I'm not a fan of some of Harbor Freight's stuff and sometimes I just prefer to use my wits and stuff I have to build things.

I have a motor or two laying around and several pounds of rusty nuts and bolts not to mention the occasional bracket. It would be nice to to have one of these to make all my hardware shiny and smooth for ease of use. Has anyone had any luck making their own? It looks like the bowl would be the hardest part. It needs to be donut shaped to allow the media to fold over itself and tumble. Also has to be strong enough to handle 5 - 10 lbs and not break apart with the vibrating. Making the virbrator from an old motor is the easy part. Any thoughts on this?

I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to build a tumbler. I used to have one that a friend made from a 1/4hp gearhead motor. The drum was a 5 gallon plastic pail bolted to a hub on the output shaft. The gearmotor was mounted on a triangular box so that the bucket faced up at a 45 degree angle. The bucket was filled with pyramid media stone, small rocks and black beauty blasting media. It made coil chain, rusty tools, nuts and bolts and other small parts brand new in about a half a day. I always wanted to build a sound deadening box for it. It was pretty noisy.

maybe fill a small concrete mixer bucket with the pyramid media stone, small rocks and black beauty blasting media?

I'm still chlealating over here......

Don't know how this would work on iron parts, but when I used to reload in quantity I made a brass polisher out of an old dryer. I got the dryer from the scrap yard, disconnected the blower, controls and heating element and wired the motor to a timer switch. I cut the legs off an old pair of jeans and ziptied one end shut. I put the brass in, about 75 rounds of rifle brass or about 200 rounds of pistol brass, filled them loosely full with ground corn cobs (Wal-Mart sells it as small animal litter), a little bit of jewelers rouge and about a tablespoon of odorless mineral spirits. Ziptied the open ends shut and tumbled them in the drier for about half an hour. Came out bright and shiny. I did glue some carpet scraps in between the fins inside the drier drum, so it wasn't terribly noisy, about like tumbling a pair of sneakers. The only downside was I had to take a certain amount of grief from my friends about my "redneck" brass polisher. But it worked, and only cost me about $25. I don't know if it would work to polish harder materials, and I certainly think ceramic media would be a lot tougher on whatever you used for bags, but it might be worth considering.

The tumbler is probably the best solution.  Some years ago, I heard of a fellow who used a tumbler on old iron and steel parts and pieces and had consistently good results.  As I recall, he used ground walnut shells and some kerosene to get a clean but not overly bright surface on the stuff he put in the tumbler.  Rice hulls would work well too.

I know of a guy in Iowa that also tumbles bottles to polish them up after he digs them up out of old dumps or land fills.

I see mixers like the one below in craigslist all the time. I would think it would work good for a tumbler.

http://chicago.craigslist.org/sox/tls/4015186007.html

Quote from: Lewill2 on August 20, 2013, 08:23:56 AM
I know of a guy in Iowa that also tumbles bottles to polish them up after he digs them up out of old dumps or land fills.

You don't really tumble bottles. Not like a clothes dryer or cement mixer. That would pulverize glass.
 
You hold a bottle still in the middle of a tube and let the media tumble around it, inside and out.
Chipped copper, lots of water and a pinch of polish.
    It takes at least a week to polish glass that has surface erosion (looks like chalky milk).
      yours Scott

I bought the HF, smaller unit (5 lb version) back when it was on sale for $39.95--cost me more for all the various media-black beauty, liquid hone, white sand, playground sand, walnut shells etc..  It does a decent job on small wrenches, sockets and what you can stuff into it.  It's noisy and takes a few hours to do the job-never tried any shell casings or brass items-probably would work OK.  Aluminum would clean up with the walnut casings.............Cranky