Doing what I said I would never do.

[Paul Gauthier]

A few weeks ago I decided to take the plunge and try stainless pin tumbling. I have had a Lortone R40 tumbler for 5-6 years and it has been doing a stellar job using crushed corn cob and I have been happy with it. I am not particularly interested in how shiny my brass is, I care only that it is clean and free of residue and grit.

I have always been opposed to it because I know that stainless steel is much harder than brass and that it must cause undue wear. It seems I was right as there must be billions of brass particles floating about in the water as I drain it. I also did not want to have to dry the brass after cleaning but that part of the job became quite easy by placing the brass in a shallow pan and place said pan on top of my coal stove, twenty minutes later, dry brass. It was the dirty, carbon filled primer pockets that finally drove me over the edge. While I am very pleased with the results in the primer pockets , I am still not pleased with all the tiny particles I see in the water. ​

I guess I will just have to live with it.

 

[Brad]

Those little particles exist in your corn cob media too.
The SS pins do so much better at really cleaning the brass. The inside of the cases are now clean too, corn cob won't do that.

 

[Kevin Stenberg]

+1 ^^

 

[Wasalmonslayer]

Good morning

I tried a little experiment the other day with wet tumbling.
I left out the pins and just ran the brass with wash and wax it worked better than corn cob but the primer pockets were still dirty just like tumbling in media.
I know some guys don’t worry about primer pockets on pistol stuff so this is an option for them.
I ran it for 2.5 hrs and the brass exterior and interior was very clean and shiny!
You might just give it a try.

Have a good day
Max

 

[Dusty Bannister]

I use the Lyman Cyclone and find that I really do not need the pins to get good clean cases. My solution is Lemi-shine and the Armorall Car wash and wax. It took a few batches to get the ratio right for good cleaning and a bright finish. I have run with and without the SS pins. I see blackish foam in the container after running with the pins. I only see the white foam without pins. My run time is about one to one and a half hours. Minimal brass metal flakes are present with the shorter run time. I have to wonder if perhaps the black I see is from the SS pins as brass oxide would be green.

I primarily run 223 cases, so do not worry about the inside of the case. I still need to uniform the primer pockets so cleaning would take place at that point.

I will still use the dry media cleaner once the cases have been through the wet cleaner because they will never get that dirty again.

 

[Ian]

Those brass flakes used to be burrs on the edges that you don't want anyway. You won't wear out the brass by cleaning it with SS pins and a rotary tumbler, not before shooting and reloading it does, anyway.

Abrasive cob etc. embeds and wears your brass, dies, and guns, too. I think I'd rather wear on just the sacrificial part of the equation.

 

[oscarflytyer]

I tried a small pin batch and it turned out awesome. A batch of brass I got that was real rough pushed me over the edge. I salvaged prob 100-150 cases that would have otherwise been tossed.

 

[Barn]

I use a rotary tumbler with a dash of dish soap and citric acid. I then used primers - the opposite size of the brass that I am cleaning.

 

[fiver]

for pistol cases I deprime, then wet tumble, then throw them in a dry tumbler to apply the wax.
it waxes them and dries the cases at the same time.
makes the super shiny cases run through the Dillon easier and the wax keeps them from tarnishing much longer.

 

[Todd M]

Barn, you used primers as the tumbling media? Good idea!

Although, that would certainly increase the amount of pollutants that I came in contact with while loading.

 

[Paul Gauthier]

Just to night I ran about 300 44 mag cases, they look great, pockets look like new.. In the last two days I have deprimed 1400 30-30 cases, have about 100 more to do, I will run those in three batches.

I am running all my brass through my Dillon 650 just to deprime, I put on a counter when I started with the 30-30's so my count above is accurate. I should have put the counter on when I started doing this, have run about, just guessing mind you, 4000 cases total among 223, 380, 44, 45 acp. Going to be fun when I get to the nine MM's, think I have 10,000+ of those, also have several thousand 40 s&w, and I don't have a gun for those. Never will either, don't like that cartridge.

I am sure I don't need to tell you this but don't run you cases for 16 hours in your tumbler. I forgot about them. Firstly they come out brown and secondly the case mouths are severely peened over and will take much work to recover. I changed the water and added citric acid only and ran them for 3 hours and now they are shiny but useless right now.

On to next adventure.