The Armour Archive

Get your stuff tumbled!

The tumbler is 24" by 20", so its big enough to tumble full shirts. And using a large flat-rate priority mail box, shipping a shirt cross country is relatively cheap. Only $15 each way.

Prices are pretty reasonable. Cost depends on the media you want, the item you want tumbled, and the duration. Email me with what you want tumbled and I can give you a quote. Full shirts will be $30-60 depending on material. Smaller stuff like coifs, mantels, jewelry, will be less. $5-30.

Anyways, I have the tumbler available for use. If this is a service people would be interested in using let me know. This is great for shirts and large items. Below are some before/after pictures of a bunch of items.

The tumbler:


12g mild steel.


16g Brass


Stainless and brass:
http://www.bikiniduck.com/images/tumbledchessboard.jpg

18g Bronze
http://www.bikiniduck.com/images/tumbledcoif.jpg

--Martin--

Fantastic offering!

Sweet!

Makes the thought of those icky blackened shirts tolerable -- they can be more easily unblackened!


Effingham

Yeah, I've tumbled a few shirts and things for people I know.

Most shirts are too big and heavy for most small home tumblers. And you cant really toss a 50lb hauberk in the clothes dryer.

From a few shirts of my own I know how cruddy they get. A quick polish makes them look like new, and once again wearable/sell able.

--Martin--

Nice!

Unfortunately however, you did not make any allusion to a certain Boy George song.

Do you have any experience with how riveted shirts hold up during tumbling?

If SoFC is reading this, do you think one of your shirts would do well going through this?

With thanks in advance...

Alfred of Carlyle

Actually I think riveted would be the safest to tumble. With butted shirts some rings might come loose if the rings arent closed properly. I havent had it happen yet, but its one of those things that could be possible.
With riveted you would have no issues at all, as the rings are effectively solid loops.

If SoFC is reading this, do you think one of your shirts would do well going through this?

One of my shirts? Absolutely. I have an industrial rotary tumbler that I used for all the shirts we sold. I still have it, and also will do cleaning. My tumbler drum is water-tight, and I wet-tumbled/cleaned, followed by tumbling in a drying/polishing media.

But be aware that not all maille shirts are of as good a quality as what I used to sell. Now many vendors have started copying the wedge-riveted style, but not all of them have figured out how to do it right yet.

I took on a shirt a year or so ago to clean, and did not look at it very carefully. When I tumbled it clean, it lost many hundreds of rings. Of course it also then becomes a giant, tangled mess that is nearly impossible to unravel without ripping out many rings. Then, when I attempted to repair it, I found for every ring I replaced another was falling out. Ultimately I had to return the shirt to the fellow with a lot of rings, rivets, and a set of tongs, with my apologies.

When I do cleaning for folks now, I do it with the caveat that I cannot vouch for the maille coming out undamaged.

But I love my tumbler. For personal projects I'll let it go in the polishing media for days. The stuff comes out looking like silver.

Steve

Steve -SoFC- wrote:/cleaned, followed by tumbling in a drying/polishing media.

But be aware that not all maille shirts are of as good a quality as what I used to sell. Now many vendors have started copying the wedge-riveted style, but not all of them have figured out how to do it right yet.

QFFT

Steve, we really lost a resource when you went out of business. I prize the haubergeon that I bought off of you, and have not found nearly the quality since.