Tumbler for chains

Jewelry Discussion
1 
  Any suggestions on a good tumbler for chains with small
openings.  Have to polish and debur.  Thanks.  RW<< 

I hate to seem self-serving, but check out my workshop on

tumble-polishing metal jewelry in the Jewelry Journal section of
the upcoming July issue of Lapidary Journal. The media I use
there is mainly for polishing, but deburring can be accomplished
by running the chains in deburring media, followed by a
polishing run. What I’m saying may be too elementary for your
needs, but I don’t know what everyone’s past experiences are.
My own experience is mainly with large chains made of base
metals; smaller chains may differ. A friend recently warned me
against tumbling serpentine chains.

Judy Bjorkman
@JLBjorkman

2 
       Any suggestions on a good tumbler for chains with small
openings.  Have to polish and debur.

G’day; I use a home-made vibro polisher (a sprung platform
vibrated by a little motor with an eccentric weight on the shaft)
and a simple small plastic screw top box, held on the platform
with rubber bands, and containing a mix of 1mm, 2mm and 3mm ball
bearings (steel shot) just covered with water and a few chips of
ordinary soap. I make chains with jump rings on a 3mm and a 6mm
mandrel, (and others) made oval by stretching the rings. An
hour in the rockin’ an’ rollin’ box with my workshop door closed
and me off for a little walk gives a brilliant hard polish
difficult to come by any other way. But you have to do a good
clean-up job first on the chains…

        /\      John Burgess
       / /
      / /      Johnb@ts.co.nz    
     / /__|\
    (_______) The basic premise of The Scientific Principle is 
  that everything in the entire Universe is capable of logical 
  explanation by humans.
3

Hello, I couldn’t help jumping in here. At the Providence MJSA,
we just picked up a magnetic tumbler. WOW! It is absolutely
wonderful for pieces with very small holes and crevices. And by
the way, our steel shot in the vib tumbler is feeling neglected
on other pieces too. J.A. See our ad in Metalsmith Magazine
J.A. Henkel Co. Inc. Moldmaking, Casting &Finishing