DIY - Hash Tubler/Dry Seive

I had posted this DIY at Cannabis Culture a while back, and I couldn't get it through their search, so I went through some cached pages and found it. It shouldn't get lost here...

Well, here goes. I finally built my tumbler, and it looks like I beat Mountaintechne to the finish line. I'm 100% positive that I could have made a solid, well constructed tumbler in about a fifth of the time, but I always seem to be the one that likes to take the road less traveled.

This is going to be less of a "tutorial" and more of a "this is how I built my tumbler". Use this post to get ideas, or to realize where the pitfalls are, or just to entertain yourself. I originally wanted to build the whole thing out of metal so that I could practice my MIG welding skills, but I failed miserably and had to fall back on my impressive pop-riveting skills.

I also wanted to use as many parts as I could that I had laying around the house. Mind you that I have a full work shop and I have a lot of stuff that most normal people wouldn't have.

Anyway, here's a picture of the finished project. A little warning, I have about 50 pictures and I plan on using most of them.



To start, I needed a source of sheet metal. Conveniently placed in my garage in a spot that really annoyed me while trying to get from my car to my house was an old filing cabinet destined for the dump.



I tried to bash the top and side panels out with a sledge hammer, but that piece of shit filing cabinet still had some life left in her



I put down the sledge, and started cutting with my tin snips. I don't feel like I've accomplished something unless I bleed a lot, and this project was no different. When working with sheet metal, please, PLEASE use protective gloves. Don't bleed like me.



And finally, a nice big piece of sheet metal to start working with:



The next step was to strip all of the paint and rust off of the sheet metal. I wasn't about to take my health for granted anymore, so I wore a respirator, safety glasses, and work gloves and went to town with my power drill and it's paint striping bit.

I had an old dust collector in my basement that had kicked the bucket, and I saw some potential for the makings of the tumbler drum:



So, I striped the paint off of that too. A little note about striping paint off of sheet metal; it sucks. Metal and paint dust gets everywhere. Make sure not to breathe that shit. Make sure that your work area is either outside or well ventilated.





There were flanges on either end of the dust collection cylinder, so I needed to pound those out. I figured if I didn't, it would crinkle the mesh screen.



to



The dust collection drum also had a convenient lip that only another picture could explain:



I figured that this lip would work well to hold a circular piece of sheet metal to form the tumbler sides, so I pried the entire lip out to fit a circular piece of sheet metal on both sides:



Here's a shot of the drum striped and ready to receive the circular pieces of sheet metal that I just cut from the filing cabinet sides:



One of the sides needed a port to get the stuff in and out, so I cut a smaller hole out of one of the circular pieces of sheet metal, then I cut another circular piece of sheet metal that was about 3 inches in diameter larger than the hole that I just cut.



To attach the port hole cover to the main drum side, I used 1" #6 metric screws with butterfly nuts. I drilled 8 holes through both pieces of metal that would take the mini bolts. Since I couldn't be positive that everything was symmetric, I had to mark the top of both of the metal circles so that it would fit together the same way each time.

To make sure that the bolts wouldn't fall into the drum, I made some "bolt holders" out of semi-rigid plastic. You know, the kind of plastic that holds most electronics, and if you try to rip it open you're guaranteed to cut the hell out of yourself? I got this idea from installing outlets. All outlets and switches have these so that the bolts don't fall out while you're installing them.



And if there weren't already enough pictures in this post, here's one more of my pitiful attempt at MIG welding a piece over the side of the dust collection drum. No matter how low I turned the voltage, I still burned through the metal. Not only that, I got spatter all over the place, and never got a nice continuous welding line going, so I said screw welding. I'm the king of pop-rivets anyway.



Here's a picture of one of the drum sides seated in the drum lip. It fit in a lot easier than I thought it would. After it slid into place, I hammered the hell out of the lip again to seal it into place. All I could think about during this step was of a giant take out meal with those aluminum sides that bend over the take out top.





The whole welding step was completely unnecessary, since I was going to be cutting off both of the ends of the drum anyway. I figured that if I had a plate over that hole, than it would be a little bit more stable when I ran it over my table saw. I replaced my wood blade with a mason/metal blade and I went ginsu on its ass.



The next step was to connect the two drum ends together. I used 4 x 2' lengths of 3/8" threaded rod to connect the two pieces together. Here's a picture of how I did this. I used a lock nut and washer on the inside of each rod, and a cap nut and washer on the outside:





Now that the drum is basically in place, I'll turn to how I made the frame that would house the Farberware Rotisserie motor that I bought on eBay for $20. I figured that the motor would be a lot cheaper, and if I had to do it over, I would have probably used a higher speed motor, and geared it down using the appropriate ratio pulleys and a drive belt. It's done now, so there's no turning back, right?

I wanted the base to be somewhat flexible so that I could remove the drum easily by pulling on the sides a little bit, but rigid enough so that it wouldn't fall apart.

A quick note on my design. I decided to make things even more difficult for myself by not using a "through the drum drive shaft". I used a short drive shaft that was made out of a bolt with the head cut off.



This picture shows 2 bolts that I used on the opposite side of the motor. I made a mistake by making it too short to start. It kept on falling out of the vinyl grommet that I was using, so I made a longer one.

Here's a picture of the receiving end of the rotisserie motor's drive shaft. I didn't take a picture of the bolt that I used for this, but it was basically the same as the one in the previous picture, except that I ground down the sides square so that it would fit right into that square hole. Go figure. It worked great.

Here's a picture of the vinyl grommet that I had mentioned before. I actually had to make it, since I couldn't find a bearing or grommet that would work for my setup. I bought a vinyl washer, and used my trusty table saw to cut an 1/8" channel 1/8" deep through the sides of the washer. This allowed the grommet to slide right into the frame channel pictured here:



I realize that I'm getting a little ahead of myself here, since I haven't explained how I built the frame for the drum. Here's a picture of the entire frame before any bends were made. I probably could have made the frame a fixed width throughout the whole thing, but I figured a few angles would make it look nicer. Notice my favorite pair of giant scissors:



Next, I made a make shift metal bender. I really, really wish that I had one, but clamps, a rigid straight edge and a table edge worked fine.



I used 2 L brackets per side for added support. The next picture shows the frame nearing completion. I've drilled the 2 mounting holes for the motor.



Now I've cut the channel for the vinyl grommet to fit into.



After test fitting the drum, I realized that I was about an inch short. Damn, that always seems to happen to me one way or another. You can see this by looking at the grommet and how the bolt barely sits inside.



Also, somewhere along the line I cut a hole for the drive shaft to mate with the rotisserie motor, and temporarily mounted the motor for the test fit.



So, I took my favorite giant scissors, and cut the frame in half.



Then I striped another piece of metal, and used it as an extension plate, and pop-riveted the hell out of it. This was actually a good mistake, since the addition of the extension plate increased the rigidity of the frame to exactly where I wanted it to be.



Another test fit later shows that the drum fits perfectly inside of the frame.



Now it's on to the difficult task of attaching the REALLY expensive 120 micron metal mesh screen to the drum. I spent $100 US (shipped) on a piece of 120 micron mesh that was 4' x 41 1/2". I designed the drum so that it would take exactly 1/2 of the screen to cover, so that I could have a replacement. Here's a shot of half of my metal sheet cut to fit:



First, I covered the inside lip of either side that was to connect to the mesh with super sticky double sided mounting tape.



I left enough extra length in the metal mesh for a 2" overlap. To seal the seam, I cut a piece of roofing tin, and bent it twice into the shape of a compressed 'N'.



The top piece of screen in the overlap fit into the top angle, and the bottom into the bottom. Then I pop-riveted 3 rows of 8 through both screens, and through the 3 pieces of the seam holder. This worked even better than I could have hoped.





The next step was to use a couple of worm drive hose clamps to hold the screen so that it would not come loose. Unfortunately, you can't buy a clamp large enough for my drum. Fortunately, you can attach as many of the clamps together as you want:





Of course, something had to happen to make this even more difficult than it already needed to be. I was scraping off the stickers from the clamps, and my screw driver slipped slightly, and made a small hole in my $100 mesh.



After swearing like a sailor for a half an hour, I remembered this plumber's epoxy that I used to fix a leaky pipe a few months back. This stuff is magical. So magical, that it deserves it's OWN PICTURE!!!



All you have to do is cut a small bit of the putty, and mix it with your hands until it's soft. Then you have about 5 minutes before it becomes rock hard. I pressed a pea's worth into the mesh on either side and voila!

After tightening the clamps I realized that I was running out of things to take pictures of. I still had one thing left to build, and one thing left to find. I had to build a kief collector, and find a storage bin that would fit all of this inside.

To make the kief collector, I bought a plastic laundry hamper and cut it in half. Unfortunately, again, it was slightly too short. So, I used the other half and attached them together. I angled the top piece with sand paper so that there wouldn't be a crack for my hippie crack to get stuck in.

The only problem left really was to attach the two pieces of laundry hamper together. I tried superglue. And yet AGAIN, super glue has failed me. I don't think I actually remember a time where it's worked for me. Then I tried plastic epoxy. Nothing. It just came apart. Then it hit me. Regular double sided tape. I couldn't believe that regular double sided tape beat out superglue and plastic epoxy. For extra measure, I used some waterproofing tape on the bottom seam. Here's a picture of the hamper and the storage bin:



With the finished kief collector:



And now we're finally back to the original picture with the collector in place.



Pop the whole thing into the storage container:



Drill a hole in the storage container, thread the motor plug through it, and put the lid back onto the storage container and we're done.



Thanks for hanging in there. Hopefully I didn't waste your time. Hey! Wait! Can you hear that? That's the sound of my bandwidth being sucked away. Okay, it's time for me to go as the autumn moon lights my way...

I've used this thing a few dozen times, and that rotisserie motor just keeps on trucking. I've found that you can put about 5 gallons of packed, dry trim into the tumbler at a time.

Splitting the batch into 2 x 24 hour cycles to grade the keif works extremely well, producing 30 grams of keif on each run.

The only thing that I'd change was the keif collector. Anything plastic will hold a static charge, and you'll always lose some that just won't let go.

Throwgar...I really enjoyed your posts!


I put down the sledge, and started cutting with my tin snips. I don't feel like I've accomplished something unless I bleed a lot, and this project was no different. When working with sheet metal, please, PLEASE use protective gloves. Don't bleed like me

lol..I want to see pics of the blood!

I would have probably used a higher speed motor,

what was the original RPM and what RPM did you gear it down to?

the REALLY expensive 120 micron metal mesh screen to the drum. I spent $100 US (shipped) on a piece of 120 micron mesh that was 4' x 41 1/2".

good quality stainless steel mesh is expensive...nylon mesh is much cheaper....and some people complain about the cost of Bubbleman's new Tumble Now tumbler!

available from ICmag sponsor : AquaLabTech for $350,,,check it out

http://www.aqualabtechnologies.com/...w/tumble-now-rotator-dry-sifting-machine.html

After swearing like a sailor for a half an hour,

lol..you swear...I kick things


The only thing that I'd change was the keif collector. Anything plastic will hold a static charge, and you'll always lose some that just won't let go

a sheet of good quality white paper works really well, so does a sheet of thin, smooth faced wood

DIY is the way to go for those with the skills, tools, workshop and bits of stuff laying around! I'm sure you will give lots of members here ideas on making a tumbler.

Happy Tumbling

Thanks Chamba!

The nice thing about the rotisserie motor is that it doesn't need to be geared doen at all. I think it turns at about 4-6 rpm. This is all you really need for a tumbler, since all of the keifing action happens when the trimmings slide down the side of the tumbler wall. A faster rpm might spped things up a little, but I just leave it over-night, and I have a surprise in the morning!

Good idea with the paper. I could just cover the plastic keif collector with paper, and that should work fine.

I think I spent about $150 on this, and about 10 hours, it's worth it to me to build my own and save a few $100. It's not for everybody, but if you can hack it together, it's probably worth your while.

Bump! Sick plans yo!

Bumping in 2019 cause I wanted this information!

really good info for us, can anyone who made it show us how it works?

I made a shaker that was way easier than a tumbler. I used a paint shaker as the mechanics to shake the box. The box was pretty simple with 100u stainless.

About 1 to 4 ounces at a time. Only a few dollars and almost no talent required to build (that was important for me. LOL)

I have some pics and more details if anyone cares.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLvTmsqeWGM


.

that looks slick

where can you find a paint shaker?

I got mine at Harbor Freight https://www.harborfreight.com/pneumatic-paint-shaker-94605.html