Tumbler, magnetic, ultrasonic.

[Milomade]

I want something to harden my jewellery and polish it but not sure what the best thing to invest in. Thought I'd ask here. At the moment I have a tiny national geographic rock tumbler that I've only ever used steel shot in. It's been great but the opening is small so it's not something I can use for Bangles and the larger pieces I'm now making.

I've always used it to harden my metal before hand finishing with micro mesh. I do a lot of hand finishing as I find the tumbler leaves little pock marks on the silver. My shot has gone through the transition of mixed to being solely tiny little balls to try and minimise the damage to the surface of my silver.

I hear people using their tumblers to polish their metal and get a shiny finish but I've never had success with that so maybe I'm doing something wrong ??? I also bought a barrel tumbler from cookson a while back that totally damaged a load of my rings. I was expecting them to come out shiny and instead they came out with a frosted Matt surface and I returned it for a refund as I was so dissatisfied with it as everything got contaminated with Vaseline too. Too messy.

I've looked into magnetic and ultrasonic cleaners as I also make hollow pieces and find it impossible to clean the insides of these and thought a magnetic or ultrasonic approach would be good but I don't know enough about these techniques.

So I'm here to ask your opinions and offer advice. What do you use?

[Dennis]

First of all I have to dispel the myth, even perpetuated in books, that tumbling will harden metal. The effect Of tumbling is minimal and might just improve the very surface.

To harden metal it has to be deformed, by hammering, rolling, or stretching. Silver can also be treated by precipitation hardening in a kiln, or oven, as below.

Tumbling with mixed shot will leave tiny marks on flat surfaces, but not very much on rounded surfaces, such as balls or wires. The marks also coalesce with prolonged tumbling, say six hours or more and become less noticeable.

Magnetic polishers are said to work well, but are quite expensive. A low cost one, the Bumblebee, could be useful to try out.

For flat surfaces without interruptions, about four grades of MicroMesh sheet works wonders. They are laid flat on the bench and the piece rubbed on them.

A bench polisher with non oily polishing compounds also works well. Dennis.

[Wallace]

The bumblebee, although an amazing little magnetic polisher, uses tiny pins that leave a frosty finish on your pieces. You will struggle with big bangles, it is not really designed for big pieces. If you cannot get it into a small cup, then it won't work with the bumblebee. IT comes with a small pot, perhaps I should say very small pot.

If you want a polished finish, it is quite easy with a mop or bench polisher to polish them out after a spell in the bee.

[handmadeblanks]

I use the Evans tumbler: http://www.cooksongold.com/Jewellery...prcode-999-001

My items come out of this tumbler looking beautiful and shiny! Maybe it's just the fact that I am still a very rookie and don't understand what silver should look like?

I do a first stage of approx 3hrs using these cutting cones and a mix of cutting compound & barrelbrite.

I do a final stage of approx 2.5hrs using this mix shot and barrelbrite.

I don't use any Vaseline on the seal of the lid. The 'trick' is to push down in the centre of the lid so that it creates a kind of vacuum seal. Never had a leak when I've done that. It just works.