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Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 12,467
Campfire Outfitter
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OP
Campfire Outfitter
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 12,467 |
Anybody else read that article by Wieland? Yikes. I have a Thumler tumbler with dry media and follow up with a water rinse to get rid of dust then blow the brass out with air and left out to dry. I always thought this was excessive but after reading the article, not!
Faith and love of others knows no mileage nor bounds. That's simply the way it is.
dogzapper
After the game is over, the king and the pawn go into the same box.
Italian Proverb
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Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 96,121
Campfire Oracle
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Campfire Oracle
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 96,121 |
Or you could do what I do, and don't clean your brass. Unless the stuff has been rolling around on the forest floor or the bed of your truck or a month, it just ain't needed.
"Dear Lord, save me from Your followers"
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Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 28,226
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 28,226 |
Or you could do what I do, and don't clean your brass. Unless the stuff has been rolling around on the forest floor or the bed of your truck or a month, it just ain't needed. Agreed. That and cleaning primer pockets.
It is irrelevant what you think. What matters is the TRUTH.
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Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 586
Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
Joined: Apr 2006
Posts: 586 |
Have not read the article yet. I still like cleaning the Hornady One Shot lube off the brass after resizing/depriming with a quick trip thru the Dillon tumbler with dry media. Do you guys just wipe of with a rag?
Do or do not, there is no try.
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Joined: Aug 2007
Posts: 115,424
Campfire Sage
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Campfire Sage
Joined: Aug 2007
Posts: 115,424 |
I've been reloading for 25+ years and just recently bought a tumbler. That I don't use.
Travis
Trump being classless,tasteless and clueless as usual. Sorry, trump is a no tax payin pile of shiit. My young wife decided to play the field and had moved several dudes into my house
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Joined: Nov 2013
Posts: 28,695
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: Nov 2013
Posts: 28,695 |
Got a vibrating unit I inherited, but mainly use it for dirty .38s. After all the cold-welding hoopla, necks that are dirty inside sound like a good idea.
I wipe lube on with my fingers, dip the case in the neck-lube jar with the ceramic beads, then after sizing, wipe off the case with a paper towel and 91% alcohol. Clean enough, and grit free.
What fresh Hell is this?
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Joined: Apr 2011
Posts: 150,857
Campfire Savant
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Campfire Savant
Joined: Apr 2011
Posts: 150,857 |
I use a thumbler tumbler with steel pins, rinse, dry in the sun. Cleans like new. Picked up old crap from lease, brass that had been on the ground for years, made it like new inside and out.
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Joined: Jul 2001
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Campfire Kahuna
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Campfire Kahuna
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 60,048 |
I only clean brass when it needs it, which happens maybe once every 4-5 years.
“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.”
John Steinbeck
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 4,030
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 4,030 |
I clean my brass mainly due to my not wanting to run dirty, abrasive crap in my dies. It also forces me to give the brass a good looking over. It's really not that much trouble to do...to me anyway. Just switched from the old corn cob/walnut hulls method to a Thunbler's with SS pins, and liking it so far.
Jeff
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Joined: May 2014
Posts: 10,382
Campfire Outfitter
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Campfire Outfitter
Joined: May 2014
Posts: 10,382 |
I have a couple different brass cleaners. I used to clean brass after every shooting. Now, I use the wet tumbler with pins on BLack Powder Cartridge Cases and only clean other brass occasionally, but very little in the past couple of years.
I prefer classic.
Semper Fi
I used to run with the hare. Now I'm envious of the tortoise and I do my own stunts but rarely intentionally
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Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 2,975
Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
Joined: Sep 2009
Posts: 2,975 |
I have had no need to clean my rifle brass with the exception of some .223 brass from the range. I do clean my pistol range brass. It's usually so dirty that cleaning is necessary.
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Joined: Mar 2004
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Campfire Regular
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Campfire Regular
Joined: Mar 2004
Posts: 2,622 |
I used a tumbler for years, and it was good, but I get a lot of dust buildup in the cases, which I don't like. I recently bought a steel pin tumbler, and was amazed at the amount of crud that came out of the cases. I'm a gadget freak, and like clean brass, so I clean it. Is it strictly necessary? Probably not. But do I stil do it? Sure.
Old70
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Joined: Aug 2005
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Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 28,226 |
Have not read the article yet. I still like cleaning the Hornady One Shot lube off the brass after resizing/depriming with a quick trip thru the Dillon tumbler with dry media. Do you guys just wipe of with a rag? I use Lee collet neck sizing dies. No need for lube.
It is irrelevant what you think. What matters is the TRUTH.
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Joined: Nov 2015
Posts: 19,190
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: Nov 2015
Posts: 19,190 |
For the biggest part of my reloading career, I rarely ever cleaned my brass. I'd usually keep a bottle of rubbing alcohol around, and use that to put on a rag and wipe the lube off the brass after resizing it. Now days, I do things a little differently, partly because arthritis in the hands makes you change.
I use Hornady One Shot for lube, and after resizing, and I always full length resize, I put the cases in the tumbler and run them for about an hour. That cleans the lube off and shines them back up a little. Then I trim if needed, but always clean the primer pocket using the Frankford Case Prep Center.
I know a case doesn't have to be bright and shiny to use, but as I have plenty of time, I don't mind taking the extra step and cleaning them.
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Joined: Mar 2015
Posts: 3,577
Campfire Tracker
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Campfire Tracker
Joined: Mar 2015
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I like my brass to be clean. Not just because it looks nice but I also don't want gunk inside my dies. I clean my brass in an old Lyman vibrating cleaner. Then I lay a bunch on a paper towel and fold it over and roll them to clean the dust off. After I resize, I wipe off the lube the same way with either 91% alcohol or electrical contact cleaner on the towel. OCD.
Wag more, bark less.
The freedoms we surrender today will be the freedoms our grandchildren will never know existed.
The men who wrote the Second Amendment didn't just finish a hunting trip, they just finished liberating a nation.
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Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 96,121
Campfire Oracle
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Campfire Oracle
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 96,121 |
I've found it less time consuming to clean 1 DIE than to clean 10,000 pieces of brass. But WTF do I know.
"Dear Lord, save me from Your followers"
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Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 22,884
Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 22,884 |
Why does everyone seem to clean off the Hornaday One Shot lube? Why not leave it on there?
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Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 60,048
Campfire Kahuna
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Campfire Kahuna
Joined: Jul 2001
Posts: 60,048 |
It's always interesting to read about what "dirty" brass might do to dies. Of course, if you're picking brass up off the ground (either yours or somebody else's) that's one thing, but just firing brass doesn't make it very dirty.
I bought a set of RCBS .270 Winchester dies in the mid-1970's, but didn't clean my brass other than wiping it down and sometimes using fine steel wool on the necks. About a decade later I finally got a brass tumbler and started cleaning cases, though not always after every firing. Then a few years later started having trouble with cold-welding, and after doing some investigating and testing (including whether cleaning primer pockets had an effect on primer ignition or load accuracy) I quit cleaning cases, except in a very few specific instances.
Kept using those same RCBS .270 dies until just a couple years ago. They were still working fine, but had gotten so "old" looking that a magazine editor suggested they be replaced for photographic purposes, which can be a factor in my business. But I still have them, and the FL die still works great after handloading thousands of rounds for over a dozen .270's, including my very first, an extremely accurate Remington 700 ADL, which had its barrel shot out partly because it was so accurate I couldn't keep myself from shooting tiny clusters. Oh, and the RCBS die also sized the cases for another .270 that got shot out. Probably 90% of the cases it's full-length sized since the 1970's weren't new or cleaned, yet I can detect no meaningful wear on the die, and it doesn't scratch cases.
Maybe a die in some serious varmint or target caliber could get worn out by sizing "dirty" brass, but it didn't happen in this instance.
“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.”
John Steinbeck
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Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 96,121
Campfire Oracle
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Campfire Oracle
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 96,121 |
Why does everyone seem to clean off the Hornaday One Shot lube? Why not leave it on there? I don't know. Lots of people like to weigh every powder charge too. The majority of handloaders would snap me with all the anal sheit they do.
"Dear Lord, save me from Your followers"
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Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 96,121
Campfire Oracle
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Campfire Oracle
Joined: Oct 2002
Posts: 96,121 |
Right It's always interesting to read about what "dirty" brass might do to dies. Of course, if you're picking brass up off the ground (either yours or somebody else's) that's one thing, but just firing brass doesn't make it very dirty.
I bought a set of RCBS .270 Winchester dies in the mid-1970's, but didn't clean my brass other than wiping it down and sometimes using fine steel wool on the necks. About a decade later I finally got a brass tumbler and started cleaning cases, though not always after every firing. Then a few years later started having trouble with cold-welding, and after doing some investigating and testing (including whether cleaning primer pockets had an effect on primer ignition or load accuracy) I quit cleaning cases, except in a very few specific instances.
Kept using those same RCBS .270 dies until just a couple years ago. They were still working fine, but had gotten so "old" looking that a magazine editor suggested they be replaced for photographic purposes, which can be a factor in my business. But I still have them, and the FL die still works great after handloading thousands of rounds for over a dozen .270's, including my very first, an extremely accurate Remington 700 ADL, which had its barrel shot out partly because it was so accurate I couldn't keep myself from shooting tiny clusters. Oh, and the RCBS die also sized the cases for another .270 that got shot out. Probably 90% of the cases it's full-length sized since the 1970's weren't new or cleaned, yet I can detect no meaningful wear on the die, and it doesn't scratch cases.
Maybe a die in some serious varmint or target caliber could get worn out by sizing "dirty" brass, but it didn't happen in this instance. Exactly! If some carbon on the neck of my cases is going to ruin my dies, I need to find another die maker.
"Dear Lord, save me from Your followers"
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