Monday, September 10, 2012

My Tumbler Loves Me!

I use a tumber to make my jewelry all clean and shiny. For those of you who don't know what a tumbler is, or how it works, it's a plastic barrel that rolls around on a motorized base. The barrel is filled with these little metal pieces called "shot" and when I put the jewelry in I cover everything with water and a little liquid soap. As the barrel rolls around the shot and the metal jewelry rub together and the shot makes the jewelry nice and shiny. It takes a minimum of an hour and it's a low-effort way to achieve a high shine on several pieces at once.

This is the tumbler barrel
Way back when I first got the tumbler I mistakenly bought carbon steel shot instead of stainless steel shot. (Carbon steel was cheaper and that's probably why.) Since carbon steel will rust I have to be careful to completely let it dry before I store it until next time. So when the tumbling is finished I dump the shot and the jewelry into a strainer and rinse it all off and pick out the shiny jewelry. Then I spread out the shot on a kitchen towel to dry:

Shot drying on a towel

When the shot is completely dry I scoop it to store it in the tumbler barrel. I pick up the edges of the towel to gather it together in the center and every time this is what I see:

It's a shot heart! I mean, a heart out of shot...
Every time! I don't mean to make a heart out of my tumbler shot. It's the Universe telling me that my tumbler loves me. It must be.

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