Build A Portable Pressurized Water Source For Grinding

When building lapidary equipment at home, or when modifying manufactured equipment, one of the largest problems which confronts any mechanic is how to feed water to grinding wheels which require cooling and lubrication to grind. This handy unit is easy and inexpensive to construct, and can be put together at minimum cost. Also, it is easily moved about, so that one unit will service many machines. A common household pump-sprayer normally used to spray pesticides is modified with some copper tubing and clear flex-hose, to direct a steady pressurized stream of water to any grinding operation. This unit even works at drill presses and hand grinding operations, as well as grinding wheels.
The first thing you will need to acquire is a plastic pump sprayer, and it pays to buy the best you can find, although any unit of decent construction will work fine, even used units. You will also need about two feet of rigid copper tubing whose outside diameter is the same as the inside diameter of the port at the top of the pump sprayer. This is the future water output of this tool, and the flex hose will connect to it, so make sure the copper fits tightly into the port in the pressure tank. When installing this, a little silicone caulk will lubricate a very tight fitting connection, then harden to further waterproof and glue it.
So the piece of copper tubing will be fit snugly through the hole at the top of the tank, after the entire original hose assembly is removed. The rigid tubing needs to be inserted deeply into the tank, to within an inch or two of the bottom, and about two inches or so needs to protrude outside the tank, at the top. This tubing is, of course, where the pressurized water will flow from. The fitting needs to be airtight, so the right sized copper tubing is a must.
Once the rigid copper tubing is inserted into the tank and is made fast, all that is required is a five or six foot length of clear plastic tubing to plug onto the copper tubing sticking out of the tanks top. Coupling nipples for this plastic tubing are readily available wherever the tubing is purchased, and most hardware stores, aquarium supply stores, or auto parts stores carry these parts. Use a coupling nipple to hook to the copper tubing at the top of the tank, and use another coupling at the far end of the plastic hose, to hook to a stop-cock type brass faucet, which can also be purchased at hardware stores, or an aquarium supply store. The plastic nipples fit tightly over copper tubing with just hand pressure. You may have to flare a small length of copper tubing and affix it to the input end of the brass faucet, in order to have something to hook this nipple to, but this is very simple and can be done for you at most auto parts stores or machine shops if you cannot accomplish it yourself. Again, a little silicone caulk may work wonders at this scenario.
On the output end of the mini-brass-faucet you can affix a hypodermic needle casing for a fine stream, or even leave the needle of the hypo intact, for a very fine stream. Be careful if you do that though as the needle is sharp and may rust over time. Your particular situation will dictate just how fine your water stream needs to be, and some experimenting will of course be necessary. It is always best to start with the smallest stream available, and modify from that point upward. You can make the stream larger easily enough, but making it smaller many times entails more work and materials.
The business end of your flex hose can be easily clamped in place with a tent clamp, clothes pin, or other clamping device, up to and including specially made units which are magnetic and are marketed for just such situations. You will necessarily evolve what is best for you, and its probable that you will use different clamping apparatus for different situations. Just be sure not to pinch your hose shut when clamping!
Now all that is needed is to pump the sprayer several times to build pressure within the tank.
The water stream itself can be easily adjusted by opening the stopcock faucet in various degrees, from nearly closed, to wide open. The wide degree of adjustability ensures you will have just enough water for all situations, and you will be hard pressed to find a more handy tool once this becomes a member of your workshop.

5 Tire Tumbler

     Finally, something really cool to do with old tires, wear them from the inside out, too.  These tires will give many more miles on this tumbler set up.

      This tumbler has been on a back burner for a few months now, waiting on parts, the bearings were the hardest for me to scrounge, I found them on worn out machines and they were still good enough for this duty.  I also found that taking a little extra time allowed me to really think things through; assembly went well.  No hurries, no worries.  The entire unit is made from salvaged materials, reconstructed.   Ehhhhhhh ....Stimulating.

     The RR ties were cut in half and about 2 feet are buried in the ground to make good long term posts.   Notice the radiator hose sheathing on the long shaft, the tires run better that way.  This is a key point really, and I got my hose out of a junked schoolbus, there was 80 feet of it running to the various heaters in the back.  The only real problem I have is adjusting the water levels of each tire load, because splash will wet the heater hose sheathing on the shaft and there is slippage of the tire.  On some of the loads I keep an almost muddy consistency in the slurry to avoid a lot of splash.

     This version of my latest tumbler ran fine before being fastened down even,  and I am kind of proud of the balance.  I could turn the shaft with tires on it easily with my fingers.  My 1" steel shaft was half of a drive shaft from a junked windmill dumped in the desert.  It was cut with an angle grinder fitted with a metal blade.  It took some sanding to get it smooth enough to accept the bearings and other hardware, but it worked.

     The motor got strapped to the ground after it was balanced a bit more.   Stakes and kevlar, yum.  The motor is a 115vac 1/3hp 1725 rpm which is a good strong motor.  The shaft speed is stepped down with a large pulley, and a very small pulley on the motor.  30-60 RPM max.  Slower is better.  I am using a 10"  pulley on the shaft and am searching for a 12" now to slow my rotation down a little more.  The pulley at the motor is a 1&1/2", and could be slightly smaller too.

    The bearings were only lightly nailed to the top of the posts, Just to eep them from moving, because I will need to get at the tires and do maintenance on occassion.  Ease of maintenance is worth planning for, these large machines really produce but also take a beating over time.  Everything needs to be adjustable, and balance is what lasts....once something wears and the system gets out of balance it starts to lose efficiency, leading to break down if not addressed.  The more quickly a problem is addressed the easier it is to remedy, and the less adverse wear on the parts around it.  A good shop tool is the laser type temperature pistol which has come down in price a lot.  You aim it about 8" away from whatever you want a temp measurement on, and it does it very accurately.  A hot spot detector.  Invaluable when working on machinery of all types.

   This is the third of these tumblers I have built, the other two were single tire experiments and for materials like glass and shell, and even metals (WORKS VERY WELL FOR METALS), they are really aggressive.  For agates and quartz things they work well too but require harder grits than quartz sand, and it takes longer of course.   To actually polish materials different tumblers need to be made and dedicated to different grits, because grit contamination is a sure thing with these unless care is taken to avoid it.  There is usually a fair amount of splash and I constantly add water to my loads during their tumbling processes. 

      These tire tumblers are also great for cleaning most kinds of mine run materials used in lapidary endeavors, and they can be employed as ball mills to pulverise rock.  I only run my tumbler when I can be there to supervise, and this rig will grind about 60-80 pounds fully charged, which means around 10-15 pounds per tire.

     Thanks for checking this out.  Good Luck.