Tumbler Troubles

Tumbler Troubles

As some of my faithful readers may remember from previous blogs, I've been an active devotee of the hobby of metal detecting for quite a number of years. I've used a half-dozen machines of various makes and models in the course of this hobby, the latest of which I purchased last year. The aim of the hobby is, of course, to acquire “treasures” from the ground. As you might imagine, the gold rings, gold coins, silver dollars, jewelry and other goodies are the most sought after. But the normal acquisitions that the ground yields up to the metal detectorist are usually common, everyday coins – cents, nickels, dimes and quarters – or rarely a half dollar. Occasionally a dollar coin is uncovered or some other rarity, but the vast majority of finds are quite simply pocket change.

What you have to understand about coins lost in the ground is this: they change color and get tarnished during their sojourn in the soil. I'm not sure of the chemistry, but the various metals in modern coinage react to the soil by darkening and tarnishing. So the coins you bring home at the end of your day digging them out of the ground will eventually need cleaning before any even semi-observant store will accept them. Or the banks. Or anyone.

I haven't cleaned any of my finds for a number of years. I've just been tossing them into a big jug in the basement and figuring I'd “get around” to cleaning them “one day”.

So the jug of dirty money sat in the basement.

Upstairs, in the extra bedroom we use for our library/computer room/file storage room we have two big jars which we also use for coins. They were originally the depository of pretzel rods. Now they hold pocket change. One is for cents only, the other has mixed nickels, dimes and quarters. There's LOTS of coins in them, about forty pounds worth in each one nowadays.

I've been looking at them for some time now, wondering what I was going to do with that money when I cashed it in. I wanted it to be used for something special, not just household expenses. The last time we had an accumulation of a magnitude near this size we bought a nice digital camera with the proceeds. But we had no need for a new camera at the moment, so what would we do with it?

As my faithful readers may also remember, my wife and I got into a new hobby last year – geocaching. That's where you get the coordinates of a hidden “treasure” on the Internet and, using a GPS receiver, go and find the target. When found, you sign a logbook, exchange small tokens if you like, and log the find on the Internet. We'd been using one of the more inexpensive GPS receivers last year and had talked a bit about getting a better one.

Aha! A reason to break the two “piggy banks”! A new GPS!

But, if I was going to do that, why not add the dug coins from the basement stash to the two big jars upstairs?

All I had to do was clean the dirty ones.

As you may or may not know, there are several ways to clean dirty coins. I've tried most of them. The easiest way is with a rock tumbler.

Let me explain.

A rock tumbler is a machine who's original purpose is to tumble semi-precious rocks in and, by tumbling with various grades of grit, smooth and polish those rocks until they became like gems and could be used to make jewelry of various sorts. You've probably seen them in rock shops or souvenir stands in bins with hundreds of smooth, colorful pieces of various minerals.

The rotary rock tumbler (the kind I have) is quite simple. It's just a soft rubber barrel into which you load whatever rocks you want to tumble to smooth and polish along with some grit. You seal the barrel and place it in a metal box where a motor turns the barrel. The load of rocks and grit in the barrel tumble against themselves and, by doing so, wear themselves smooth and rounded and, depending on the grit, highly polished.

The rock tumbler is also a dandy way to clean dirty coins. I have an old rotary tumbler which I purchased at a garage sale many, many years ago. It's given good service, but was definitely showing the signs of age. I'd taken the cover off the drive machinery (it didn't fit well anymore and rubbed the barrel) and had to doctor up the drive shaft (that turns the barrel) so it would grip the barrel better. Along with other tweaks. The barrel itself was old and the rubber was showing a lot of wear and dryness.

Last Saturday I sat down and sorted through the “treasures” in the basement jug. I separated the pennies from the clad coins and those from the other “stuff” in the jug. I ended up with two piles of dirty coins. I loaded up the rubber barrel from my tumbler with the pile of clad coins along with some sand, some aquarium gravel, some water and a dash of dish soap. I sealed the lid on the barrel and started it tumbling. I had to wrap some masking tape on the drive shaft to give it some “bite” so it would turn the barrel. It was running fine.

I left it running for three days which is what I usually did for a load of coins.

They came out fine. I rinsed the gravel, sand and slurry off the cleaned coins and let them air dry. They were plenty clean enough to spend, so I carted them upstairs and dumped them into the “silver” jug.

I then loaded up the cents into the barrel. You don't want to mix the cents with the clad coins as your result will all look coppery, even the clad ones. I started them tumbling three days ago.

They were doing fine yesterday afternoon which was the last time I checked them.

But as I descended the basement steps this morning, planning on emptying the barrel and rinsing the cleaned cents, I subconsciously noted a change in the sound from the workshop where the tumbler was running. Instead of the light grinding and grumbling a loaded barrel made when it was rotating, I just heard a humming. The humming of a rock tumbler motor without a load.

I grit my teeth, took a deep breath, walked into the workshop and turned on the light.

Sometime between yesterday afternoon and this morning, disaster had occurred on my workbench. One of two things had to have happened. The first possibility was that the idler shaft that kept the barrel square while the drive shaft turned it, had slipped out of it's bearings and dumped the barrel, thus knocking off the lid and dumping the contents on the bench top. The other possibility is that the barrel itself had succumbed to dry rot and had popped the lid off itself, dumping the contents onto the idler shaft and knocking it off.

Whatever the mechanism of the failure, the gray-black slurry that was in the barrel was suddenly ejected onto the motor's fan which, in turn, then splashed the glop onto the walls and everything within six feet of the motor. It was a mess, with gray splatter seemingly everywhere, dumped cents all over the machine with the dark slurry hardening into a stone-like mass over everything.

And the coins weren't even clean! They needed another day or so tumbling.

So...

I cleaned up the cents as well as possible, rinsing the gravel, sand and slurry off them, and put them on some paper towels to dry.

Tomorrow I'll start cleaning the workshop. Or else I may just paint the rest of the room in polka dots to match the slurry splatter that's there already.

I'll have to think about that.

In the meantime I've given the wrecked tumbler the old heave ho and have ordered a new one from a company on the Internet. It should be here later this week.

Then I can finish tumbling my pennies.

And what did I learn from this coin catastrophe?

I guess you could say I've got a cents about needing some change in my life.

Yeah, that one hurt...

The Miraculous Medicinal Properties of the Humble Bean Burrito

The Miraculous Medicinal Properties of the Humble Bean Burrito

As some of my loyal readers may remember from previous blogs, I've been a bit “under the weather” in recent months. Flu-ish symptoms evolving into bronchitis which, in turn, further descended into pneumonia. To combat these diseases I've taken several prescriptions for various antibiotics, the result of which were almost worse than the diseases themselves. I've been inching my way back from that dark period of my life over the past month or a bit longer and the miserable results of the diseases and the necessary cures have been easing. But it's been a l-o-n-g process that I'm sure I haven't quite seen the end of yet.

On Monday this week I decided I'd recovered enough that I'd be able to resume my bi- (or tri-) weekly visits to a local gym. My wife pays a certain amount of money out of each of her paychecks which enable us to use this local gym's facilities as we see fit. I actually used to like popping in there a few times a week to exercise a bit and raise a sweat. I know it's good for me and most of the time it's enjoyable. Some days are easier than others, however. Some days the time spent exercising passes quickly, the body sweats appropriately and the work seems virtually effortless. Other days it's like trudging through thick mud and the minutes drag like anchors embedded in a heavy clay sea bottom.

So I ended up at the gym on Monday after several months of not feeling well enough to go. I found it enjoyable to work muscles that had been ignored for so long and I performed my normal exercises with a sense of enjoyment and contentment of doing something good for myself for a change. I felt good afterwards albeit a bit sore. I also knew I'd be much more sore the next day if the normal course of events happened.

Tuesday I woke up feeling not so good. I'd had a headache around 2:30 in the morning and had arisen to take some ibuprofen for relief. When I finally crawled out of bed later in the morning, the headache was a distant memory, but I was sick to my stomach and felt generally blah, out of sorts, icky. My muscles were also barking at me for their unexpected usage the previous day, but I was expecting that reaction. I dragged myself through the day, feeling fairly miserable but not quite bad enough to stay home sick from work that afternoon. But I thought about calling in. A lot. I instead worked my normal shift that evening and the nausea and miserable feeling kept me company through the long nighttime hours.

On my way home after work Tuesday night I decided that I was kinda hungry and figured I'd stop at Taco Bell and get a bean burrito on the way home. Now that might not seem like a good idea, with the way my stomach had been queasy all day, but I thought, “What the hell. In for a dime, in for a dollar.” So I stopped at the restaurant's drive through around 12:45 in the morning and bought my yummy treat.

I got home, sat down in a chair and opened up the warm paper wrapper, inhaling the distinctive odor of the burrito. My mouth began to water and I suddenly couldn't wait to start devouring the burrito. I popped open a fire sauce packet and squeezed a healthy dollop of the hot sauce on the end of the burrito and slowly sank my teeth into it, savoring the delightful experience of the first bite. It was perfect! The soft mashed beans with their slightly crunchy hint of onions and the bite of the shredded cheddar cheese, along with the slightly grainy taste of the flour tortilla were a symphony in my mouth. The fire sauce added piquancy and heat to the luscious mouthful and, before you knew it, I was finished and sliding into my warm bed next to my sleeping wife. I worried a little about how my stomach might react to its unaccustomed snack, but I was soon asleep and worried no longer.

I woke up this morning and actually felt good! I was a bit surprised. I'd anticipated the continuation of the malaise from the previous day but... It was gone! I was still a smidge sore from the gym workout two days previous, but the stomach? Fine as a fiddle. Right as rain. Happy as a clam. Etc.

And so what do I attribute this small semi-miracle to?

To my strong intestinal constitution? To my usually iron-clad stomach? To the various pills and nostrums that I took the previous day for stomach distress? To the healing aspects of time?

Nay, my friends. I sincerely believe that it was none of the above mentioned things.

Some people claim to see Jesus in a toasted cheese sandwich and it brings them solace. Some see salvation in a mildew stain on the side of a barn and it relieves them of worry. Others believe in the healing power of pills, capsules, syrups, drops, inhalants and other substances which are swallowed, injected, breathed in or placed in body cavities.

But for me, I'd humbly like to profess that the answer lies in the simple bean burrito. For a mere 99 cents you can stop a belly ache, gain a night's pleasant slumber and satisfy an unconscious craving for Mexican food.

And, perhaps, achieve satori at the same time.

So, my faithful reader, what glimmer of wisdom have we gained today?

To wit: When in doubt, try a bean burrito. The results might be astonishing!