Two questions about dust or something

[Orrex]

So I make chainmaille jewelry. Honestly, if I had my way, I'd call it "chainmail," but the conventions of the marketplace require me to use the other spelling. But that's not my question.

To keep these pieces affordable, I work principally in aluminum. After winding the wire into a coil and cutting the coil into rings, I put them in a rock tumbler for eight hours or so, along with a handful of steel b-b's. When the rings come out, the burred edges are nicely smooth, yielding a much superior end product.

However, the rings are all coated with an ultra-fine dust that comes off with handling. Most of it wipes away while I'm making the bracelet or necklace or whatever, but some stays behind so that the finished piece needs to be cleaned before sale. Not a big deal, but it gives rise to two questions:

1. What is the dust? Is it aluminum or is it steel? At first I thought that it must be aluminum because steel is so much harder, but then I realized that the b-b's are tumbling against each other as well. So which is it? Or is it some proportional mixture of steel an aluminum?

2. What's the best way to clean the completed piece of jewelry? Since it's aluminum, I have no problem washing it with a little dish soap between my palms, but it occurs to me that there might be a more efficient method. Suggestions?


Your insights are greatly appreciated!

[tigereye]

1. you never fail to surprise me!

I know a bunch of SCA folks, so I know people who talk about that kind of stuff.


Can't help you with the metallurgy stuff, though.

[Orrex]

11. Thanks all the same

I started making mail in the SCA a bunch of years ago and only got into the ornamental aspect of it much more recently.

[LaurenG]

2. I think you should at least show us pictures

that way we can analyze them and possibly buy them. :D

[Orrex]

10. LOL!

I resisted posting a link because I didn't want to seem as though I was shilling for myself.

However, since you asked, here's a link to the Chainmaille Creations section of my wife's Etsy Shop.


I await your advice!

[kentauros]

14. Excellent work!

I guess the "Deluxe Chainmail Dice Bag" is 'deluxe' because it's spelled without the extra 'L' and 'E'? :P

Just don't ever end up on Regretsy ;)

[Orrex]

16. Thanks, and I love Regretsy!

My wife paints portraits by commission, and sometimes when she sees really amazingly bad portraits on Regretsy. Like line-drawings of wedding portraits that look half-assed outtakes from The Far Side.


And I totally missed the missing "LE" on that one. No wonder it hasn't sold yet!

[kentauros]

18. Sometimes sites like Cake Wrecks and Regetsy are too hard to look at,

feeling embarrassed for the artists or maybe it's just stupidity overload...

The missing 'LE' kind of popped out at me, and then I see you have a second page! So, now I see the "Chainmaille Juggling Balls" and my first thought is "would make a nice thing to squeeze after a hard day of computer-mouse work" plus all that knobbly surface for massage effect :D

[LaurenG]

22. These are all very nice. I really like the dice bags too!

sorry I don't have any advice about the aluminum particles though it looks like there are lots of people wanting to help you.

[Kali]

3. and what is the inside of the rock tumbler container made of?

hmmm?

[Orrex]

5. Excellent question--I should have specified.

It's this model:


The chamber is plastic. I hadn't considered that because, by comparison, a handful of rocks seemed more abrasive than a handful of aluminum rings, but now that you mention it it seems like a reasonable possibility.

Hmm...

[Redstone]

4. Buy an ultrasonic cleaner (I used to be a jeweler, and found it

to be indispensable for cleaning the polishing tripoli and rouge off the pieces).

They're pretty cheap these days; I think you can get one from Brookstone for about $79.00.

Redstone

[Orrex]

7. Ah, yes--I'd forgotten those.

On the plus side, whatever the mystery dust is, it comes off pretty readily, so it would be no challenge for an ultrasonic oscillator.

Can you recommend a good cleansing solution? Or does ordinary dish soap do the trick?

[Redstone]

23. I part dish soap (out of eight); one part ammonia. The rest tap water.

Works a charm. Then dry (after toweling off) in a barely-warm (105-degree) oven.

Redstone

[kentauros]

6. Because you're using a rock tumbler to begin with,

why not use some fine grit and water as if you were tumbling stones? Continue to use the steel BBs, just keep the whole mess in the tumbler longer, as the water will slow down the impact from the BBs. But, that will eliminate the dust as it will all end up in the slurry.

Pour it all into a big sieve, run some water over that or fill a tub or sink with water and run your fingers through it to dislodge the leftover bits of grit.

I'd then spread the rings and BBs out over towels, pat them dry and run a hairdryer over that. There may still be grit leftover in places, but for the most part it will be gone and leave behind some nicely polished rings :)


I don't know what the dust would consist of other than aluminum oxide and whatever the BBs are coated with to prevent rust.

[Orrex]

9. I didn't want to use a sieve because I was afraid that I would strain myself

Hardy har har.

Thanks for the suggestion--that sounds pretty good, and of course the grit-and-water mix is how you'd tumble rocks, so it makes sense.
I've wondered about using some kind of grit but hadn't yet looked into acquiring any. Do you have a recommendation?

The tumbler came with a series of step-down grits for use with rocks, but I bought it with the intention of using it solely for tumbling links of this sort.

[kentauros]

13. Talk to Redstone about grit recommendations.

I haven't tumbled rocks in decades, and my father always handled the grit changes. Plus, the tumbler we used was home-made and many times larger than the little one you have there. That is, we were tumbling pounds of rocks at a time and for at least 6 weeks, nonstop ;)

[Orrex]

17. Just yesterday I spoke with a woman who tumbles really tough stones

We're in PA, and she works with a guy who quarries/mines/finds the stuff out west. She had a basket of Idaho flint, for example, that took something like 500 years to tumble. Very neat, but I'm not really set up to run a tumbler for such a long period--we have limited space, and the constant whirring would likely drive us to madness after a few weeks.

[kentauros]

19. We kept ours in the garage

so the constant sound wasn't a problem. Plus the garage was separate from the house by a good fifty feet. Yeah, weird 1960s upscale NASA neighborhood...

When rocks are tumbling, they're also grinding each other. I suppose if you're tumbling just one kind of rock, it's going to take longer, but we always put all of the rocks we found in one mix. My father's a petroleum engineer, so he knows his geology; we weren't tumbling granite with calcite. Still, there were plenty of metamorphic and igneous rocks in the mix, and I've asked where those stones went, only to learn that they're in storage, somewhere.

I know that grit is often made of carborundum (hardness scale of 9) but ask the experts, like Redstone or those people that run rock shops.

[rug]

8. It is steelle. Or maybe aluminumme.

[Rabrrrrrr]

12. So they want "chainmaille" for historical accuracy, but let you use aluminum?

They need to figure out who and what they really want to be.

Aluminum chainmail would be good for late era steampunk.

Just sayin'.

As to your question, the dust is aluminum. Alzheimer's (potentially) causing aluminum.

I like the idea that others offered - work the stuff in a slurry so that the dust is captured by the liquid.

If you have a centrifuge, you could then separate the aluminum back out and save it for recycling.

[Orrex]

15. I suspect that they spell it "chainmaille" because it sounds authentic

Which is silly for a host of reasons.

I don't know. As an affectation, it leaves me somewhat cold. Like a store in a mall that calls itself a "shoppe."


In my experience the appearance of historical accuracy is held to be more important than actual accuracy. I mean, very few armors draw their own wire these days, so it becomes a question of where you dset the goalposts.

Anyway, these are modern jewelry pieces, so historical accuracy is a minor consideration.

[canoeist52]

20. It's oxide corrosion comming from the acid in your fingers.

My husband the machinist says. Pure aluminum does this.

[Orrex]

21. Interesting--that's a new one.

It's actually an alloy rather than pure aluminum, but that certainly seems like a reasonable answer.

Thanks!

[OffWithTheirHeads]

24. What dust is it? Try a magnet

Munimula (you have to be really old to get that one) is non ferrous so a magnet will not pick it up... Steel, on the other hand...

Of course if the BBs are stainless they are not magnetic either but if they are stainless you can be pretty sure they are not your dust source cause that stuff is serious hard.