Wooden beads made on home-made tumbler.

Very very cool. How did you polish them?

-- If you believe you can or can not do a thing, you are correct.

Thanks. A while ago I figured out using my lathe that regular white paper does a great job polishing wood. So I used the same concept to polish these: I always keep my worn out hook & loop sanding disks for my 5” disk sander. I never knew why, but i figured they would be good to keep on hand. So I took one of those warn out disks and glued it to a piece of paper. Once dry I cut the extra paper off and put it on my sander/tumbler. To put the finish on I put all the beads in the tumbler and dipper a rag in poly and just put it in the tumbler for a couple of minutes.

-- Ryan

that is crazy that paper will polish like that! Just computer paper? Did you use the rag dipped in poly at the same time you used the paper to polish them? Or did you polish them with the paper first, and THEN put the poly rag in it??

I’ve got a homemade tumbler myself, but havent made any beads to the point of polishing yet….will have to try that

-- Hey you dang woodchucks, quit chucking my wood!!!!

Yes, it is just computer paper, nothing special. I use it on all of my turnings, it works great and is cheap. I polished the beads with the paper first and then put the poly on. In the future I will make a video of my process.

-- Ryan

Nice work. What shape were they to start? Did you tumble them to round them off? What media to shape them?

-- "some old things are lovely, warm still with life ... of the forgotten men who made them." - D.H. Lawrence Wake Up America!! Please read; http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/26-0

I would love to see some pictures of you tumbler. Great idea.

-- Glenn, Nova Scotia

Hand sanding vs tumbling, an easy choice when you can use it.

-- A childs smile is payment enough.

Looks like hard candy. I had thought one time to buy a rock tumbler to use for wood jewelry shapes. Love to see how you made up this one.

-- I just got done cutting three boards and all four of them were too short. (true story)

Beautiful! Please document your process and show us how you did them. Also information on your tumbler. Sounds intriguing!!

-- Paul, Auburn, WA

Great beads! I’d like to see your tumbling process also! By the way, paper ‘grocery bag’ type paper really works well to buff and polish. It is comparable to really high grain (like 4000) or something. Works really great on lathe projects or as a pad on an orbital sander!

-- Dennis, WV

Great job with the beads!

-- It's all fun, Terry******N. Idaho

Nice job. I plan on making some of these in the future!

-- ---Joel; Central MD...rookie empter nester and getting back into woodworking!

Very Cool !!!

-- Pat - Worker of Wood, Collector of Tools, Father of one

WAAAAAAAY cool Ryan, great job.

-- W James Brokenbourgh Custom furniture maker http://artisticwoodstudio.com/

For those who are not familiar with the process used by other lumber jocks to make beads from scraps by LJ’s Filinvested, see his bit for a way to do this. (It sounds like a variation from what Ryan did with his disk sander.) It works pretty darn good too. I didn’t want to burn up my expensive “main” work drill with long run times between grits so I spent $14 on a el-cheapo Harbor Freight hand drill dedicated for this use.

I added a Woodcraft vacuum port with a screen and a block of wood adapter to the side of the coffee can BELOW the disk, just to keep any “escapees” from getting sucked into the vacuum. Really helps with the dust control.

http://www.woodcraft.com/product/2000899/9634/212-router-fence-dust-extraction-fitting.aspx

One word of warning: If you do this as shown in the link, be sure to do it OUTSIDE. It’s bloody loud and will drive you out of your house or shop while it is running in no time. (Sounds like “Nuclear Popcorn” popping?)

Project:
http://lumberjocks.com/projects/38288#first-new

Blog on how it is done:
http://lumberjocks.co:/Filinvested/blog/18675

-Dave

-- I'm not old. Just "well seasoned".