Lortone Rock Tumblers for Polishing Polymer Clay Jewelry Beads
Shiny Beads – Rock Polisher vs Sanding by Hand:
Lately there has been lots of talk about how to use a tumbler to sand and polish polymer clay beads. By the way, the reference to 'Lortone' in this article is for a company that for many years has been making a professional line of tumbler products for lapidary and jewelry artists. And below are some comments about tumblers that were originally posted on July 5 in the comments section of this buffing beads article.
I have found that I can use my tumbler to sand and buff my polymer clay beads. To buff my beads with the tumbler I have cut up a shammy that I found in the automotive section of Canadian Tire. I put the beads in the tumbler with the cut up shammy and tumble over night. In the morning I have shinny beads! I still hand sand and use my rotary tool for larger pendants and focal beads as they don't tumble as well. ~Vanessa
This is probably a dumb question, but do you tumble dry with the shammy pieces or add water like regular tumbling? ~Karen
Do the little tumblers work well that you can buy in Hobby Lobby? ~Raye
Cindy. I am wondering if a cheap kids tumbler would work for small beads too. I see that there are some really expensive ones out there, and then there are some more inexpensive ones that are about $25.00 each. What do you think and would the cut up shammy work in one of the less expensive ones? ~Cindy Erickson
I wanted to know from Vanessa what she uses in her tumbler for the sanding and if she uses anything else with the shamies (such as another material) or just that alone? Cut up shamies don't seem to take up as much room is why I ask. ~Lani King
Ok, so what is a rock tumbler? I had visions of beads going round & round my tumble dryer [only joking] ~Andrea
I don't want to exhaust the subject but I do want some additional info on the tumbler use.
- 1. What grade medium is used for sanding?
- 2. Has anyone ever used fine sand? baking soda? salt? other_____?
- 3. What works on beads with sharp corners without knocking them off?
I have friends that use polymer too and I ask them this question and report back what I find. ~Lani King
The reason why I haven't put too much on this site about using rock polishers to sand and buff polymer clay beads is that I have not yet found a method that I am truly satisfied with.
I do have a Lortone Rotary Tumbler. It was my husband's from when he was a little boy so that says something about the quality of these machines and how long they actually last.
Knowing that the sand substrates used for polishing rocks would be too harsh for using on the soft clay beads, I started doing research on what method would be best for polymer beads.
So far, this is what I have tried… with limited success.
- Glued 2 sheets sand paper back to back and cut into 1 inch squares. Did this for each grit starting with 320, 400, 600, 800, 1200 and 1500.
- Learned that the black rubber tumbler barrel leaves marks on the beads, so I bought 6 tubs of canned frosting in the white plastic containers. They fit nicely inside of the rubber barrel. Made cakes to go with frosting. Ate cakes. Negative result for butt and thighs! :O
- Placed a handful of the lowest grit sandpaper with a handful of beads. Topped with water and a drop of dish soap according to the advice I read in some forums and on web sites.
- Ran machine overnight on each grit, rinsing in between.
- Made a small bag and some small squares out of canvas to use for the buffing step. Ran for 24 hrs.
Now maybe I'm just picky or maybe I'm doing something wrong. But the beads I put through the process outline above, did not turn out nearly as smooth as hand sanded beads. They seem fairly smooth but not glassy. Definitely not as nice in my opinion.
Someone told me that I should start with 400 grit instead of 320 and use less water. Some people suggest using denim instead of canvas. Some people use dry sand.
Frankly I think there must be a better way. Desiree from Desiree Creations uses river stones to sand her beads. That sounds promising. But I can't honestly recommend this method until I find the right stones to test out.
I guess I see myself as a guinea pig to make sure you only receive information from me, that I'm confident is going to give you great results. That means I have to experiment first and make the mistakes…. so that you don't have to :)
And so far I have yet to nail down a satisfying technique for using my Lortone Rock Tumbler to polish polymer clay jewelry beads. If you have had success with rock polishers, please share what you know. Myself and many others would like to save our poor little fingers from having to work so hard… meticulously sanding by hand!!
Filed Under: 02: Tools, 10: Finishing by Comment. 
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Comments on Lortone Rock Tumblers for Polishing Polymer Clay Jewelry Beads
5:49 am
Once again Cindy you have managed to not only inform us but entertain us as well. I love your STYLE!!! Your site is one of the best Polymer Clay sites around and proves over and over again to be user friendly and informative. I am a true devotee and I personally THANK YOU for taking the time and effort to put all of this together….:0)
Thankx Hon….
1:49 pm
For what it's worth–and I haven't tried this with my Lortone, only my vibrating tumbler (which takes a lot less time)–I have been sanding my beads for about 4-6 hours in the vibrating tumbler, using a 2 lb bag of polyfill–the stuff beanie babies and dolls are stuffed with, tiny plastic pellets about the size of bb's—and 2 cups of baking soda. The beads come out beautifully sanded and require only a 5 second buff on a surface like a carpet square to achieve a perfect eggshell finish; for a higher polish, I put them through an additional 5 seconds on the buffing wheel; I can sand about 200-300 beads at a time, and it's so easy! The polyfill acts as a distributor and separator,and the baking soda works its magic on the polymer clay.
2:12 pm
@Pamela: Oh my goodness you are sweet!! Was it the effects of the frosting that got to you?
@Randee: Oh how cool!!! Are you talking about the hard plastic pellets or the squishy styrofoam ones? And are you doing this dry or with water?
5:46 am
@Cindy….it must have been the ice cream….:0)
4:40 pm
:-)
11:15 pm
Hi Cindy
I was reading your post from 2008 about sanding polymer clay beads. I don't remember if I sent you an email regarding this topic. I use a rotary tumbler (a Loretone). I cut up a plastic place mat from the dollar store just short of the height of the tumbler barrel. Then I glue sandpaper to the plastic using a water proof glue E6000 is good. These barrel liners can be made using a variety of grits. I write on the back of each piece of plastic what grit it is. I tumble my barrel 3/4 full with beads, water and a drop of liquid soap. I then leave the beads to tumble over night or longer. After the beads have tumbled I give them a quick rinse, and dry them before buffing. I got my hints on tumble sanding beads from Gera Scott Chandler in Victoria, BC.
To buff I cut up about 1 cup of 1 inch square bits of a shammy that I bought in the automotive section. Toss that in a dry tumbler barell with your beads (nothing else), and let tumble over night. It does seem to be important that beads are dry before they are buffed. I was recently reading on a forum where some people make a small bag out of a shammy fill with beads and toss in tumbler.
Thats my solution to sanding and buffing it seems to work really well. My beads get a nice sheen this way. I prefer not to use any future or varethane on my creations.
Vanessa
9:02 am
Thank you Vanessa for the detailed instructions! Gluing the sand paper to the plastic mat is an excellent idea. Makes it much stronger that way and gives you more room in the tumbler than putting in a plastic icing tub!
Will give your's (and Gera's) method a try. In most cases, I too prefer the look of a properly sanded and buffed bead over ones covered with a gloss coating. An effective tumbling method would really cut down on the amount of time required to get a good quality finish.
**There is more discussion on some other ways to use a tumbler in the post I have linked beside my name. Check it out if you haven't already.
11:37 am
Did my stuff in a Lortone, both polymer pieces and lots of beach shells/glass, until it got packed away in storage.
Found that just using the "grit" in a slurry with some weight was the way to go. I had the best luck with two products….the German glass ball beading shot and increasing grades of finer white building sand (ran three, coarse, med, very fine….use a mask). Do not put too much product in there, use a good amount of the glass/sand and add distilled water to the 3/4 mark, and a tiny bit of detergent (Dawn). Let her rip. Have to clean out the bead hole well and quickly…stuff dries in there like concrete, lol.
Very important not to mix the grit. Found that could use old pillow cases to dump the old load, it would drain (outside) then when rinsed clear it could be used over and over. Just need to wait for the grit to dry before removing from case by shaking it.
Sound is not soothing. Found using a pack of magazines/newspapers with a rubber gripping mat on top worked to deaden the sound, as well as covering the unit with a double lined cardboard box (leave room for air) and a beach towel. Looked like chaos on a stick but it worked.
Jocelyn
6:43 pm
Excellent information Jocelyn! Thank you, thank you for sharing it!! It is really helpful!Where did you purchase the grit?
Like the pillow case idea and the sound deadening tactics! Anything to make it a little quieter! Not sure what chaos on a stick is was it sounds like it describes it pretty good! :-)
6:26 am
The grit was three grades of white builders sand I found at the local hardware store. The glass beads I found in my German grandmother's craft supplies.
If you google glass micro beads you can find a number of sources, but they come in small packages if they are sources for use as sprinkle on glitter. A better source would be to find a local sand blasting shop that uses the glass beads, and purchase a small amount from them, since they get it in 50 lb bags.
Best of luck to you who try this, I hope you have the same results I did.
A caution, keep a close eye on polymer beads made from "fabric" or slices of mokume gane. These are thin, and the design can wear away quickly.
8:58 am
Fantastic Jocelyn! I will take a look for those materials and try them out myself! I have had some great success with the river rock as long as the beads are quite smooth going into the tumbler. The rocks don't take off fingerprints and creases though. Does the grit remove small defects?
You're right about being careful with the fabric sheet beads like the pillow beads. You wouldn't want to wear away any of that beautiful design!
11:27 am
Hi Randee,
I plan to try your method of sanding polymer clay beads using the poly pellets. Is water added with the beads and soda like with other methods. Or is this way done with out water.
Thank you in advance for your help.
Linda Pollack
6:15 pm
Linda, the plastic pellets would be great to try if you have them already, but the method I have found to work the best so far is the River Rock Method.
Click the link by my name for an article on this method.
6:08 pm
Instead of river rock gravel, try plain aquarium gravel from a pet shop. A small bag is all you need. The weight of the small rocks keep the beads in constant motion.
10:14 am
Excellent advice Cathy! Thanks!
9:03 am
I am fairly new to this chat thing but i love your site it has given me so much help like all of you i am polyclay mad, made tons of beads and sold some in the local craft shop, but i live in the u k or at least wales my children say out in the middle of nowere my question is i have just ordered a beach tumbler as the postage for the lorton was to expensive. It has a plastic barrel is that o k and what would be river rock in the uk is it the same as in the U S I have never seen any to no what it looks like. i am trying to help my pore arthritic fingers with the small beads
7:35 pm
Welcome Ritzs – It's great to have you here. The plastic tumbler on your beach tumbler should be fine.
There is actually a ton of information that has accumulated here at the blog about rock tumblers. There is a search box at the top of every page to make it easy to find stuff. Use the following keywords:
tumbler
kiddie tumbler
river rocks
lortone
vibratory
If you still have questions after reading through the articles and comments that have already been posted, then by all means post specific questions and some will be glad to help you further.
8:45 pm
**PHOTOS ADDED: Some project pictures have just been added to a Spotlight Feature showcasing Rob Kerfoot, a member who is very much appreciated here at this supportive polymer clay community. Click on the "Rock Tumbler Polymer Clay Beads" link by my name above to have a look.