Tumbler Details
(click on pictures to see enlarged views)

For my first attempt at tumbling clothespin halves, I put a bunch of them in a box, wrapped it with an old towel, and then stretched some Saran wrap around it, as this next picture shows…

The box went into my wife's clothes dryer. The idea worked but it was rough on the dryer. I had to prop the door closed because the box kept banging it open. 

Before I broke the dryer, I decided the box wasn't such a good idea.

Then I put clothespin halves in plastic bags, like shown above and tumbled them in the dryer with a bunch of towels. That idea works a whole lot better than the box.

The same bag-in-the-dryer tumbling idea worked when it came time to coat the halves with linseed or tung oil, as the picture above shows. I simply  soaked some terrycloth with boiled linseed oil, added them to the bag, and tumbled. If the bag had broken open while tumbling, I would have had a mess to deal with, but that didn't happen.

Dryer-tumbling will work well when making small quantities of clothespins, but but I needed a dedicated clothespins-only tumbler. I made the tumbler pictured above using materials I had on hand. It is what I'm now using to tumble-sand and it does the job pretty well. This tumbler was made hastily and  the design can surely be improved, so I offer this not as an ideal clothespin tumble-sander, but one that is doing the job pretty well for me at this point in the evolution of my business. The pictures and details that follow may be helpful to you as you design your own tumbler…

The picture above gives you some idea of scale. The frame, made of 3/4" pine, is 32" high. The barrel is 20" long and 14" in diameter.

The barrel ends are made with two circles of 3/4" HDPE plastic. They are actually part of Whizbang Cider Press pressure plates that I sell (Click Here to see the finished pressure plates). 3/4" plywood will work just as well.

I spaced the discs apart using four lengths of pine board. I attached the boards with screws through the discs. The boards are like interior ribs. 

The outer covering of the drum is 1/8" HDPE Plastic, which I sell to people who make Whizbang chicken pluckers. The HDPE is attached to the HDPE ends and the four pine ribs with panhead screws. I sealed the overlap with a strip of black Gorilla duct tape, and I put the tape around the barrel ends too. It's not pretty but the tape has stayed in place remarkably well.

I cut a 5" x 7" opening in the side of the barrel. For a door, I simply tape a piece of cardboard over the opening. It does the job. The above picture shows the taped-on door after tumbling a load of clothespins for three hours.

The clear packaging tape holds the cardboard for tumbling, but comes off of the HDPE plastic easily. This type of door is, of course, not an ideal situation but, like I said, it does the job.

The tumbling drum has a 1" diameter shaft through the center and the shaft is driven by a motor with pulleys and belts. I attached flange bearings to the end of the drum, thinking that they would be needed, but they are not needed at all. That flange bearing you see in the picture above is totally unnecessary. It so happens that the barrel and  shaft turn as one and the actual "bearing" is where the shaft rests on the wood frame. As you can see, I have screwed blocks of wood on either side of the shaft to keep it centered. It just spins on place between the blocks. 

I used a 1" diameter shaft because I had some 1" flange bearings (I sell them to make chicken pluckers). You could make the drum with a shaft of less diameter. I dare say, you could probably use a wooden broom handle as a shaft.

The above picture shows the opposite end of the drum. Here you can see that I have another totally unnecessary flange bearing bolted to the end. Then I bolted a 16" pulley to the drum. The white HDPE plastic blocks serve to shim the pulley out away from the flange bearing. If the flange bearing were not there, the pulley could be attached directly onto the end of the drum, and that is what I should have done. As is the case on the other end, the end of the shaft rests directly on the wood framework and spins there.

The above picture reveals the transmission scheme I have on my tumbler. The 1/2HP motor spins at 1,725 RPM, which is way too fast for tumbling. I wanted to get the RPM to less than 100. I could not do that with one belt and two pulleys. I needed a "jackshaft" in the center. My jackshaft is a double end mandrel that I salvaged off a compost tumbler invention I made years ago. 

This Link will take you to a couple of mandrel options offered by Woodworker's Supply. The mandrel with bronze bearings is less expensive and sufficient for a clothespin tumbler because it spins at  less than 100 RPM.

My tumbler has a 2-1/4" pulley on the motor and is connected by a v-belt to a 10" pulley on the jackshaft. The other end of the jackshaft has a 2-1/2" pulley and is belt-connected to the 16" pulley on the barrel. This arrangement gives the drum a speed of exactly 53 RPM (I measured the RPM by bending up a flap of tape on one end of the drum and counting the times it hit my finger in one minute). This speed seems to be entirely satisfactory.

The picture above gives you another view of the transmission arrangement.

In the picture above, you can see the interior of the tumbler. The yellow arrows point to the pine ribs. You can see the shaft running through the center. I have had the best results tumbling with the drum half full (I add clothespin halves until the shaft is just covered). That's about 1,000 halves. And a 3-hour tumble seems to work best.

The biggest drawback to this tumbler design is that getting clothespins out after tumbling is a bother. They can't be dumped out, they have to be scooped out by hand. 

Another drawback is the small size. I am currently oiling the halves in bags (as shown in Picture #3 above). I am putting 2-pound bags of halves into the tumbler (3 at a time) and they are a tight fit.

If you end up making a clothespin tumbler of your own, and would like to share the design with others, please send me a picture and I will post it below.