accomplished

I wanted to try and make driftwood after seeing some driftwood frames in a local shop.  I couldn’t find any information on tumbling wood, so i went ahead and chucked a few pine off cuts in with some glass.  I was pretty amazed by the results, much better than I expected.

The tumbler has been going for 3 months. I check it weekly to oil the rollers and to swap the contents out (or not as is often the case).  I learnt very early on to avoid getting oil on the belt, this causes the motor to spin, but the barrels pretty much just sit there for a week not moving.

The barrels tend to leak slightly, and leave a dusty white powder everywhere, but this doesn’t cause any real problems. One barrel even managed to fall off  at some point between my weekly checks.

I have at least 2 projects planned for the glass and wood,  but its a case of waiting for enough to be produced.

I’d been toying with the idea of a rock tumbler for some 18 months, but was finding it difficult to justify the outlay. To cut a long story short, my mum got me one for xmas and for the last 4 days its been churning away in my shed.

So far the results are looking promising, this batch is going back in for another 4 days with 80 grit. After that it gets tumbled for a week at progressivly finer grits before at least a week of polishing.

For more about rock tumbling, an excellent guide can be found here.