Tumbler - Large Volume

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wheelgun

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Thanks to all the ideas from this forum I finally have a large volume tumbler that will keep up to my 650 with case feed. The tube is 24" x 101/2" diameter. I stopped by a construction site and the utility installer gave me a cut off of the green pipe after I explained what I was up to. There are three internal paddles.

I am not sure what I will end up with for maximum number of brass but I put in 1.5 gallons of 9mm for the first try. I will keep the small tumbler I have for the stainless steel pins. This one is for dry media and dillon cleaner.

Picture011b_zpsca76032e.jpg
 
Holy ***T.

That's great looking. A quality build for sure.

I'd like to see some pics of the pile brass that you can load into her, and the finished product after running. I hope it all pans out!

Well done!
I.T.B.
 
Great design! What are those black discs made of? And what are the internal paddles made of and how did you affix them to the inside of the utility pipe? I had one like that too, albeit a lot smaller, and I could not find a way to fix paddles inside. How're you keeping it all watertight?
 
I have a lot of brass so I will keep this thing busy. The belt look loose but is tensioned for the barrel as loaded. If you look closely at pic you can see left side of motor mount is on a shaft so the base rotates and you can see the bottom of an adjustment bolt on the right, the belt can easily be tensioned more, I considered that with the build. I will post pics of brass cleaning results. In Winnipeg we have access to 50 lb bags of corn cob media so I will stick to that for now, with the Dillon polish brass is very clean/shiny.

The black discs are steel with a heavy rubber gasket between the green pipe and steel.

I could easily make it water tight but the stainless steel pin cost would kill me.
 
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well as long as the motor isn't over amping and the belt's not sliping there should be no issues.

now that i think about it some more, once the drum is up to speed it wouldn't take much force to keep it going. On hvac units and suck, the blower has force on it all the time as it keeps pushing air, so they need to be tighter.
 
Starts easily with full load of media and brass. So far it appears less or equal load to furnace fan it came from and the motor pulley has been greatly reduce over the furnace fan application.
 
My main issue is that my tumbler is too large.
I think I will build a smaller tube.

My large tube is good for like 1000 223 brass, but very not practical when I want to tumble only like 100-200 cases. So I will probably buy some 4 inch pipe and do a small 12 inch total tube for small batches.
 
Kryogen said:
My main issue is that my tumbler is too large.
I think I will build a smaller tube.

My large tube is good for like 1000 223 brass, but very not practical when I want to tumble only like 100-200 cases. So I will probably buy some 4 inch pipe and do a small 12 inch total tube for small batches.
Click to expand...

build the base big, then you can make one large drum for large sessions as well build smaller drums for small batches. then you could tumble several small batches of different calibres.
 
the drum you made was close to same as the one i made...i originally started to make mine the same as yours...but when i wanted a plan to make up some kind of baffles in the drum...i decided to run the bolts that hold the end caps on the inside of the drum...that way the bolts did there job and acted as the baffles also...
great job on the build...are we going to get to see a video of it in operation???
 
My base is already made to hold a large drum, but I just bought some 4 inch pipe to do a small 12 inches long drum for smaller batches.

Honestly, unless you often tumble like 1000 223 rounds, a tumbler that large is really annoying for smaller batches. I got pissed of using mine.
 
Don't recall ever having that much brass of same caliber and vintage.

Does everyone else sort their brass by number of firing?
 
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