Hi y’all
Some time back, I’ve taken the time to build my own hash tumbler. These tumblers were originally invented for pollen collection, hence them being sold online as “pollen tumblers”. They turn rather slowly (iirc about 3 rpm) as they rely on the falling motion of the leaf, knocking the trichomes loose as the flowers or leaves hit the inner surface of the mesh drum. For this reason it is important that the mesh screen be stapled to the drum as tight as you can get it, so it has some tension in the drum surface where the leaf can smash it’s mass into, instead of the leaf being gently caught by a flimsy safety net. Just so we are all on the same page on what we are doing here.
For the outer box, I used scrap bits n pieces of wooden boards I had laying around, so it’s not much of a looker. It gets the job done perfectly though! I’ll roughly explain how I put mine together, but do MacGyver your way through your leftover bits n pieces to make this work your way!
The screen material is just simple printing cloth; you can use several drums with different mesh sizes for different strains if you like. Printing screen cloth doesn’t always come in “mesh” sizing, so you might need a converting table to get the numbers on your order right. I know I did.
Sativa and outdoor will often have smaller trich heads, so you will need a smaller mesh size.
Hybrids can go either way, and it’s not necessarily in line with how the bud affects you.
Indica and indoor tends to have larger trichomes.
These are general guidelines and far from always true.
The ideal mesh size for most people would be somewhere between 50 and 90µ, this will get most of the trichomes out for all strains without allowing too much other debris to fall through.
You CAN run it all through one mesh size, which is what I do. In that case, IMO, it’s best to go with a medium mesh size like 70µ, which will generally leave you with a very nice high quality dry sift. I am more an Indica type of guy, and IIRC, I went with 65µ, which is small for the type of bud I like most, but I figured if it was too small I could always step one up, and I’d rather have a bit more patience to obtain higher quality than speed things up in expense of it, which I think is what a bigger mesh size would do.
The drum is made from 2 circular discs of MDF wood, with 3 slits cut out of the circumference, that hold the bars keeping the right distance between the outer discs.
One of these discs then has an access port cut out from the middle. This cut out circle is then glued onto another bigger circle creating a lid. The lid is held in place by some other bits crafted from leftover wood. Attach the bits with 1 screw each in the right place so you have a nice locking mechanism. In the middle of the port, a socket cap screw can function as the axle.
It might have been better to make the discs out of pine wood as the MDF shows quite some stress from the stapling of the cloth. It holds though, so I soldiered on.
The bars: 2 of the bars are cut from plywood, 1 from solid wood, as you need to be able to staple the mesh cloth to the third bar. The bars are 1.5 inch high, long rectangles, only with a little corner cut out of each end, to keep the discs’ distance. The corner that’s cut out is the same depth as the thickness of the discs, so it fits nicely in the slits that you cut out of the circumference of the circles. The bars all need to be about 1 - 1.5 inch in height, as they not only serve to keep the shape of the drum, but also as blades to allow an efficient motion of the plant matter.
The motor, rated for 10 rpm, I found online, just like the power supply for it. The 8mm axle has a beechwood gear on it, that drives a larger gear, also made of beechwood. The gears were made by glueing a gear template made with some online gear calculator on top of the wood, taking a jigsaw roughly around the circumference, then drilling the hole in the small gear for the grub screw that secures it to the axle, followed by drilling out the female parts in both the gears’ teeth with a drill stand mount (a bench drill would be better of course but I make do) and then using a jigsaw to carefully saw the male parts of the teeth, turning the gears around afterwards and using both gears, the jigsaw, a few files and some sanding paper to create a relatively smooth running gearwork.
Both ends of the drum have an axle end piece that’s really no more than a socket cap screw that ends up in a hole in one end and a screw-in holder on the other. There would be other ways to do this of course, like having a U-shaped spot to lay the axle ends in. That would have actually been easier probably but hey, hindsight’s 20/20.
I have yet to use this with wet material and CO2 (dry ice) pellets, which should theoretically also work, as long as you work it all in freezing temperatures, meaning, run it in the freezer! I have heard of this turning into a mess rather easily though, so do take care not to let anthing thaw, and when done, to let all materials dry sufficiently. The dry ice will not render any moisture, but the fresh frozen will if you let it.!
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love the craftsmanship, outer box be damned. Seriously really freakin sweet 
