Tempest 67, regarding your reverse light: If by “subtle” you meant “invisible”, you are right. If you hadn’t told me exactly where it is I would have mistaken it for just another bolt!
As for the hillbilly tumbler, I had tried all kinds of ways to clean up small stuff like nuts, bolts, clips, small brackets, etc. and nothing works like this thing. I was even given one of those fancy “vibratory tumblers” once and there’s no comparison. Plus it’s easy to make and it costs next to nothing. Here’s the completed unit, hanging in place and ready to go:
The palm sander is just some cheapo unit I picked up at Canadian Tire for something like 15 bucks a while back. I simply drilled a couple of ¼ inch holes through the palm sander base, and bolted it to the bottom of an old gallon can. Here’s a bottom view:
And here’s a top view (looking down inside the can). I added a small plate in the can so that the bolts don’t chew up the thin metal that the can is made of:
You can also see some of my “media”. I have a tandem truck load of this stuff as I use it in the winter on my driveway. Any coarse sand will work, it makes no difference at all so just grab whatever is free! The load of parts in my previous post is about as much as I ever toss in, and it only takes an inch or so of sand in the bottom of the can to clean this many parts. After a load or two I change the sand as its effectiveness does plummet after a bit of use. One drawback to the hilly tumbler is that it is very loud.
Hope this helps!