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Making a Better Dremel Buffing Wheel Desiree's stitched polyester felt buffing wheel Anita's stitchless cotton buffing wheel Introduction While I thought my main buffing tool was a Foredom bench model, I find, more and more that I'm favoring my variable speed Dremel for its convienence, extreme portability and increased suitability for doing small to modest sized items like beads and pendants. IMHO, the key drawback with my Dremel, however, had been it's tiny cloth buffing wheel, a thin little disc that's about 3/8th inch thick and 1 inch in diameter. The area that actually touches the item to be buffed was very small - too small for my needs. Dremel's cloth wheel was also a bit too course for polymer clay. Which is understandable since it was not designed with polymer clay in mind. On the page Make a Better Dremel Spindle, I describe how I made a spindle to accommodate holding more than one Dremel cloth buffing wheel. On this page, I want to share with you how I made a superior (IMHO) buffing system. I didn't think this one up, Becca

Tutorial Dremel

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Making a Better Dremel Buffing Wheel

Desiree's stitched polyester felt buffing wheel

 

Anita's stitchless cotton buffing wheel

Introduction

While I thought my main buffing tool was a Foredom bench model, I find, more and more that I'm favoring my variable speed Dremel for its convienence, extreme portability and increased suitability for doing small to modest sized items like beads and pendants. IMHO, the key drawback with my Dremel, however, had been it's tiny cloth buffing wheel, a thin little disc that's about 3/8th inch thick and 1 inch in diameter. The area that actually touches the item to be buffed was very small - too small for my needs. Dremel's cloth wheel was also a bit too course for polymer clay. Which is understandable since it was not designed with polymer clay in mind.

On the page Make a Better Dremel Spindle, I describe how I made a spindle to accommodate holding more than one Dremel cloth buffing wheel. On this page, I want to share with you how I made a superior (IMHO) buffing system. I didn't think this one up, Becca Crauswell did (the 'angel'), who told a wonderful email friend who suggested I try making one. So I did! In fact, I made two. Then I tested my new buffing system on some unfinished polyclay eggs I had laying about. (heh heh)

I must say I've buffed/buffed for quite a few years using various methods and machines, including a Foredom bench buffer with a cotton wheel, not to be confused with the slightly courser muslin wheel. The trick is the polyester felt. It produces a wonderful shine in at least a 1/3 - 1/4 of the time. I highly recommend trying this, if you can. I went from liking

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my Dremel to loving it and wanting to buff anything in site. (OK, I was a little excited in the beginning.) And for those who have not buffed before, keep in mind you need to do a good sanding job first or no amount of buffing will help.

Don't get me wrong, I also find my Foredom bench buffer to be great. I use both appliances. But that blasted Dremel is so darn convenient. I find I use it most of the time. Plus, because I can make the wheels any size I want.

Below are instructions for two different types of buffing wheels:

Desiree's stitched polyester felt Anita's stitchless cotton sheet

o I considered Anita's technique so clever, I asked her if I could include it in this tute. Since I haven't tried it yet, you will need to direct any questions about it to her via her Esty store.

Desiree's stitched polyester felt

Here's what I used:

a square foot of polyester felt (make sure it's not wool felt - regular wool felt is too coarse). Make sure it's soft and at least 3/16 inch thick ). For sources, try thefeltpeople - thickfelts (Durafelt) or talk to the nice folks at Nancys Sewing Basket.

OR some possible alternatives to felt (any of these need to be tightly woven)

o a nice soft piece tightly woven aged denim

o sweat pants or shirts o you get the idea ;-)

scissors a 1" - 1.5" diameter circle

template a way to stitch (preferably a

sewing machine) 1" long spindle (click Make a

Better Dremel Spindle, for how to make your own)

felt marker

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1) Using your circle template, mark 1.5 inch diameter circles on the polyester felt. Cut them out as precisely as possible. I usually stitch 4 circles to make one wheel and join three wheels on that modified wood screw, so I'll cut out 12 circles.

2) Stack 4 circles on top of each other.

   

3) With a felt marker, make a spot dead center in the top circle. Make a hexagonal outline and a 5pt star outline on the top felt circle. Stitch along those outlines. Since the felt material is so soft, the stiffer and stronger you can make the wheel's core, the better. This outline pattern stitching provides minimal reinforcement for the wheel. More stitching within the hexagonal outline can make it stronger.

   

4) Trim as best as possible with scissors. I usually make 3 sets and stack them together. With the type of felt I use, this buffing wheel lasts me at least a year, depending on how much I buff, of course.

Note 1: These directions are for a wheel that can be mounted on a hand held rotary tool like a Dremel. I suspect you can cut out larger circles for making a buffing wheel that would fit on a bench buffer. But don't make the wheels that you'll use on the Dremel any larger than 1.5" or you'll overwork the motor and shorten its life.

Note 2: Another method is to cut out squares instead of circles; about 1.5" square in size. Stagger their positions so 3-4 squares stacked on top of each other looks like a 12-16 point star. Why a star? It spins cooler, which is better for polymer clay.

You'll need to stitch the set in the

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center area to make sure they remain staggered. Make 2-3 of those sets. Caution - make sure the squares aren't too big. If you hear the motor pitch is lower when running, the wheel is too big and is overloading the motor. Trim the squares a bit to reduce the workload.

Anita's stitchless cotton sheet

I cut several approx. 2" diameter circles from a 600 thread count satin cotton sheet (it's very soft and dense at the same time), stacked them on top of each other, folded the stack over a Dremel sanding bit (the one that looks like a little drum...???),

...and tied a wire around underneath the "drum".

When you turn on the Dremel, the cloth disks spread out like an umbrella and do a great job buffing. Sometimes I use the upper half (where the cloth is pulled over the "drum") for removing small imperfections. But I do not like sewing and tried to rig the cloth this way, and it seems to work great.

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I considered Anita's technique so clever, I asked her if I could include it in this tute. Since I haven't tried it yet, you will need to direct any questions about it to her via her Esty store.

Tutorial - How-to with a dremel tool and magic eraser

Hi Everyone,

Today's post is long with a lot of detours as I point out various bits and pieces. At Morrisburg a while back I did a tutorial on how to make the Michael Buessler beads and how I sand them. While people ooh-aahhed over the beads by far the most enthusiasm was for how I sanded them. I will post a bit on the beads later but here's how I go about my sanding (though there's a twist that I tried today that I didn't teach at Morrisburg).

What you need:- dremel tool with assorted collets and drill bits- drywall sandpaper- 180 grit wet/dry sandpaper- Mr. Clean magic eraser

If you have a dremel tool one of the most useful accessories is the dremel collet set which allows you to use various drill bit sizes. You can see a picture of the kit here here. The kits are cheap, particularly at this website since I paid more than 2x that at our local home depot.

The first step is to put the bead on the drill bit. When I make the beads I start with a hole in them, but if you don't have a hole, just drill a bit through - it's actually desirable to have the bit snug in the bead. It'll loosen up and I'll get to that in a bit.

Put some damp paper towel or rag underneath some drywall sandpaper. The damp paper towel keeps a lot of the dust down. For those that are concerned about clay dust, you may want to wear a dust mask during this portion. Couple of points: if the damp is too damp, you'll end up generating a nice spray of fine clay bits all over anything in the area. If it's too dry you'll end up generating more dust. Lay the drywall sandpaper on top.

I can't take credit for the drywall sandpaper idea, Cathy M from Guild taught us the value of this tool, and she got it from someone who got it from someone who got it from one of the clay greats...

You can see in the first section of the photo below (click on the photo to get a bigger image, I can't figure out how to make it larger in the blog) that I've roughly shaped the bead into a cylinder, but there are a lot of sharp edges on it. The bead is fully baked at this point.

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If you're curious as to how I got the first three images together as one image, I brought them into Microsoft PowerPoint, grouped them, then clicked on the grouping and exported as jpeg.

IMPORTANT!!! Before touching the dremel tool to the sandpaper, make sure that you've got your speed set to the lowest speed. I didn't on one of the beads and I bent the mandrel that the bead was sitting on and the bead went flying off across the room. Which brings me to another MORE IMPORTANT point - wear protective eye covering since unusual things can and will happen.

OK, enough detour, back to the lesson. Turn on the machine and press it against the drywall paper. It should start to smooth out as you can see in the middle photo.

Sometimes what will happen is that the drill bit will go all the way through the bead and the bead will start spinning on the bit rather than the bit spinning the bead. This is OK, it just makes the process a bit slower. I'm not sure why it happens, on some beads it does and some it doesn't. For whatever reason the red beads that I made do this more than some of the other colours. If I get frustrated I'll move to a larger drill bit and that will last a while. I'm tempted to try to bake the bit into the clay and see what happens with that (though that's how I bent the mandrel). There's some trial and error here. Feel free to try to push down harder on the edges to give a more tapered bead (I'll show that in a different posting) and to flip the bead on the bit. You can also start experimenting with speeds, but go slow!

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Eventually (in my photos it was about three - five minutes) you'll get the bead smooth as in the third part of the first photo. Now you're ready to move onto the sanding sponge. This is a sanding sponge that's 180 grit that I bought in the paint department of our hardware store. I dampen the sponge and hold the tool to the sponge. At this point there's quite a bit of spinning of the bead and it doesn't take any pressure at all to make the bead stop spinning while the bit continues. Adding more water seems to help. You'll generate a bit of clay sludge on the sandpaper - that's actually useful because it serves as a finer grinding surface and helps with the polishing. Once you've got it as smooth as you think you can get it (you want the big scratches removed from the first sanding), you're ready to move onto the next step. The sanding sponge if everything goes well takes maybe a couple of minutes tops. But, if you're futzing with the bead because it's so slippery on the bit then it'll take longer.

This next step is where I

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differed from what I taught at Morrisburg. I've been seeing things on the Internet alluding to the Mr. Clean Magic Erasers being good as clay tools(if you don't know what I'm talking about, you can go see it here) though I haven't seen anything concrete (I haven't been looking too hard). So I thought I'd try this today. Tore a piece off one of the ones that I had, dampened it and tried running the bead on it. Beauty!!! It took away all of the fine scratches with no problems and I was ready to move onto the buffing.

At this point my bead is way too loose on the bit to make it useful for buffing. I switched to one of my other dremel tool attachments. I'm a complete newbie when it comes to the dremel tool. My husband gave me one for Christmas and I've been experimenting with it on and off. So this piece looked like it might work on the bead. But, as you can see after a couple of minutes buffing, the bead broke because one of the slices separated. No big deal unless you're making a matched pair, just remove the slice and put the bead back on. I played around on a variety of surfaces with the buffing. A shop towel paper towel seems to work just as well as anything.

And here's the finished buffed piece. All told, it's probably 10 minutes of polishing, but no scraped fingernails, and no futzing for many minutes before baking the bead trying to get a perfect cylinder.

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Hope this helps. If anyone else discovers some modifications to what I've said here that make things even easier, I'd love to hear about them.

Enjoy,

Sandy

Making a Better Dremel Buffing Mandrel

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This page describes how I made a customized buffing Dremel spindle to hold more than one cloth buffing wheel.

While my main buffing tool is a Foredom bench model, I find I favor my variable speed Dremel (C) for its convienence, extreme portability and increased suitability for doing small items like beads. IMHO, the key drawback with the Dremel, however, is it's tiny cloth buffing wheel, a thin little disc that's about 3/8th inch thick and 1 inch in diameter (A). The area that actually touches the item to be buffed ends up being very small - too small for my needs.

I've always wanted to, at least, add a second disk to double the buffing area, but the spindle (B), the accessory that fits into the Dremel to hold the cloth wheel, has room for only one.

Today I decided to see what I could do to change that limitation. heh heh.

Success! I figured out a solution that looks like it will accommodate at least 1-2 more wheels.

Here's what you'll need if you want to do the same.

- two nice new cloth buffing wheels (A) - variable speed Dremel rotary tool (C) - metal cutting emery wheel {Dremel #409} and its spindle {Dremel #402} (D) - * zinc wood screw, 5 X 1-1/2" (E) - safety goggles - metal file - pliers

* Some folks have mentioned they have had trouble finding that size screw. What you need to do is find a screw where the non-threaded part is a thickness that will fit into the Dremel. Use one of the spindles that comes with the the Dremel so you can do a good job of estimating sizes.

1) Put on your safety goggles. Take one wood screw. Hold the threaded end with some pliers because it will get too hot to hold when you perform the next step.

2)  Cut off the head of the 5 X 1-1/2" screw using your Dremel and the metal cutting emery wheel attachment. Make ABSOLUTELY SURE to wear safety goggles when doing this because tiny bits of metal could wind up in your eyes. Sparks will likely fly but that's okay.

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3)  File any rough cut edges using a metal file disk or a metal file. With the screw head removed, you've got yourself a buffing wheel "spindle". The end of the screw that you've just filed is the end that goes into the Dremel.

4)  Twist the first cloth buffing wheel onto the pointy, threaded end of your new spindle until about 3/8ths inch of the screw's end shows.  

Twist on the second cloth wheel until it is right up against the first wheel and just the tip of the screw shows.

 

5)  Mount the screw and wheel accessory into the Dremel and spin for a few minutes against some kind of hard edge, like a counter top or table edge, to remove the first few loose cloth threads.

Congrats. You've just doubled your Dremel buffing capacity! hee hee.

Note: If you want to make your own buffing wheel that is optimal for polymer clay, click here.

Je lustre, tu lustres, elle lustre...

On m'a souvent demandé comment certaines de mes pièces brillaient autant sans vernis.

En bonne feignante, j'utilise les outils qui facilitent le travail! Alors voici une astuce connue mais qu'il est bon de rappeler!

Il suffit d'une bonne mini-perceuse type Dremel et d'un vieux jeans!Mais avant ça un peu d'huile de coude au dessus de l'évier de la

cuisine pour un peu de ponçage au papier de verre de carrossier que l'on trouve dans beaucoup de magasins de bricolage. Je commence au grain 600 en général pour aller jusqu'au 1000 tout dépend des pièces et du rendu que l'on souhaite. Si vous deviez n'avoir qu'une sorte de

grain, le 800 est très bien!

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Donc pour faire des disques à lustrer pour une mini-perceuse il faut découper une 10aine de disques dans un vieux jeans

Ensuite appliquer de la super glue au centre

Coller les disques les uns sur les autres

Lorsque 8 disques ont été collés, attendre que la colle soit sèche et percer au centre (perso j'ai mis 9 rondelles mais tout dépend de

l'épaisseur du jeans. Il sera plus facile d'ajouter une rondelle que d'en retirer une donc vérifier avant avec le mandrin (photo suivante))

Voici le support nécessaire pour fixer les disques: un mandrin et 2 rondelles.

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Et voilà, l'outil est quasi fini!Il faut l'"affûter" un peu car là c'est un peu raide. Avant de l'utiliser

sur de la pâte, faites le tourner sur une surface dure (métal par exemple) qui ne craint pas pour "casser" un peu la rigidité et évacuer

les 1ères fibres.

Vous remarquerez aussi très vite lorsque vous lustrer qu'un coup de balais est obligatoire ensuite et que ça chatouille le nez car les fibres

s'envolent au fur et à mesure.

ATTENTION!!!!!!! La vitesse de rotation détermine le succès

ou l'échec du lustrage donc partez doucement au départ et faîtes des tests sur les pièces auxquelles vous ne tenez pas!

On trouve aussi des disques à polir en tissus tout fait chez dremel par exemple comme celui là

tout neuf                tout vieux

Celui-là est quand même un peu plus dense et donc un peu plus dur avec la fimo, mais plus il est vieux et mieux c'est.

Voilà !

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Lustrez bien!