 Over
the years, I have been asked a
kazillion questions about tumble polishing jewelry. One would think
it's a pretty cut and dried task to tumble jewelry. However, there are
some tips and techniques that I've learned over the years which may
help give you better results from your rotary style tumbler
without having to learn some things the hard way. This is a long
article (there's so much to talk about!), so you may wish to grab your
favorite beverage before reading on.
Why
Tumble?
Why indeed! When I first started making wire jewelry, I didn't tumble
it. But now I can't imagine NOT tumbling as part of the finishing
process for my jewelry! Tumbling burnishes the soft metals like silver,
gold and copper, making them shiny and polished looking. It also
removes any excess patina residue or crud etc... thoroughly cleaning
the items and softening any plier marks and metal burrs. It also helps
to harden the metal, making it more durable and better able to hold its
shape.
Basically, you add stainless steel shot into your barrel, just enough
water to cover the jewelry and a squirt of liquid dish soap. Put on the
lids and let it go!
One pound of stainless steel shot is perfect for a 3 pound tumbler like
a Lortone 3A or Chicago brand machine from Harbor Freight. The Lortone
machines are known as the best. The 3A - 3 pound capacity tumblers
average about $85 retail. Harbor Freight offers the same model of
tumbler made in China for around $30. The HF tumblers are noisier and
the belts don't hold up very well. I've replaced the belts in my HF
tumblers with the much longer lasting Lortone ones. The Lortone belts
for the 3A tumblers retail for less than $2 each. Tumblers are designed
to run 24/7 for years. The motors of both brands of tumblers I own are
working just fine after 5-6 years of hard use.
A
heads-up...
The HF brand tumblers have a very strong and unpleasant rubber odor
that takes a couple of weeks to dissipate. It'll just about knock you
over when you open the box, so consider yourself warned! :)
I also have some larger capacity tumblers with bigger barrel sizes like
the Lortone 4C ($115 retail) and the QT6 ($170 retail). Because I make
big and sometimes heavy jewelry and lots of choker-style necklaces, I
needed the bigger barrels. However, a bigger barrel means more shot is
necessary to get the best results. You can also get a double barrel
tumbler, Lortone 33B or HF double barrel which look like two of the 3A
styles put together. The HF tumbler is a great value for a small
investment once you put a decent belt on it. If you have the means to
start out with a Lortone, they are very nice machines.
Take extra care to keep the seal of the barrel and the lid dry before
reloading your tumbler as some water qualities can corrode the aluminum
under the rubber lid, causing the rubber seal to warp and leak. Also
make sure you tighten that nut down on the lid. If you don't, you may
enter the room where your tumbler is located only to find its contents
all over your counter or floor. Not a great way to start your day! ;)
More
about shot...
 I prefer a
stainless steel shot called a 'Jewelry Mix' which is made up of several
different shapes of shot. Each of those shapes performs a different
task in the tumbler to polish and clean the items in the barrel. It is
important to use stainless steel shot and not steel shot as steel shot
will rust...stainless steel shot does not. I've left the shot in my
tumblers — I own four of them — for years and
there's not a bit of rust in the lot of them! There are other mediums
that some folks like to use to tumble polish jewelry and I'll talk
about some of those later in this article.
Other
thoughts...
Dawn® dish washing liquid acts as an agent that holds all the
yucky stuff (impurities etc...) that the stainless steel shot removes
from the metal. When there are more impurities being removed than the
dish soap can handle, it will happily re-deposit itself back onto the
metal...hence, the greyish, bluish looking metal. You just need to
tumble a bit longer with fresh solution. When your water is thick and
black...time to change it! Sometimes when the items are really
oxidized, they need to be taken out, re-buffed with the steel wool or
3M scrubby pad and then put into a fresh solution. Other times, you
just need to change the solution. I know it sounds like a pain, but
eventually you just learn by looking at it just what needs to be done.
You can then tumble some more...about 2 hours should do it with a fresh
batch of clean water, clean shot, a freshly scrubbed or rinsed rubber
barrel and a squirt of Dawn® (about one teaspoon for a large
tumbler, half that amount for a smaller 3 pound size.) If some of the
components you use in your jewelry won’t allow you to tumble
for long periods of time, then you can use a polishing cloth that will
remove the discoloration from your metal.
Tarnex® will remove ALL oxidation from the silver —
please don’t use it on copper — but leaves the
silver dull and sort of a whitish, yellowish yucky color. But...the
oxidation is gone. :) You can then polish with a polishing cloth or
re-tumble using fresh solution and it will shine right up! I think the
most common problem with tumbling is that we don’t change the
solution often enough or we get in a hurry for the items to be done and
don’t leave them in long enough. Refreshing Bali beads, etc.
usually takes about 30 minutes to one hour. Be sure to string any beads
that have holes in them large enough for the shot to get into!!
Otherwise you’ll be spending oodles of time picking shot from
the beads or just having to scrap them.
FOLKS, STRING THOSE LOOSE BEADS BEFORE YOU TUMBLE THEM!!!!! With
today’s silver prices, it’s just too darn expensive
not to! (not to mention frustrating, heartbreaking, maddening, and the
general good ol’ stupid feeling.)
True gold-filled wire tumbles fine and should not have a coating that
can come off like a plated wire will. Gold-filled is made by fusing a
layer of karat gold to a suitable supporting metal. This is
accomplished using very carefully controlled pressure, heat and time.
The bond produced is permanent.
Neutralize
the Liver-Of-Sulfur action before tumbling...
1. Dissolve one teaspoon per 1 cup water of baking soda in a small
glass or plastic bowl. Old margarine tubs are good for this.
2. After removing and rinsing your freshly LOS’d item, put it
in the baking soda/water solution for a minute or two.
This will neutralize the LOS and stop the metal from continuing to
oxidize.
Tumbling is not a cure-all. It will not remove all the excess oxidation
from LOS’d items. Not even if you let tumble for days! It
will just polish them up. YOU must remove the excess oxidation BEFORE
tumbling or afterward with elbow grease and a polishing cloth (or a
flex-shaft and polishing wheel. :)) Sometimes, I tumble first, then
oxidize, buff and it’s done.
Using
a de-burring solution...
The de-burring solution for copper and silver is nice, but a word of
caution on it. It is very, very concentrated. A little bit goes a
loooong way. If you add too much to the barrel, it can actually make
the copper come out dull and yucky feeling/looking. It does do a pretty
good job of stripping away most the dark patina! I use it when tumbling
jump rings and not much else.
A
word of caution...
Nothing porous
like turquoise and pearls in the LOS. They will absorb the solution and
get discolored. Soft and porous cannot be tumbled either. Now, lava
rocks are porous and can handle the LOS AND the tumbling. While being
porous, they are very hard natural volcanic glass. However, their holes
are just the prefect size for plastic and stainless steel pellets to
cram into. They don’t come back out either! So they are a
no-go for the tumbler! While there are some turquoises that will not be
harmed by the process, you never know...so it’s best not to
chance it.
Also, tumble like with like...a few heavy bangles/bracelets or a bunch
of earrings or ear wires, but not the light and heavy stuff together.
Heavy items can damage delicate items. And don't overload your tumbler!
That will stress out your motor and the belt. Best to tumble several
smaller batches than try to stuff everything in at one time. You'll get
a better finish if the shot can reach all surfaces of the items
tumbling.
Does
tumbling stones improve their appearance?
Yes and no. Tumbling gemstones with steel shot will not polish them.
For those, you must use special polishing compounds. I recommend using
a different barrel too! But polishing stones is a topic for another day.
I have found that Swarovski crystals do fine in the tumbler. Just make
sure that you don’t tumble heavy stuff with light, delicate
things. To do so could damage the light stuff. Never tumble turquoise,
pearls, dyed corals, or other soft gem materials. I have successfully
tumbled the amethyst and smoky quartz gemstones that I use in many of
my earrings. I have plastic pellet shot that I sometimes use with
really delicate items as it is not as harsh or heavy as stainless
steel. I use the Dawn and water just like with the steel shot. However,
this is really just to thoroughly clean the items and not to polish
them. There are dry media like walnut shells, but I find it to be very
messy and all those little walnut bits jam into every available hole! I
have not had any success with rice either...it powders and, when wet,
that powder turns to glue.
I hope you are not more confused than ever! I DO throw just about
everything in my tumbler, but I am careful with the gemstones.
Choose your tumbling ‘partners’ carefully. I
don’t tumble delicate gemstones and earrings with heavy
bangles, etc. Earrings on a whole, come out just lovely from the
tumbler.
Have fun experimenting!
What
can go wrong...
"My
silver is coming off the beads or turning grey and won’t
shine up!"
Are you sure that your silver colored bead is really Sterling?
Sometimes “silver” beads have a very low silver
content, not qualifying
them as true Sterling silver and whatever they may be alloyed with
could be causing a problem.
"My
Sterling silver comes out of the tumbler looking like hematite!"
Give the ‘hematite’ beads a Tarnex® bath
and rinse or burnish with 0000
fine steel wool. Wash the shot in your tumbler, give the rubber part
just a rinse with sudsy water and re-tumble. Another possibility and
where you could be picking up the contaminating culprit is in your
water. Are you on a well? Try using a bottle of distilled water from
the store.
"What
are the silvery marks on my etched lampwork beads?"
Stainless steel shot can and will discolor glass lampwork beads that
have been acid washed, giving them a slightly rough surface like sea
glass. The steel shot transfers itself on the surface leaving little
silvery streaks on the glass. Sometimes, I’ve had to re-etch
the glass
as they come out of the tumbler with little shiny silvery spots all
over them! So now, I tumble the components ahead of time and
don’t put
etched glass in with the stainless steel shot. You can tumble it with
plastic pellets with no problems, but this method really only works
well to clean the pieces but does not polish the metal. If it really
needs to tumble, the etched beads are usually OK with just a short time
in the tumbler - like an hour.
"YIKES!
My polymer clay beads came out of my new tumbler looking yellow!"
Often, a new rubber barrel leaches a substance that will stain porous
items like polymer clay a yucky, yellowish color ruining them as it
does not come off. To avoid this, ‘season’ your
tumbler barrel by using
it with metal and glass items for a few weeks until the leaching stops.
Your barrel will then be safe for tumbling the PC. You can always test
the barrel first by adding a white test bead and tumbling it for 4-6
hours. If it comes out white, you’re good to go! This is more
of a
problem with the HF brand.
"I
can’t get all the black out of my tumbler...I’ve
been scrubbing it for days!"
You could be just scrubbing the rubber right off! LOL The small black
rubber particles will be held in suspension by the dish soap and should
not harm or discolor your jewelry. But seriously, please don't scrub so
hard as to damage your rubber barrel! It is important to thoroughly
rinse the pieces you’ve oxidized with Liver-Of-Sulfur and to
wash your
shot. This helps make sure no residual LOS is being added to and built
up in your tumbler. To make certain you stop the oxidizing process, do
the following steps.
Still
have questions about tumble polishing?
Just
ask your question on my Tumble
Polishing Q & A page and I'll be glad to help!
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