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Hello everyone:
I have been doing much investigating on clay sanding techniques. Many artisans’ seem to be using a "rock tumbler" to cut down on the time it takes to sand a bead to perfection. Some find great progress with vibrating rock tumblers and other are very happy with rotary tumblers. My experiments have used the rotary tumbler.
There are also several different techniques in regards to the potions. Some artisans are using fine sand and water in the rotary tumbler while others use cut-up sandpaper. I have read that the vibrating tumbler works well using beans from a beanie baby. Myself , I have used the rotary tumbler with a very fine beach sand (sifted through a nylon stocking) and water mixture. I ran the tumbler for 24 hours and found it to work well. The round beads came out very smooth. Odd shapes appeared to need more sanding.
I also experimented with the plastics beads from beanie babies. After gutting all the beanie babies in the house ( sorry guys) I tumbled them in my rotary tumbler for about 12 hours with noticing little results. So, I would stick to using these beans with your vibrating tumbler like originally mentioned. I also used the sand paper idea that worked really well. One artisan mentioned to cut-up a whole piece of 600 grit sand paper, place in tumbler (rotary) fill with beads and then with water (3/4 of barrel). Let it run over-night. Nice results! The sand paper will curl causing these little tunnels of sandpaper that are great for small round and long beads.
Thanks to Cindy Lietz! She has some great ideas and how to’s using a "rock tumbler" to sand the beads.
Here is Cindy's site address. http://www.beadsandbeading.com/blog/rock-tumbler-professional-polymer-clay-beads/5263/ This page in particular helps us with our topic today which is rock tumblers. She has some great collections of videos that teach you about different techniques in creating with clay.
Please, share your ideas with us. I would love to hear them.
By for now.
But, after a bit more exspirementing. LOL
Susan
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Another sanding material I like to use in my tumbler, is river rock. You know, the unpolished stones you can get by the river, ocean or as decorative stones at your local craft store. I use the rocks with water and a drop of dish soap along with the beads and tumble for a few hours. This will save tons of time and will never wear out like the sandpaper squares do!