Tumbler For Cleaning Rifle And Pistol Brass

[blacksmithden]

There wasn't much machining in this one. More like a bunch of scrap metal cutting and welding. A buddy gave me a 1/2 hp motor and 90 degree gear reducer recently. I had plans of making a drum type rolling tumbler with it, but the gear reducer was 50:1. With the rollers I had, and the size of drum I wanted to use, I would have been getting about 4 rpm out of the drum. I decided to go with a whole different style. The really nice things about this one...I can get all the 5 gallon pails and lids I could ever use from work. Also, I can wet or dry tumble my brass now. Here's a little video of it running. I'll have to find a safe place to leave it running where the kids won't mess with it. There's 25hp there at the output shaft of the 90 degree drive. Getting tangled up in the thing probably wouldn't be the best part of ones day. Tumbler of Death was my son's idea. LOL.

 

[FLguy]

Looks like a paint shaker on steroids. You will have a area with in barrel that'll have less movement meaning less work done in a given time.

 

[jpfabricator]

Looks cool! I subscribed to your channel also.

Sent from somwhere in east Texas by Jake!

 

[RJSakowski]

You still only have 1/2 hp. The torque has been multiplied by a factor of 50, less drive train losses.

 

[derf]

Looks to me it would beat cases up pretty bad....

 

[ELHEAD]

And how many cases do you process at a time?

 

[blacksmithden]

I ran a test load of about 700 223 cases today (you could easily put double that in it) and it worked quite well. There's still a falling sound inside as the media and cases go from one end of the bucket to the other. No cases have been damaged though. I had a bunch of scrap wood bits hanging around, so I glued and screwed some random shapes together today to put inside the bucket to hopefully get a little more stirring action going and less falling action. Hopefully that will speed up tumbling time from it's current 2-3 hours and decrease the noise at the same time. Here's some pics of the....baffles? that I made. I guess this proves I don't have OCD. LOL. Hey...if they don't work out as baffles, I can always paint them green and sell them to the government for $100k as art.

 

[francist]

Interesting. I wonder if there would be better action if the barrel was mounted obliquely in the holder? Like, instead of being nicely straight on the axle, if it was tipped a bit so it would have a kind of wobbly rotation. Just a random thought, may make not difference at all.

-frank