Chain Cleaning

I have been building a garden swing seat for the summer. Most of the seat materials have been recycled or repurposed from somewhere or another.

I needed a few metres of chain to support the seat, all I had was really rusty and didn't look very smart at all. I did not fancy cleaning it all with a wire brush or using s chemical cleaner. The alternative was to use the cabinet blaster but this was taking forever.........

I decided that I needed to make a tumbler or trommel to use the rotary action to clean the chain. But this would be more work and how often would I actually use it?

This in the middle of the night I had a tough.......... concrete mixer..........................

Step 1: Concrete and Glass..........

I have a concrete mixer and a huge tub of glass cullet that is too coarse for my cabinet blaster (It got sent to me by mistake.)

Put the glass in the mixer with the chain and see what happens, after all whats the difference between the mixer and a tumbler?

Step 2: Rusty Chain

As you will see the chain is really rusty and looks really horrid. Drop it in the mixer with the cullet and 30 minutes later..............

Step 3: Before and After.........

After about 30 minutes of tumbling............ a bright chain........... much better.

A soak in some oil and left to hang for an hour and a I had a perfectly good chain form the seat.

The picture shows the before and after.

Really impressed with the process and the outcome. Now what else can I cane this way? Or shall I build a tumbler?