Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters tumbling live ammo

I know this has been covered a few times. but has anyone ever actually personally had an issue with tumbling live ammo?
personally if somebody asked me I would recommend against it but I've got to situation where I'm kind of curious..

and I mean tumbling in Walnut or corn cob in a vibrating tumbler...

my live ammo I mean primed powdered bullet seated everything..

No, it's not a good idea. But thanks for bringing up this thread. It reminded me I needed to buy some more Tufnut media..

I would be afraid of turning the power, into taclum power consistency. Thus changing the burn rate. That said I have never attempted !

Prolly wont hurt a F-ing thing... But, Like Elvis... I'd leave the building... Oh, And one more thing... Didn't Curiosity Kill the Cat?...

Live ammo is tumbled during the manufacturing process.
Cat

I’ve done it without issue. I wouldn’t tumble it too much but if you don’t get obsessive you should be fine.

I use a Lyman turbo vibrating tumbler and vibrate all my ammunition after I load it to clean the case lube off. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing that.

However, I did miss a prairie dog a couple weeks ago, so there may be some truth to the powder degradation from tumbling…

what's too much ?

i bet it was a swift anyway with a leupold ... 😁

Always wondered that myself...but admittedly too much of a chicken$hit to try. I’m the poor ba$tard that something would just have to go wrong during the process!

There was a test done on another forum that involved quite a period of time spent tumbling live ammo. Periodic disassembly showed no deterioration.

I've done it for a ½ hour to remove lubricant from the cases, chronographing indicated no change.

Wonder if 1/2 hour in a vibratory cleaner would be worse for it than riding in a truck from a factory in Arkansas or Missouri? Or a ship from Korea or Europe?

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm lucky but I have always done it to clean lube off and make my ammo pretty. Never had a round go off, get damaged or have different velocity/pressure from it. Like was mentioned above the factory does it although I don't know for how long. A couple hours in the vibrator polishes them up nice.

I dunno, you tell me. I haven’t gotten obsessive with it so I don’t know where the outer limits are. 😀

I’d imagine you could tumble them until you get to the point that when you squeeze the trigger it sounds like a fart and back off from there. When I’ve “needed” to tumble loaded brass I tumble for several hours and that accomplishes my goal.

How long do you need to tumble your brass for?

Might be a way to explain a major fire at your home to an arson investigator.

🦫

Is that anything like driving down a rough ass road with the ammo rattling around in a box for 2 years?

All of my ammo that comes from my progressive gets tumbled after loading. I tumble them about an hour'ish in order to get the Hornady 1 shot off of them.

Did you forget the smiley emoji, shrap?

For the guys tumbling to get the lube off. Why not just wipe it with a rag with some mineral spirits or such on it?

Enough to mess with the coating they use to control burn rate.