Maybe OT: Tumbling wood - Page 2

On Tue, 4 Aug 2009 23:03:04 -0700 (PDT), Jangle


when axe and tomahawk handles are made here in WA they are made in a
machine that looks like a copy lathe with a chainsaw tooth style
blade.
they come off quite rough.
they are just tumbled to smooth them off.

I've heard a verbal description but never seen the setup.

plastic barrel half full of dry sand???
clean cement mixer with dry sand???

stealth Pilot

Actually, although it's counter-intuitive, quite coarse media will give
quite smooth finishes in a tumbler.  You might consider sharp flint
pebbles or polygonal deburring media.

LLoyd

The grain structure in most woods gives alternate hard and soft spots.
When you tumble, the hard sections impact the soft sections, dent and
gouge in those areas while leaving the hard edges you want to get rid
of. Net: makes a mess of the finish

I occasionally do some similar wood blocks, need to smooth all 12 edges,
last batch was 32 blocks. Belt sander works ok, not very uniform, tend
to miss edges. setting up a 'V' holder would help the uniformity issue.
Someone else mentioned the round over bit used in a router table, should
work the best.

Jangle wrote:

Exactly, somewhat the same result as wood that has been in contact with a
grit blaster. You might just create a lot of rough areas that would
splinter.

Replied above about my concern of routers/shaper. I see the issue
about hard and soft sections.

I tumble finish Beech and Maple brush blocks.  We use a handful of powdered
wax for many thousands of blocks.  Sometimes we throw in some chunks of
softwood to help retard the dinging of the corners of some blocks.  Don't
use any media!  The blocks rubbing against each other will do the trick.
Sometimes we will use rags and a little bit of liquid furniture or floor wax
for a better finish but it's more expensive.  The variables are:  RPM,
fullness of tumbler, type of wood, shape of block and time.

wrote:


I built two video inspection machines for the last wooden clothespin
mfr in the US several years ago. The clothespin profile was
cross-grain milled into slabs of green (undried) red beech. A gang saw
divided the slabs into individual pieces. The pieces, along with an
occasional block of paraffin, went into a rotary kiln that dried and
polished them. Throughput was on the order of a million pieces per
day.

--
Ned Simmons

This sounds hopeful. I am looking at about a hundred cubes in a run;
an inch on all dimensions; somewhat exotic woods (left over from other
projects) like teak.

Maybe I need to make a tabletop machine which can do about a 100 at a
time. Back to the net for plans!

Thank you, gautham

They were tumbling pegs for timber framing on This Old House last
week. Shop made barrel.

Karl

Will check this out. Is there a link you might ave?
TIA -gautham

As Steamboat said, a router table or shaper will work fine, as long as
the fence is tight on the bit.  I've done hundreds of small hardwood
pieces just like that.

But, since you're dead set on tumbling that's what you should do.
You'll have to experiment.

John Martin

I think what you need is a Burr beaver clone:

http://www.harigmfg.com/bur-beaver.html

You could rig one up with a Dremel router or a Dremel with a small sanding
drum.  With appropriate spring fingers, you could even feed a bunch of
blocks though, lined up against each other.

Doug White