Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles What kind of medium do you use in your tumblers?

I started with crushed walnuts but now I'm using crushed corn cobs. The corn cobs take a little longer, so I just turn the tumbler on and then go to bed. Then I turn it off first thing in the morning.

Lizard Litter from Petco. Ground up walnut shells, and much less expensive than the same thing packaged for brass cleaning.

I would never use any other tumbler after switching over to the rotary style with SS pins. They come out looking better than new, inside and out. Saves some wear and tear on your dies too since they are clean.

Ditto.

I'm not making jewelry, I'm making ammo.
I use a 50/50 mix of walnut and corn cob to clean the brass. I don't really care about a high shine.
Many times I just wipe the brass of with a rag and reload. I haven't found any accuracy advantage in bright shiny brass.

I am not making jewelry either. Still I have grown to prefer the wet tumble w SS pins and Lemi shine.

Remove the primer. Wet tumble for roughly 3 hours. Rinse w warm water separate SS media. Roll back and forth in a towel to rough dry. then into the oven at 220 F to dry for 30 min.

Nothing wrong with your preferred method either, results in the end will be essentially the same.

The first batch of brass I ran using the SS pins was some once fired that had previously been through a vibratory tumbler but not loaded. Should have seen how dirty the water was, just from the inside of the cases. I think of it as similar to build up inside a chimney, and nobody wants that.

Walnut - if you have a Harbor Freight near you bulk box in the blasting media section is very cheap per pound. Tumble some cut up dryer sheets to get rid if the dust . You can use an ounce of liquid car wax every 5-10 tumblings if you want to get a bit of extra shine.

SS pin media does in one hour what a vibratory with aNY choices of media / potions can't equal in 5 hours. Its that fast.

Me too. That's why I don't tumble my brass.

Lyman Tuff Nut works good for me, hate to wait for brass to dry, at first I was put off by the red dust but it only is notable for the first few times its just rouge,

edited, guess I should check spelling before posting

What size grit?




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I use that green Lyman stuff. Works beautifully and smells good.

Actually, I don't like to put a medium in my tumbler. She wouldn't fit easily and would probably make a lot of noise.

I use jeweler's rouge impregnated walnut shells. It gets the cases clean enough that they don't damage the dies, they shine enough for me, and I don't have to mess around rinsing and drying the brass.

in the late 1980's the place i worked at bought a
machine of some kind on a whim and it used crushed
walnut. they had several five-gallon buckets of that stuff
they threw away. i retrieved it and i'm still using on it.
it gets a shot of automotive polishing compound now
and then.
like others have posted^ ^ ^ ^ i don't tumble every
load unless the brass is dirty and would scratch dies.
even then i only tumble to clean it, not get a mirror
finish.
jmho- i never leave any electrical appliance running
while i sleep. i've already been through one house fire.

I have s timer on my tumbler, stainless pins work great.

There is videos on u tube using stainless pins. I have a thumblers tumbler. Amazing!!

I tried the SS pins and did not like it, several cases in a batch would have pins wedged sideways in the primer pocket. Also did not like the water and having to let the cases dry. I have gone back to tumbling with media, the current Lyman material I'm useing is a pain as more than 50% of cases have media lodged in the flash hole. I going to get some coarser media to take care of this problem. Also tried Iosso liquid polish and don't like it, I'm going back to Mother's mag wheel polish.

I tumble with the primers in. My case prep center has a primer pocket cleaner so I use that instead of tumbling.





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