Homemade Jewelry Tumbler
A more economical way to polish silver jewelry at home is to make your own homemade jewelry tumbler. Professional jewelry tumblers can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars. Other jewelry polishing cloths, cleaners and sprays can be messy and not get silver jewelry polished as nicely. If you have quite a lot of silver jewelry, a homemade rock tumbler will save you time and effort with jewelry polishing tasks.
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Instructions
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Preparation
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1
Purchase a basic rotary rock tumbler. Rock tumblers are often sold online or in department stores during the holidays. Sometimes you can find rock tumblers in the arts and crafts department or in the toy section of stores. A standard-sized rock tumbler used for children's hobbies will work. Prices for this kind of rock tumbling machine range around $50.
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Purchase some medium- to small-sized steel shot balls. These can be purchased in packages of 100 in hunting stores and sporting goods areas of department stores. One package should suffice. The price for a package of steel shot balls is usually about $3.
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Set up the rock tumbler in a sink. Plug the unit in. Make sure that the cord is in a dry area away from water.
Tumbling
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4
Open up the rock tumbling machine and add a capful of Palmolive dish soap.
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5
Add one to two cups of water to the inside of the homemade rock tumbler. Add the package of steel shot balls to the tumbler next.
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Place 10 to 20 pieces of silver jewelry that need polishing inside the rock tumbler. This works best for silver items that do not have stones, but will also work for jewelry that contain stones. Use your own discretion depending on the value of the silver jewelry items. Shut the machine lid or door. Turn the switch on. Let the jewelry tumbling machine work and spin the silver jewelry items for about 20 to 30 minutes.
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Remove the silver jewelry from the homemade jewelry tumbling machine. Dry the silver jewelry with a soft towel. If the soapy water in the rock tumbler looks clean, you can reuse it for additional silver jewelry polishing without changing.
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Tips & Warnings
For polishing large amounts of jewelry, you may have to run the homemade jewelry tumbler through these same steps. The steel shot balls will polish between three and five batches of silver jewelry before they become misshapen and need to be replaced. Purchase an additional package of steel shot balls if you need to polish many silver jewelry items frequently.
Tumbling jewelry instead of rocks is perhaps not the original purpose that the rock tumbler was intended for. Keep the cord out of the water and follow the manufacturer's instructions for machine operation.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit rocks-smooth image by Jeffrey Zalesny from Fotolia.com
