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This seemed to be the best forum for this. Over the years I have amassed a lot of specialized bolt and fasteners. On my current car if I could find stainless or new grade 8 where needed I just bought them, but some oddball clips, nuts, fasteners & bolts you just have to use factory replacements. I got tired of cleaning on the wire wheel mounted to my grinder and thought that a tumbler of some kind would be cool. Load it up and come back in a day or two and be done. I was thinking about a Harbor Freight 5lb vibratory tumbler for some time and as luck would have it, I was given one from a guy who hated it. I bought the pyramid resin impregnated with abrasive and loaded it up with about three pounds of abrasive and 2 lbs. of old nasty bolts. Ater a day in the garage ( it's fairly loud ) the bolts that were not to bad looked good, the realy nasty bolts (think original under the car bolts ) needed more time. A second batch needed about a day as well. They are not like new but will clean up on the wire wheel in a minute or 2 instead of 10-15 minutes. I coated them in oil to keep them until I need to use them. They come out with a layer of resin that comes off easy. Bolts with a ridged head did not clean so well in the well. Cap head bolts cleaned well except for the allen hole. Regular bolts cleaned up very well. I plan to get some kind of finer abrasive and test that for final cleanup. Anyway if you're on a budget I recommend it, if you have the cash just go all new. I'll take some photos of batch 3 before & after if it seems there is any interest.

Thats intresting. Did that process dull the treads any? I suppose if it did you could referb them with a tap or dye.

Good question...I wondered that as well.

David F.

I have them on the bench. When I get the whole batch done I plan to run thread cleaning dies over them. I'll report on what I find.

Some pics to add to the post.
This is the vibratory tumbler
This is the pyramid media
This is what I started with on average
These are the bolts I cleaned after dipping in Corrosion X
This is after 1 day in tumbler
And this is one day in tumbler & 1 day in soaking in the Corrosion X
The batch I put in last night was unimpressive, and I'm leaving them in for another day. It's plain one day is not enough, I'll see what 2 days does.

I wonder if there's a different type of media that could be used that wouldn't require the extra work of chasing/cleaning the threads???????

David F.

3rd batch was left in for 3 days. There is no real difference from the one day batch to the 3 day batch. I don't think the pyramids are reaching the bottom of the threads at all, they seem to do a nice job on deep rust and flat areas. It also revealed bolts that had rusted to the point they were slightly necked down, those got tossed. I threw 2 shallow U-shaped metal pieces in tonight with a lot of flat area to see how that works. My brother is supposed to scare up some Black Beauty sand blast media that I am going to try. Tomorrow after this batch has been in all day I'm going to try some left over paving sand. Cheap, fine particles and should be abrasive enough to do the job. More pics tomorrow night.

After the third batch I'm pretty unimpressed with the pyramids. Maybe they take a long time or are better on smooth surfaces. They seem to work well on aluminum. The Plate I tried was ok in the flat and needed more work in the ridges & such. This is after a day


This is about 5 minutes on the wire wheel on the grinder on the right side

I decided to try the play sand, it was frozen solid and had to chip it apart with a screwdriver (it's in the low 20's) this is what went in.

Any suggestions for inexpensive media tests are welcome. All of my severly rusted bolts from many years of saving are cleaner, but none are ready for paint/installation yet. The lack of effort is appealing but the results are uninspiring so far, probably equals the effort. We will see how the much smaller particles of the sand do.

The play sand was a complete waste of time, 3 days and nada. Now it's frozen into a block in the tumbler bowl. Bummer.

Finely crushed walnut shell(s)????? Any retailer that sells ammunition reloading supplies should carry it or at least be able to have access to it.

David F.