Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Why I Like Rotary Tumbling

You ever reload brass so many times the black caked on gunk in the primer pockets make it extremely hard to insert new primers? And look at the .270 Win brass....vibratory will never clean off that surface corrosion.

From round three. I let them run twice as long to see if the brass looked even better. Not enough better to do that again in my opinion.

Round two of some of that nasty .270. This time they were run for 15 hours. Wanted to see if a much longer cleaning time was effective.

Look what difference a better camera makes!

Works great on nickel plated, too.

Tag

Yeah, I made the switch as well recently, and sold my Hornady tumbler. Couple things I saw so far (from just doing a few cycles):

With the corn/walnut media way: Sometimes I would run batches through overnight 12+ hours to get that really super bright shine and make sure everything was clean. The insides would clean up reasonably well, and I tumbled with spent primers in, so the pockets was not an issue anyhow. I cleaned those separately. With the SS tumbling, I don't see that much more than 4 hours would be needed, except maybe for really bad brass.

The walnut/corn would leave that super fine dust stuck to everything. I don't know that it was a problem, but it had to be abrasive and dirty

So far, with mine, I haven't been able to really get that brilliant "polished gold" look, but I do know they are 100% clean, so it really doesn't matter. Maybe adjusting the lemi or detergent might help

Found that .223 brass and pistol cases such as 10mm don't mix. A few always get jammed together, leaving the base of the .223 and the inside of the pistol case uncleaned. Never had the problem with corn or walnut, but it certainly is not a big deal to run separate loads on cases that would sleeve together.

Overall, glad I made the switch, and won't look back.

I found that if you use too much Lemi-Shine, they don't get as shiny. Which is kind of strange, because you use the Lemi-Shine to GET them shiny. I was using a full teaspoon, but my last batch I used just 1/2 teaspoon, and they came out super shiny.

I'm considering doing a shorter (hour or two) cycle after sizing and trimming as well. I know it adds a few steps, but it also takes care of the case lube removal, as well as the primer pockets that were not exposed the first run if they were not decapped.

For removing case lube, I still have my old vibratory tumbler.