Tumbling out sickness...help please!

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justanolddigger

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ORIGINAL: BarbaraInCalif

I was hoping to be deluged with advice and tips on using the tumbler, but for what ever reason there are lots of folks looking, but not many joining in.
Barbara
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Hi Barbara, I am one of those watching, but I didn't really see where you were asking questions that needed to be answered. I have been tumbling for about 12 years now, but have never used the glass beads, so I was following the thread to try to gain some knowledge. It looks to me like you are doing very well in your first attempts. If I would offer any advice, it would to be more patient and let the bottles tumble longer without checking them. It is way too much work to load and reload constantly, just give them a little more tumble time. I know there are a lot more knowledgable people out there, and each has his own ways, so I hesitate to offer advice, but here goes. I pretty much use a three step process after I prep the bottle to tumble. #1 is inside and outside with a light cutting grit like 1200. #2 is to readjust the bottle to remove those nasty prong marks, I use polish or 1200 on the outside (depending on the amount of stain remaining), and polish on the inside in this step. #3, I polish the interior only, this last step gets the neck more evenly and reaches inside the neck that was blocked by my stopper during the tumble. I can usually pack 4 to 6 bottles in a tube during this last step. I generally tumble about 3 days in each step, but #2 could be shorter if desired. It is a long drawn out process, but the bottle will be really worth it, no neck haze, no prong marks, you shouldn't have to go back and work on it more later....good luck....Bill
 

BarbaraInCalif

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Pulled the Celery Compound bottle out of the polish a couple of days ago. The exterior looks great, but the interior neck was still shockingly filthy. Hoping to get some good advice off of jarhead jim's question on Cleaning inside of neck area

Made couple of changes in my tumbling technique; less water in the canisters and increased the tumbling speed.
Excess water in the canisters helped make the tumbling media flow better, but perhaps too much reduces the efficacy of the cutting/polishing compound?
The pulley belt was adjusted from low to high speed...that was scary...but a compromise to reconfigure the pulleys to a 1:1 middle speed is working out well.

The most surprising discovery is that 220 SC with glass bead media works similar to 1200 SC in copper.

Thanks for the help!
 

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