[Jewelry making - Article 00201] - Re: [Orchid] Tumbling Oxidized Jewelry

[Judy Hoch]

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    Allyson - Tumbling does several things depending on the media you
    use. 

    To smooth the metal after fabrication, you would use a mild abrasive
    such as the little green triangles or larger media such as Rios Clean
    cut. If you have darkened the jewelry over all, the abrasive will
    remove the darkening from the high spots and leave it in the low
    spots. If you have large areas of recessed darkening, the media will
    remove the darkening in the recesses except for right at the edges.
    You can use this to your advantage since the edges will be crisp with
    the darkening. Simply paint the center of the opening with your
    darkening liquid. Use larger media to avoid removing as much
    darkening in recesses. 

    If you are using a tumbler to burnish the jewelry, steel will
    brighten everything and leave the dark parts looking like hematite.
    Small ceramic polishing balls will also brighten and don't change the
    color of the dark parts as much. If you try to use dry compounds such
    as walnut shells or any of the prepared media of wood chips, you will
    remove most of your darkening. 

    My process to tumble "antiqued" parts is to first immerse the
    jewelry in the darkening liquid. Remove the jewelry and let it dry a
    bit. Then process the parts in a vibratory tumbler with Clean Cut
    media for 4 to 8 hours using a flow thru system. Remove the parts
    from the media, rinse well, and if the parts have small openings, use
    the sonic cleaner on them to remove all the residue from the media.
    Then run for 30 minutes in a rotary tumbler with stainless steel.
    After all the mechanical processing, you can then touch up any areas
    that have too much of the darkening removed. 

Judy Hoch
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