Hi Delia,

I personally tumble polish all of my cloisonné and champlevé jewellery. I can't remember ever having something break, and I have found that the polishing brings the cloisonné wires up to a fantastic shine. I do take a few precautions when tumbling:

1) I fill the tumbler barrel at least 3/4 full of stainless steel shot (though, I think I may use even more shot than this). This way, the cloisonné will always be supported by the shot and won't have a falling phase within the barrel that could be damaging to the glass. It is not worth saving money on stainless steel shot if you run the risk of denting pieces or cracking the enamel. In addition to the shot, I fill the barrel full of water (I don't bother with soapy solutions or special polishing liquids).

NOTE: I understand that weight can be a limiting factor here because more shot may cause more wear on the tumbler motor. My tumbler is a rickety thing, so I don't really worry about it. If you have a nice tumbler you might want to see if it has weight guidelines in the manual.

2) I only tumble pieces for 30 - 45 minutes at most, and I peek on them every 10 - 15 minutes to be sure nothing has gone wrong.

3) I make sure I have a good coat of counter enamel on everything!

I hope this helps. I'd recommend tumbling a small piece first to make sure you have confidence in your own set-up before you tumble something you've labored months on.

Christine

I agree to Christine. I polish my silver cloisonné jewelery work also more than 40 years as described by Christine . Before the tumbling I polish the entire workpiece with a silver polish and / or cerium oxide with a felt-wheel. To remove possible dirt, I add soap into the tumbler. For me it makes sense, because the foam is dark gray after tumbling.
After tumbling I clean the works with a nail brush under running water, dry it, and rub the enamel surface with a white candle stick. Afterwards I polish the enamel-surface with kitchenpaper towels until no wax is longer to see.

Don't tumble 2 differend metalls like copper and silver at the same time. Otherwise the silver becomes a copper deposit!

Edmund

Christine,

  Thank you so much for taking the time to share this with me.  I've been wanting to try it but was too faint of heart to try it without having more than once source to confirm it.  I am a newbie to cloisonné, just learning as I go by trial and error.  I never even considered that people could work months on a single piece.  THAT would explain the masterpieces I've seen.  So much to aspire to.

Thank you Edmund.  I especially appreciate the warning against tumbling mixed metals.  I often mix copper and silver in my metalwork settings and wouldn't have thought twice about throwing one of those in the tumbler.  You may have just saved me a world of heart ache.

Kind regards,

Delia

If it really happens that you have a thin copper-deposit on silver it's no big problem. Because the deposit is very thin you can remove it normally with a silver cleaning cloth or silver cleaning agent.

Thanks!  This is fabulous information and I just ordered some more steel shot for my tumbler.  I was recently experimenting with tumbling my cloisonné to polish the cloisonné wire that I had oxidized, but had been terrified that I would crack the enamel. 

I read somewhere before where an artist said you could tumble polish cloisonné jewelry but I've not found any information on that to confirm that this is a safe practice.  Has anyone here had any experience with this?  Do you recommend it, recommend against it?  Any feedback is appreciated.