Thread: New Idea??? Experimentation....

Nice reloading station set up BJ...

Originally Posted by floppyshoes

I was looking at vibratory tumblers on ebite the other day and had the same thought. I'm interested to see how well they work on heavy/deep pitting. Sometimes grinding seems to be inevitable.

I also looked at vibratory tumblers on ebay. Looks like you can get some pretty good deals on them. Can't wait to see the after pictures and the results of your experiment.

OK here are the results so far...
Keep in mind I am using the walnuts shells still as just a cleaner, as soon as all the rust, patina, and gunk are gone then I use the corn cob with a metal polish "loaded in" and go for a nicer finish... So far the results are very promising, almost all the rust is gone, the patina has disappeared, and the blade and tang are beginning to take on a satiny shine. Notice the etch and the tang stamps are legible now....
Also though you can't see it, I can tell you that the blade still has a pretty good edge to it....
This is after 12 hours while I was sitting at work !!!!!!

I'm already impressed...
I didn't think the tumbler would really do much of anything.

Looks pretty good. The tumbler media - can it be reused with the same effectiveness?

Well this has been going for 24 hours now....

Here is the good news:
There is no damage at all the the blade...
The edge still has a little bite left to it,not quite as sharp as when I dropped it, but the edge is by no means rounded or folded...
The finish is very smooth and satiny..
The jimps really came clean as well as the tail..
The etching is absolutely beautiful and clean

Here is the bad news:
The tang next to the pivot hole is clean but there is slight pitting that is still there...
On top of the spine there is tiny spot of that black crap that is so hard to get off (even with sandpaper)...

Continuing from here I used a piece of 400 grit paper and spent exactly 3 min cleaning by the pivot hole and roughed up the black spot...
I will check it at 7pm tonight and decide the next step at that time..







Please forgive my lack of photography skills !!!!! it's the best I can manage...

far as I can tell there aint no bad news. bad new would be all I could find was a piece of the tang this morning! Keep up the good work!!!!!!

This first pic is just for Gary
Yep I'm sitting behind that window typing this




The second pic is for those of you that are following this thread that are not Re-loaders...
In an earlier post I made mention of "loading the media" with a metal polish..
This is a short explanation of what I was talking about
First corn cob media loads better then walnut that's why it is used for polishing and walnut is used for cleaning..
When I finish with the cleaning stage I will pour this corn cob media in the tumbler and then add about 3-4 oz of whatever polish I want to use into the spinner it will take approximately 24 hours for the polish to load on the media then I'll drop the razor back into the spinner and it will be polished with the corn cob and the metal polish
For this experiment I am going to use Blue Magic metal polish because it is the cheapest and most accessible one that actually works, and it is safe for scales, which is the next thing I am going to try polishing... Oh yeah once the media is loaded is will last for a long, long time with out reloading, also any of the media is good for a very long time, you can continue to use it until it is dirty, how long that will take with razors, I have no idea I would suspect years and years or thousands of razors, they just don't have a lot of "dirt" on them compared to ammo cases....

Great results. Can't wait to see what the blade looks like after the next set of media with the polish added.

Glen is that your hvac system in the pic?