The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Tool Chest Vibratory grit recommendation

For those that use a vibrating polisher to clean small pieces what have you found to be the best grit or media for this purpose. I am looking to purchase one for small items like clips, bolts, fastener hardware etc.

I use the wire brush on my bench grinder.

I have a Kwik-Way parts tumbler. I use nuts, ball bearings and all kind of little pieces steel and it runs in Varsol.

Looked thru all the 917 pages of Kwik-Way's catalog and apparently they don't have a parts tumbler any more Ken. Of course being a dealer in oils, Varsol is a proper name for one of your products, but isn't that just another name for one of the various grades of mineral spirits or Stoddard solvent or white spirits??? I’ve used Kerosene in my gunk tanks for three or four decades now ever since it became unpopular to wash parts in gasoline, which was all any of us used back in the 50’s or 60’s.

I've been looking into making one out of a five gallon bucket rotated on rubber wheels mounted on a couple of shafts in pillow block bearings. I've collected a bunch of old electric motors and boxes of pulleys to choose from. If I play my cards right I might even be able to design it so it would take a one-gallon buckets or a PVC pipe with end caps on it, that might even be a better option. Different sands and small crushed gravel or a combination of both makes for a good cheap abrasive. A lot depends on how large of an item you plan on tumbling and how many cracks and crevices you need to get into.
HF carries a lot of different abrasives; I just picked up a box of walnut shells that I thought would be good for polishing or in retaining detail in softer materials like alum or plated parts.

And Tiny, that thar wire brush gets my vote, it's my favorite for most of my restoration work also. Why….99% of my '50, 3600 has been cleaned up with the old Sears pedestal grinder and a fine wire wheel. I especially like the brush because it doesn't take any of the tooling or surface forming details off the parts as the more abrasive cleaning does. When the parts are repainted they look just like they came from the factory, sharp edges and all. Each form of cleaning carries it’s own special advantage and even though not everything demands the sort of attention wire brushing offers, I can certainly see a place for sand blasting, tumbling and chemical cleaning in a well equipped shop also.
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

Denny, I'm not sure how old my Kwik Way tumbler is. Kwik way has bought Van Norman, All Tool and others and with the down turn in the economy they are having tough sledding and are discontinuing a lot of things. They do have live people you can talk to in Iowa. If you want me to, I can take some pictures of it and email them to you. It might give you some ideas on how to build something. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to do it and you probably have most of the stuff laying around. Varsol is a brand name for a non flammable solvent. We use it for a generic name like we call anything a coke in Texas that you would call a pop in IL. Something else that works good for a solvent is biodiesel. I was given a barrel of it to try in my Diesel Mercedes. It runs fine but it jells at 35 degrees which makes it kind of worthless and it made my car smell like I was frying hamburgers. I have got several of these for cleaning parts. As far as parts cleaning, I have several of these. http://www.monti-tools.com/e_video.php They are amazing. I brought the first one from Germany and I have bought a couple of them on eBay since then.

Sure Ken, if you get a chance I'd like to see that tumbler. Where I worked before I retired they used several tumblers in the material lab and I took measurements and made some sketches of them.
I always wanted one in the shop but it's one of those things that I just never felt justified in spending the cash for. Never did have a lot of disposable income and that's even worse now that my wife and I am retired. I wanted to fly so I had to build my own airplane then after a few hundred hours I came to the realization that I couldn't even afford to fly it. In fact I'm in the process of selling off the planes and all the rest of the stuff I've collected over the past 40 years so I can make room for and pay for the old truck. That was what I lived for when I was a teenager and as I look back now I wish I would have stuck with it.
But enough whining, yes, I'd like to see a picture of your tumbler if you get spare minute.

I don't think gelled diesel would work to well in my gunk tank. It's out in the barn and that’s down around 10°F right now and may have gone even lower last night. I gotta wash a little then come in and warm up my hands every 10 minutes or so. The kerosene has always worked well for me so I think I'll finish out my tour using that.
The wind from the wire brush has a similar effect on my hands, gotta quit every so often and go to the warming station. But I still wouldn’t trade this weather for those 110° summers you guys get down there in Taxis!
Denny Graham
Sandwich, IL

Denny, I shot a few pictures today and sent them to your email address.

I have one of the vibrating tumbler from harbor freight and I use the rust removal media and it works real well. Just dump a bunch of rusty hardware into it and leave it for a few hours depending on how rusty.

Thanks Ken, got them and shot ya back a reply.

DG