Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Tumbling with Dawn & Lemi-shine..............

+1 to the above especially the last sentence. It isn't about caring so much as some folks need to stir up chit.

The old silver dollars I have are not collector grade. I buy them to give to grandkids on their birthdays. They like them clean and shiny. My grand mother gave me one every year until she died. I still have all 23.

I like the way my handloads look when the brass is spit shined. They don’t shoot any better. Getting the brass separated from pins isn’t a big deal.

Hasbeen’s brass looks like new. Pistol brass I don’t worry about cleaning. Looks great though Hasbeen. On the other hand, rifle brass I do clean. First I clean the inside of the necks with a bore brush inserted into my drill, wipe the outside of the neck to remove loose carbon, lube the case then size the case. Then I squirt some Flitz on a rag, spread it, put an old pistol bore brush in my drill, insert the bore brush into the neck of the rifle brass, and wrap it with the Flitz coated rag, run it for a few seconds, then run it on a clean rag and sisboombah-new brass. Lots faster than a tumbler. No separation of media etc. I then clean the primer pockets and anneal the necks.

just did three 5 gallon buckets of 223 brass without pins, very good results, no pins to play with, I'm sold, no more pins, I'll be listing 60 pounds of pins in the near furture

I used to not clean my rifle brass, but several years ago, I started with a vibratory tumbler and corn cob media. I still clean before i reload that case - both for looks and to preserve my dies was the thought at the time.

I use Imperial wax on the cases and their dry lube on the necks unless only using a Lee Collet neck sizer - then no lube at all - yippee! I don't clean the inside of the necks other than tapping them on the reloading bench, but I clean both lubes off the outside of the casing after sizing, with a rag.

I've only started annealing my brass in the past couple of years, and only do that after 5+ loadings.

Think I'll start skipping the tumbler sometimes, if no one has experienced die issues. I really like loading and shooting, the prep not as much.

I like the loading part also, all the prep work? NOT

I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around doing all this with wet media. I'm still doing mine in corn cob with a vibratory cleaner I bought in 2000. I don't mean to belittle anyone else's process. I'm just trying to figure out what the benefit is, and it would be a good idea to switch. The big drawback I see is that whenever I get the cases wet, I have to figure out a way to get them dry. That's usually a whole separate operation.

Normally, I don't decap prior to cleaning. I'm in the camp with the guys who think cleaning and uniforming primer pockets is just too much effort for the gain.

I changed out my media this past weekend. It had gone 3 years without a problem. I started getting black smears on the finished brass, and knew it was time to go.

After I get home from the range, I pop in the fired cases, cover with corn cob, and set the timer for 12 hours or so. It doesn't matter to me how fast it gets done, so long as the batch is ready by the next time I go down to load. It seems to be such a simple process that I can't find a way to work myself up to changing.

Maybe y'all can enlighten me.

The rotary tumbler is set up for cleaning a lot of cases at once. Weight limit on mine is 30 lbs.
SS pins 5 lbs
Water 16 lbs (2gal)
Container 2 lbs
That leaves room for about 7 lbs of brass.
When I return from the range, I punch out the primers with a Lee die. I use plastic coffee cans to separate my brass. 9mm and 38 can
be cleaned together. If I try to mix in 45 the cases will become stuck inside each other.
I put a couple of tablespoons of Dawn with a 9mm case full of Lemi Shine. Run tumbler about 2 1/2 hours.
Then I pour the contents thru the 2 Lyman separators. One catches the brass the other the pins. All this separation is done in the kitchen sink. I wash the brass at this time. I carry the clean brass and pins outside to a table. Most of the pins have been caught in one of the Lyman pans. I spread a towel on the table and pour the brass on this to dry. I pick up the rest of the pins with a magnet.

I shoot a lot more pistol than rifle these days. Rifle brass can be added to a load pistol brass.
There has been some talk that the pins work harden the case necks on bottle neck cartilages . Hasbeen

My Tumbler is pretty big I use about 40 lb of pins for up to for 5 gallon buckets of brass

shaman,

I feel the same way about wet tumbling. I'm not sure I see the benefit over a vibratory tumbler with walnut or corncob media. I use a wall timer set to 2 hours and I "set it and forget it". It takes virtually no time to dump your brass into the tumbler, toss in a used dryer sheet (to keep dust down), and fire it up and walk away. I can leave the brass in it for weeks if I don't have time or see a need to put it away. It's ready to use straight out of the tumbler, with a quick wipe down from a paper towel. No drying period.

The wet tumbling method admittedly gets brass "like-new" shiny inside and out. But I see no tangible benefit to that. It also seems to me like it just generates more work with creating an extra step for getting the brass dry. Before the vibratory tumbler I manually cleaned grungy brass in a 5 gallon bucket with a cleaning solution found online. I hated drying the brass and sometimes had water trapped in the primer pocket days after I thought I had it completely dry. Moving to dry tumbling was a big step up to me. I don't think I'd like to head back in the other direction.

But to each their own. As has been said before, what someone else does doesn't affect me any.

Drying the brass is easy - rinse it well, drain it, then put it on a pizza pan in the oven at 200 F for an hour or two. (bottleneck cases can take longer than pistol cases)

I'll use a wet soak in a soap & citric acid bath for really nasty or dirty brass before dry tumbling; that works pretty well. But for most reloading, just a dry tumble works for me and as said above, it doesn't take very much effort. I do prefer to load clean brass, but won't claim it's necessary and don't really care what someone else thinks about it.

The wet method is definitely superior at eliminating dust. The first time I ever cleaned brass I did it by shaking the brass in a 5 gal bucket and letting it soak for a bit using the NRA vinegar cleaning solution because I hadn't bought a vibrator cleaner yet. Cleaning brass with a wet solution is not really inconvenient. It didn't get the brass shiny though, just clean which is all I really cared about. After draining the cleaning solution, rinse with very hot water. Then pour out the brass and water into a tumbler media separator. Tumble the brass quickly so trapped water drains out of all the cases before they cool. The heated brass will dry quickly. I bought and currently use a vibrator and corn cob media because when I first started handloading, I figured it must be the superior way, but it really isn't. Either way is easy and each has its own inconveniences. If my vibrator takes a dump, I probably won't buy another, but I still have plenty of corn cob media to use up. Definitely deprime first if cleaning with a wet solution.

You must be using a concrete mixer. 😁. Hasbeen

That's exactly what I'm using, took the mixing paddles out of it Rhino lined it

There's no need to deprime first, if you use the simple drying procedure I mentioned above. Depriming first adds a ton of time to an otherwise almost effortless procedure, and is completely unnecessary.

Not having to dry brass is even easier.

A cookie sheet in the oven for a few hours works too, if you have a spouse who doesn't mind sharing the oven & cookie sheets in that manner. Not my wifes favorite idea but I could probably get away with it if I cared enough to do it. And I guess I just like the "fire and forget" method of dump the brass in the dry tumbler and walk away. It shuts off after 2 hours and there is no need to worry about leaving clean brass sitting in the solution for days on end or leaving an oven on. I take the lazy mans approach.

And I still haven't seen what real benefit a wet tumble does over a dry one. I guess, for me, a dry tumble is good enough.

I stole our biggest pizza pan from the kitchen and keep it in my reloading room now for drying brass. My wife understands that evaporating water off of metal doesn't harm the oven or affect the food. Not sure what you're getting at with the type of pan though; seems like you're suggesting the same thing I said, but as an alternative somehow? I don't see how that makes any difference at all.

If you read my whole post, you saw that I dry tumble too, and often I don't wet tumble if the brass doesn't need it. It's not necessarily a one or the other thing; if I wet tumble I always dry tumble after. The wet tumble is to get the nastier dirt, mud, and corrosion off, and it does that well. One could certainly just go straight to loading after the wet tumble and drying, but I don't.

I put my brass out in the sun for a while. It drys it pretty quick.

You must do a lot of shooting to use a concrete mixer to clean brass!!!

I buy it by the buckets full, just got 15 five gallon buckets of 308's, but I do alot of shooting too.