and the base is a heavy angle iron set up with a sheet of 1/2" plywood for the motor to set on.
I can see where there were stickers on the machine but they're all worn off now.
Someone gave this one to my Dad over 30 years ago and it was well used then.