Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Cleaning brass ?

See where folks are now going to a wet cleaning process for brass cases that involves a tumbler, water, stainless steel pins, Dawn dish washing liquid, and some powdered lemon shine additive.

Supposedly the wet process cleans quicker and produces cleaner, shinier brass and cleans the inside of the brass as well as the primer pockets but involves more work like handling the water and drying the brass than does the traditional dry cleaning processes for brass.

Figure that gun writers need the cleanest brass for photographs accompanying their articles.

Have many of the gun writers switched to the wet processes for cleaning brass ?

Not a gun writer, but I did switch to wet tumbling. I can honestly say that i am impressed with the results... Old dog & new tricks!

It definitely works, but I only wet tumble when brass is very tarnished.

Wet tumbling with pins work great. It cleans inside and out along with the primer pockets.

The only way to fly!

I'll repeat this.

How do you ensure the cases get totally dried? Oven I'm guessing.

I use my RCBS vibrating machine with Lizard Litter (from Pet World), (about $6.00 for five pound bag) Meguiar's auto Clean and Polish for about an hour and they are cleaner than new. After they are reloaded, I use Meguiar's Polish and Wax with different Lizard Litter. Wax keeps them nice and shiny for years in ziplock bags. And NO, the wax does not have a negative affect.

I don't care that my brass looks like new. I only care that there is no grit or carbon on the case when it enters the sizing die.

For rifle brass, I simply wipe the outside off with Gun Scrubber or brake cleaner prior to sizing.

For pistol brass, I run it through a vibratory cleaner only because the cases are too small and too many to do by hand.

Or set out in the sun for a couple hours.

One of the problems with wet cleaning is not deprimming before cleaning. Moisture interacting with the primer sometimes causes a residue to form on both the inside and outside of the flash hole.

I dry the outside by rolling them in a towel, then use compressed air, couple squirts inside the case and they dry quickly.

Old NRA formula; 2- 1 gallon jugs. Put a good squirt of DW soap in one, add 1/4 cup MOL of salt, 1 cup vinegar, cases (de capped) and fill about 3/4 w/ HOT water. Shake every few minutes for 10 min. Pour liquid into the other jug, rinse cases w/ hot water (a lot) then dry them in the sun ( I use 40 cal plastic case holders from factory boxes). Fully non polluting (I use it to kill weeds on the sidewalk edges when left over) and cheap. -Muddy

If you wanna shine the brass without alot of tumbling or cleaning just use some 0000 steel wool, guaranteed to clean better than anything else, you can also chuck the cases in a drill very lightly and turn them. This takes about 15 mins per 50 and does a very good job.

I'll never go back to the old corn cob/walnut vibrator when you can turn something looking like this ...


Into looking like this ...


There was a question about drying the brass. I made a brass drying "rack" using 1 1/4" wood screws placed 1" apart on a scrap piece of plywood. You get the idea in this picture

Goofy what are you using? Those look good.

If you havn't tried stainless media give it a whirl, results are impressive..

Does the stainless require a special tumbler or can you just use a Lyman or RCBS, just asking cause I have no experience with it.

I made some drying racks with plexiglass that hold the brass like a loading block. I'll rinse the brass, roll them around on a bath towel and then stack em in the racks base up when I get home from work at night. By morning they are dry and ready to run through the annealer.

High speed Thumbler Tumbler works great. I've got a 30 year old low speed Thumbler model B, takes a little more time than the newer version.

Stainless steel media with the Thumbler's Tumbler. Works like a champ!

I put the brass on for about 3-4 hours, rinse with hot water, dry the outsides with a couple old towels, then place in my drying rack until the following day.