Stainless Steel Tumbling- Interesting Discovery

[RBHarter]

In Nevada it's called the Silver State 250 . It's run up US 93 .
Classes 80,90,100,120 and unlimited . Driver , co-pilot/navigation/clock master . Class winners are by closest to class speed unlimited has set street legal rules plus safety equipment requirements . But if you can get an Indy/F1 or NASCAR street legal with 2 seats and a JATO bottle you're good to go .

The Churchill Co Museum has or had one of the sponsored cars for a long time . A 68' dual quad cross ram hemi Monoco coup ...I think . It was a Dodge and the engine compartment was full of that intake manifold with the right side cylinders fed by a spread bore offy just over the outside edge of the lefthand rocker covers . I think it came about just about the same time Gumball Rally was released .......1 may have been the result of the other ......

 

[Gary]

Just finished this batch of 5.56 and they look spectacular! No pins in the flash holes and they'll be ready to load when I am in the AM.

 

[M3845708Bama]

I felt the need to see just how well I could uniform a mess of once-fired Federal 9mm cases, all from the same lot. I first dry tumbled them in my elderly Lyman tumbler, them sized & decapped them in preparation for a trip through the wet tumbler with stainless pins. All was well, and I ran them for a few hours until thoroughly clean. I planned to do some weight sorting, and wanted them as clean as possible for this. All went well, and then I inspected my cases as I fiddled with them.

One of the first things I noticed was that the flash holes seemed on the small size, I didn't think too much about it because case manufacturers seem to fiddle with such details at random. Then I found a few cases that were almost blocked completely. The flash hole from the primer pocket side appeared to be larger than it did from the case mouth side. All the cases were like this, so I checked a few other caliber cases that were cleaned and ready to load and noticed the same thing there too. It took me a minute, but I realized that tumbling the cases in stainless must be peening the burr around the flash hole flat, and that was causing the constriction.

I'm sure the cases would still fire, but I dug out my deburring tool and cleaned up all the cases I found like this, which was pretty much all of them. I can't help but wonder if this could be causing some match shooters some real variations in ES on their chronographs. I just thought I'd mention it. I'll still keep wet tumbling, but now everything will get the flash hole uniformed and deburred too. Weird, huh?

If the burs are large enough to affect the flash holes, then they are probably affecting powder burn. You may want to try champhering the inside of the flash hole. Some holes are drilled and some are punched, often the punched holes are not clean and leave part of punched material on one side of the flash hole on the inside. Can effect accuracy.

 

[358156 hp]

I have a deburring tool for flash holes that I used to take care of the situation. These were all Lake City cases, and weren't anything spectacular. My concern was mainly for the guys who can't figure out why they are having such a bad time with std deviation on the chrono, just another thing to go wrong!

 

[Gary]

Why a few hours in the SS media? Two hours TOPS on my brass and never have had a flash hole problem. It just doesn't take that long to get the cases clean.

 

[Ian]

Two to three to get the primer residue out using my particular tumbler. I run them all for three, usually.

 

[Gary]

I suspect that's why the flash hole is being peen'd. Two hours tops in my home built tumbler with hot water, LemiShine, and wash and wax auto soap.

 

[Rick]

A couple of hours to clean the primer pockets? With this in a few seconds it's cleaner, flatter and they are all a uniform depth.



Sinclair primer pocket tool. Simple. Fast. Effective in the extreme.

 

[Will]

I have looked at that tool several times Rick it’s just hard for me to get over the $30 price tag.

So far I’ve been happy using my stainless tumbler after running brass through a universal decapping die. Then it goes in the media seperator and onto a towel.
Then after a few hours I put mine in the corn cob media with tiny bit of nu finish. Probably way overboard but my brass looks brand new each time I load it.

 

[358156 hp]

My Thumlers is the early low RPM model. It takes longer than the newer high speed version. I'll probably update it when the motor gives out.

I'm not interested in uniforming the primer pockets in thousands of cases. Its hard enough to stay motivated to do all the prep work as it is. I do have the tool for it though, mine is from Whitetail Design, which gives an idea of how old it is. It's still as sharp as it was when new. I use it primarily for match handgun cases. I also trim them, which amuses some people to no end.

 

[Brad]

Pretty sure that Whitetail sold the design and rights to Sinclair.
Will, it is worth the money. I chuck it in a cordless drill and get to work. Being solid carbide it will last a lifetime as long asylum don't drop it on concrete floors.
I hade the large and small rifle and they get lots of use.

 

[Will]

I may have to break down and buy one. I’ll put that on the list of all the other precision loading tools I need.

 

[USSR]

A couple of hours to clean the primer pockets? With this in a few seconds it's cleaner, flatter and they are all a uniform depth.

View attachment 5188

Sinclair primer pocket tool. Simple. Fast. Effective in the extreme.

Yep, got that one. Like most of Sinclair's equipment, it's a good piece of kit.

Don

 

[358156 hp]

Pretty sure that Whitetail sold the design and rights to Sinclair.
Will, it is worth the money. I chuck it in a cordless drill and get to work. Being solid carbide it will last a lifetime as long asylum don't drop it on concrete floors.
I hade the large and small rifle and they get lots of use.

The "autocorrect" on Brads phone is positively Freudian today.

Thanls for the tip Brad, I want a couple more for the large primers, but I since Whitetail is gone now, and I only want this particular style, pickin's have been slim. And if an original Whitetail hits an auction site, it brings far more than they did when new. I did try Lymans small primer pocket uniformer in a drill, and didn't like it. It seems so simple, but it never ends up that way.

 

[Brad]

Not my phone, my iPad. It is well known for interesting typos like that.

The solid carbid tools like this are the cats ass. As long as you don't run the backwards you won't ever dull them. In a cordless drill they can make short work of uniforming primer pockets.
I once used them to depend LP pockets in 45 Colt brass to LR depth. I still used LP primers but this meant I knew the primer was not proud of the head. Only used this for brass used in heavy loads for my Marlin.

 

[Paul Gauthier]

I have recently started sst case cleaning as mention in another thread. Yes it cleans great, but I am still not on board 100%. It's that hard stainless and soft brass thing that I just can't get completely past, someday perhaps. But I am still doing it, 1000 to 1500 cases a week. So far no problem with pins stuck in the flash hole, I did experience some peening of the case mouths on a batch of 223 brass but it was caused by leaving them tumbler for 16 hours, forgot about them. Drying wet brass has not turned out to be a problem as I rinse and depin them in a Dillon media separator full of water, shake them out well enough and place them in a shallow pan then on top of the coal stove, dries them up real quick.

 

[Brad]

The pins won't hurt the brass with reasonable use.
And hell, some of the BPCR guys wet tumble brass with ceramic media and that stuff is way harder than your SS pins.

Use common sense and all will be fine.

 

[358156 hp]

It's not difficult to find pins sized to not fit into a flash hole. At least the std ones. All bets are off with the "non-toxic" marked handgun cases.

 

[M3845708Bama]

I have run into one problem with pins before I started adding car polish. The problem may be specific to my setu but this is what happened. I. Was shooting 6x45 and 308w and cleaning with sis pins after each firing. I begin to loose a number of cases from VERY thin circumficial cracks very close to mid point of the cases. Unless the inspection tool(right angle wire ground to a point was ground to a fine point) was really sharp, the crack would be so small and thin, it could not be detected. It was not a gradual thinning but an actual fine crack. The only thing I could figure out was the fine surface roughing cause by the s pins grabbed the sides of the chamber so tight that there were no sliding between case and chamber so when fired the pressure caused a slight expansion of chamber which was pulling the brass apart very slowly. There were no sudden failure of brass under pressure but I did have a few that had total separation while. running through sizing die (neck). The issue was resolved when I started adding liquid car wax to the water along with the citri acid and dawn. Just a heads up to anyone using pins, the car wax also keeps brass from tarnishing

 

[Ian]

I bought a Redding primer pocket uniforming tool, it came with a hex attachment for a drill, or it fits a trimmer. I don't use it for cleaning as much as for uniforming depth. I haven't run any real tests to see if it makes a difference in the shooting, but I can sure tell the difference when seating a primer.