Maybe OT: Tumbling wood

I have a couple of medium sized wet vibratory tumblers at work and use some douglas fir 2x4s to keep small parts circulating. They don't seem to wear down much, too soft for the abrasives. YMMV.

Gautham, this sounds like a job for a wood shaper.

--Winston

On Wed, 05 Aug 2009 06:09:48 -0700, the infamous Winston scrawled the following:

Delta? NAH! Go with Griz!

-- "It was difficult for the three of us to write a book titled _The End of Prosperity_."

"We're not doom and gloom people; we're natural optimists. And we're not part of the trendy set of intellectuals who like to trash our nation, blame America first for all the world's problems, or worst of all, predict with glee America's downfall as some kind of punishment for our alleged past environmental crimes, racism, financial mismanagement, greed, overconsumption, imperialism, or whatever the latest chic attack on the United States is." --page one, by Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, & Peter Tanous

You don't say how big, or how many blocks, but it might be just as quick to clamp a router to your work table, or buy/make a cheap router table.

Routing with something like a 1/16" or 1/8" corner round is quick, easy and does a very good job.

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

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 occasi> Sorry if this is slightly OT but this is probably the group with the

Stealth Pilot fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

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

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.

--What he said; been there done that and it works very well. Just be certain that you have fences really tight and that you have a minimal clearance ring around the toolbit so you don't have a bad day with small parts..

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.

Yup, I included the link to give Gautham a quick idea of what I was referring to. There are many suitable tools available to do that job at many different price points, both new and used.

I think a hand held router with a round over bit would be way cheaper and faster than using a belt sander. A wood shaper would probably be better yet, WRT speed and finish, particularly if you could use a custom knife to cut opposite sides at the same time.

--Winston

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.

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

Karl

I am looking at blocks an 1"square and perhaps some a little bigger. Except for a few of them, I would be wary (read WOULD NOT) of using a router/shaper. Think building blocks and blocks for puzzles (like the soma cube, pentominoes etc.) Is there a jig which might make this safer?

TIA, gautham

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

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

--Winston

--Winston