Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Got my money's worth

My old RCBS vibratory case cleaner gave out on me today. The motor went belly up. Last time I was able to fix it but it is too far gone. Date code 1987. Can't remember what I paid for it but back then it probably only cost $40 or so making my cost per year about $1.25. Can't say how many cases have been through it. Got a drum type and SS pins on the way from Midway. If it goes as long, it will out last me.

I hope the pins work out well for you. I’m convinced that stainless pins cost me a barrel. I was about 10 shots in to the second relay of the match and things went from pretty good to not being able to hit the paper. I think that I missed a pin or two that were stuck in a case and the gouge happened when I fired that round. It was a 38-55 green mountain barrel and the load was 42 grains of black powder under a 250 grain cast bullet. The damage was about 4” ahead of the chamber and was deep enough to pull fibers from a cleaning patch. The stainless media really got the cases clean, but I’m not going to chance it again.

I've been running dry media with the pins and haven't had any problems with pins in the case. If a batch gets really nasty or I'm cleaning some decent range brass, I'll then do a wet tumble and of course the drying but I then put em in a tumbling bag and bounce the cases around in the bag. Seems to do a great job of bouncing anything in the case out. BUT if ya tumble em to long you'll get a burr at the case mouth. Doesn't matter to me as I use a light taper crimp that does a good job of removing the burr and giving consistent neck tension. YMMV

That aint good. Definitely something to watch out for.