Anyone have a favorite? I remember rolling coffee cans under my feet with bird seed husks and spent brass for years when WWW was reloading, but things change. Seems all the electric polishers I've seen require "grit refills", is that the way with all of them now? We are not using this for rocks of value or big rocks, just small rocks as a hobby. It would be a huge plus if he starts reloading again and it can clean brass again. Thank You.
I use the 2 barrel from Harbor Freight... only for brass with SS pins for rek Loading tho,.... had it for years... works great
i have two dillon tumblers ,they are rock solid and made for heavy use ,i have had them for years and they have been great but start around 175.00 . you said hobby use so for the 50-60 bucks how about a harbor freight as mentioned above use a 20 percent off coupon and thats 10-12.00 off ,they only have a 90 day warranty so use it in that time period for a while ,it would also be fine for brass if www does load again ,i use corn cob for polishing i dont care for the mess from walnut shells but they work just as well ,you can ad a liquid cleaner to the corn cob to rejuvenate it when it gets dirty so it lasts longer ,i have never done stones so i cant say what would be best for them ,if www thinks he may be reloading again i would consider a better machine as it would pay for itself fairly quickly in ammo savings . coupons for hf Harbor Freight Tools Coupon Database - Coupon Search for: 62567
Hi wildwest , I have a Hornady vibratory tumbler that works great for cartridges and would work for small loads of medium aggressive small rock polishing. Harbor Freight has this style of polisher also in several sizes. I also have a Frankfort Arsenal tumbler that I got for cleaning large amounts of coins from metal detecting. This rolling tumbler is a beast and will take several hundred 30-06 cases or a bunch of rocks. It can be aggressive or not depending on your needs and tumbling media used. It has a 3 hour timer which is good for cartridges or coins but not so good for rocks which require vastly longer tumble times. You might find a unit with an on/off switch. There are a lot of variations of types, sizes and prices of tumblers out there that would work for both cartridges and rocks but I would lean toward the roller tumblers for dual purpose. One thing to remember is to clean out rock abrasive thoroughly before doing cartridges so you won't scratch the softer brass!
Thank you for all the suggestions Hoarders Leaning towards a Cabelas Thumbler, we have gift certificates there....
Thank you for your suggestions, I would have rather bought the tumbler from Harbor Freight and use the 20% coupon, thank you. We don't have one here and when we do get to another city that has one it's a mad dash to get there and get things done to get me home, as well as WWW's trips are a jam packed all day work day as well. This only cost a few dollars after gift certificates and delivered to door, so.... But thanks If he starts reloading again we'll set him up with a better one
I have not shopped there for years because it used to be outrageous, I didn't even look Oh well. But thanks for future things I need there!!!
Hi, thought I would update, tumbler here. WWW and kiddo and her friend gathered rocks here and they did 3 of the 4 grits so far (7 days of tumbling each grit). The rocks and geography out here is fascinating, some of the oldest rocks in the world spread out around here by glaciers. Turns out some of the red'ish colored rocks have tiny geode like crystals in them. How fun! Many gray/white ones look like cross sections of a barnacle tube but I need to look into it further, may just very thin different layers of rock formation. As the reviews said the rubber/plastic pins are disintegrating. Some WD40 did not help much. Just got drop of Magnalube Beetle-Kill mentioned on a gun thread. Either way this is fun!
Starting week 4 of 5 on polishing and different grits. FUN STUFF! (a few on the top left was sent with tumbler, all the others are from here) The grey one in the second pic makes me wonder about barnicals. ETA, I ordered a microscope like gizmo that hooks into a computer to take close up shots, I'll put a pic up of the micro geode in one when we get it figured out
