Jewelry Making

The other day, I read with interest a tidbit on Tammy Powley’s Jewelry Making About.com site about a technique for cleaning up metal jewelry. Cleaning up metal can be a huge issue for jewelry designers, especially those that specialize in metal jewelry that involve chain or chain mail links, or those who make their own jump rings.

This method seems a bit unorthodox and I never would have thought of it myself. Basically, it involves using a Rock Tumbler of all things! Rock tumblers have traditionally been used by hobbyists and jewelry people to smooth the surface of rough cut stones. The basic idea is to use a rock tumbler along with stainless steel shot in order to really shine up jewelry. Pretty interesting, and since there’s probably quite a few jewelry designers out there who already have access to a tumbler, this might be a cost effective way to clean up metal. Apparently, the tumbler also tends to harden the metal as well as cleaning it which I guess would be an added bonus for a lot of people.

Using A Tumbler to Polish Jewelry

There is another site that she linked to that actually has a really good tutorial on how to use a rock tumbler to shine up your metal jewelry. The site is called Urban Maille ChainWorks and it’s a really nice and detailed tutorial.

The biggest issue for me seemsto be that when I think of a rock tumbler I’m wondering how it can possibly not destroy delicate metal jewelry. After all you put really rough rocks into a tumbler and they come out very smooth. Well, here is a brief quote from their article about that exact issue:

Burnishing is the technical term for what the tumbler does to your jewelry. It’s as though your jewelry is being pounded millions of times by tiny little hammers. Although you’re likely to hear rumors to the contrary, tumbling is not abrasive and does not remove any material from the surface of the metal … Although it doesn’t seem as though it would be, tumbling is very gentle. Even the most delicate pieces will emerge brilliantly polished and completely unmangled… unless tangling occurs.

Even more amazingly, they state that you can even tumble Swarovski and glass crystals! Wow. That is reassuring, and with that issue out of the way I’m definitely interested in how to go about it using a tumbler. The basic formula seems to be, a tumbler, some stainless steel shot, and a bit of dishwashing detergent such as Dawn.

I’m not going to try to talk about all the steps that they take here, it’s best if you just go check out their excellent article on rock tumbling and jewelry cleaning yourself.