Some steel sling shot ammo, soap and water, and the tumbler took care of an entire days worth grinding and brushing off scale!  Why didn't I think if this before?!

I'm interested but, some pictures would help.

 

Right, here's a picture of the steel shot, it's from  a few packages of steel sling shot ammo from Walmart. The rotary tumbler here, is the kind you'd use for polishing rocks or cleaning cartridge cases.

 

Thing is, it knocked 90% of some really thick scale off for me, works fantastic, although it did round the sharp edges, though that might of been the two axes rubbing against each other since I put them both in at the same time.

Doesn't surprise me at all. We use a fairly coarse grit alum oxide media ( 3/16" chip roughly) when we tumble steel dive cylinders to clean out rust after hydros before O2 cleaning them. I used to have a "bucket" similar to that  I could put on my cylinder roller to clean misc parts. About 6-8 hours will get rid of light rust, and 24 hours will typically make even heavily rusted cylinders look like new. My buddy used to use an old concrete mixer and some sand and 3/8" screenings to clean and debur  a lot of CNC plasma cut parts he used in production.

They are great rail spike axes! They are now in my inspirations folder for rail spikes! I would like to make one of those tumblers, maybe from an old 100lb gas bottle (?)

In the meantime, the concrete mixer idea sounds like it's worth  a try.

just ducked out the back to take a photo for you ausfire

this shows the insides of the mixer with some parts in it

this is the media we use its just old holes

got a year out of it before I had to replace skin with 1/8 plate

could wrap some insulation around it because of the noise but I just put it out the door and insulated the door

the sooner you get one the better I should have had one years ago

fergy

Hey fergy, thanks for the pics. I can imagine that would be pretty noisy, but that's not a worry for me here. I thought maybe some sand would soften the din a bit. Good idea with the punchings. I have loads of those because the local metal fabrication shop blokes chuck them in a drum for me.

So how  long does it take to get the bits as shiny as the ones you're holding?

(P.S. Hope you weren't affected by the bushfires over there. Serious stuff.)

Hey ausfire

takes about an hour to get shiny and just get the burrs off 

to take the edges off like the weld on the lifting lug about 4hours 

i grew up in yarloop mate 

lived there from when I was 7 to when I was 19 

Lots  of good people homeless but also great to see people getting behind then to get them back on there feet 

 

Fergy, I'd try lining the inside of your tumbler with plastic or rubber, (mine's rubber) it'll last much longer and be significantly quieter! 

 

Ausfire, thanks for the complement, if you can't find a mixer, you can make a upscale knock off of mine easily with any cylinder. Though I think gas cylinders are a bit thick and heavy for the job. You could even make one out a 55 gallon drum if you're so bold!

We had urethane poured into some we made at a foundry I was at. Lasted longer, and they were dead quiet afterwards. Not sure how well it would last  but Line-X or similar coating may help.

 

I was lazy and got one of these for taking forge scale off small armor pices,

 

 

I have several media, the triangular stuff HF sells for taking off scale(wet), then crushed pecan hulls from eh pet store(they use it in lizard cages)

plus some polish for the fine work. Just make sure the polish is an abrasive polish not a coating.. (dry)

it'd do a fairly big hammer, but not tongs, nice for small stuff though.. works great for gauntlet parts...

Cal-

I have a tumbler just like that, but I've actually had MUCH, MUCH better success just using a vinegar soak to remove scale.  I haven't tried the tumbler yet as a strictly polishing method but will soon, but for scale vinegar bath is still my go-to.