This year I am going to have a tumbler and was wondering where everyone gets their sawdust or grit

I just asked them at Home Depot for a bag. They took me to where they cut wood for customers and opened a vacuum inside a little door and I was free to take what I wanted

Any difference between hardwood and softwood sawdust?

I think hardwood sawdust would be better, lot of pitch in softwood.

Hardwood only
Best I ever used was oak planer shavings.

I buy corn cob pellets that are used as bedding material for horses and small animals. They cost around $7.00 or so for a 40 lb bag.

Same here. A 40 pound bag will last a long time.

I have several cabinet shops in the city here, I went to a larger one when I was doing my own fur work, they had all of their sawdust vacuumed into two separate large storage units one for hard wood and the other for soft wood and bagged the dust into 20 pound bags.

Nice to have it sorted as soft wood is not what you wish to tumble your fur in, you will be certainly disappointed with the result

I would tumble to coyotes with half a bag in my old 4 foot commercial dryer tumbler I reworked and sealed up for tumbling
Would let it run about half hour and I had 6 to eight soft ball size hard wood round balls I would throw in with it to keep the dust from sticking or clumping up, take them out and snap them a couple times, wow instant nice !!

Corn cob grit is superior to saw dust for tumbling fur.

This is available at my local tractor supply Corn cob grit horse bedding
$12 for 40lb

I get my sawdust from a horse shaving manufacturer. They grade the sawdust to use for fur tumbling. I think$5/6 a bag.

So you guys think I should get this

I was going to get this, but what do I know

X3 I think they stole the idea for me. LOL

Of course I stole the idea from you. I even got the dryer/tumbler idea from you too.

What good are friends if you can't take their ideas and use them as your own?

I probably never tumbed as much fur some others here have. When I was I got hardwood saw dust from a mill I went by every day running my trap line. They cut oak for rail road ties was good stuff for free.
I also was give a bag of the pellet used in pellet stoves and used them. I was alway looking for free stuff when trapping. I picked up a bucket full of corn cob chaff at farm couple times too.

I like the sound of the horse bedding pellets.

Mac

We both know Trapdog ain't smart enough to think of it on his own.

Well Jayme....when you're right, you're right.

I just bought a used Van Dyke for $600, it came with the super fine corncob in the barrel already. I sprayed the bloody spots on a wolf with soapy water yesterday and tossed it in before fleshing yesterday for about 10 minutes. Wow, works pretty good. You just have to shake it off outside.
The other cob I have is the bigger stuff, like tiny round balls which I’ve only used in my dryer, haven’t tried it in the drum. It’s ok.

If using for tumbling fur not sure I'd use walnut, in my experience in using walnut in polishing for reloading my brass always come out with a red / walnut colored film, have to run it through a corn cob media,for final polish, I'd be afraid the walnut media would tint the fur