Any suggestions on a good tumbler for chains with small
openings. Have to polish and debur. Thanks. RW
Put the chain in a piece of panty hose and tie or rubber band or
seal the ends in some way. Tumble and most likely the shot will
not be in the chain-which is real troublesome to dig out. I may
be wrong but a tumbler will polish-not debur metals and
definitely not remove scratches. Lynn Wall
Hi Ray,
I’ve used a small vibratory tumbler similar to Vibratory Tumbler
#5 in the '97 Gesswein catalog. I contains about 7# of assorted
shapes of steel shot. It does a good job on chain in 1/2 to 1
hour. The easiest way I’ve found to remove shot that sticks in
enclosed spaces, is just dop the chain on a solid surface from
about a 12" height. You may have to drop it several times. Using
this procedure has reduced picking shot out with a tweezers to a
minimum.
The shot does a good job of deburring & rounding sharp edges on
hand made chain. Don’t know how it’d work at deburring of chain
made from stamped or cast components.
I don’t do ‘commercial quantities’ of chains, but I’d think the
process could be scaled up to handle larger numbers (weights) of
chains.
FWIW: I’ve heard that magnetic tumblers aren’t as effective as
steel shot on chains.
Dave