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.

Powder is tough stuff and can handle the vibration of a case cleaner without degradation. Heard this from someone who works at Hodgdon. I also came across very old and corroded 351 winchester self loading ammo. Tumbled it clean without issue. I've also Tumbled 9mm ammo over night for at least 8 hours and then pulled the bullet. The powder suffered no ill effects and looked the same. Also no powder dust in the bottom of the case.

One test that I saw from a ballistitian was a 12 hour period with no loss of velocity between a tumbled batch an untumbled batch of ammo from the same lot that he had loaded .
Cat

I did come across this..

Tumble live ammo Tumbler O' thruth EXTREME edition, 200hour torture test**UPDATE**fired rounds in OP - AR15.COM

Have done it by accident

Live got mixed up with empties

Or even more common 22 LR ammo mixed with empty brass

Of course we all (should) lube brass before resizing.
After loading, I inspect each round and wipe it down with a soft, dry, cotton cloth.
You can still feel a bit of lube on the case, but I leave it for protection from corrosion.

Are you tumbling the fired brass before reloading and then tumbling a second time?

Ditto. I've always heard that tumbling live rounds leads to fragmentation of powder, which leads to faster burning, but that could be wrong. Whatever, I won't trust what the internet says, I'd experiment with a few rounds containing the exact powder I use. (And when I say "experiment," that doesn't mean tumbling and shooting to see if I blow my head off. I mean tumbling and then pulling the bullets to see what happened to the powder.)

Prairie dogs are out and about a couple of weeks ago???



Polar dawgs?

prairie dogs around here pop out any time in the winter when the weather is nice and sunny. They'll be skittish, but a guy can still get a little shootin' in.

well I asked this question more because it's still controversial and never seems settled and if you research the internet you find both answers immediately. kind of wanting someone to chime in that maybe knows of an actual more of a laboratory type test to see if still holds true. maybe you find so much with answers both ways because of different types of powder I don't know.

I did an article on this many years ago. Here was the gist:

I spoke to the Chief Ballistic Scientist at Hornady Manufacturing and the Head Ballistician at Hodgdon Powder and asked for their professional opinions. Both agreed that this is a myth devoid of empirical data.

"Powder is hard, it doesn’t change shape from any reasonable amount of vibration,” said Hornady’s Dave Emary. “This notion that you can wear deterrent off of the surface of the powder is a myth, it is impregnated into the powder grains. You can’t knock this stuff off."

Both scientists felt that tumbling was a safe practice within the bounds of reason.

excellent ..
now I guess the real question is can a primer be set off accidentally by vibration

Exactly. I discussed this "issue" with a powder company's tech guy some years ago, and this is what he brought up--along with batches riding long distances in railroad cars. Might have even been the guy at Hodgdon that Woodhits mentions....

It's my understanding that Mike Dillon always cleaned the hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of rounds he loaded for his own fun and games in vibratory cleaners. Guess he would have stopped somewhere along the way if it had caused problems.

"Tumbling live ammo will degrade the powder and cause dangerous changes in the burn rate."

This seems to be another long lived reloading urban legend that is often repeated, even by respectable sources. It ignores the fact that ammo gets jostled around more in military Humvee's or your standard pickup on rough dirt roads than it does in a tumbler.

Rather than simply accept it as gospel, a few individuals from the website The High Road actually put this to the test more than 10 years ago. They loaded batches of ammo with different powder types (ball, flake, etc) and tumbled 1/2 the batch of ammo for 48 hours in a vibratory tumbler.

They then broke down some rounds from both the untumbled control group ammo and the tumbled ammo. They took close-up pictures of the powder and saw zero signs of powder breakdown (no powder "dust", no degradation to the granules). Then, they chronographed rounds from both groups and found no statistical difference in velocity.

Tumbling loaded ammo had zero net affect on power appearance or ammo function.

https://www.thehighroad.org/index.p...ults-from-tumbling-loaded-rounds.498890/

I don't personally tumble live ammo as I don't really see the need, but there is no harm in doing so (except in peoples minds).

Somebody just gave me some 22 LR that they tumbled. It came out clean

I learn something every day.

Why the need for tumbling loaded ammo in the first place? When I load ammo, the brass is tumbled if it is dirty, then lubed and sized and tumbled again to remove lube. After that, I see no reason or need to tumble again up to and including you now have finished ammo. Am I missing something?
PJ

if you research it it's quite a controversial subject. I was kind of interested in what a few of the more knowledgeable people had to say..

I have tumbled old ammo to get it clean. It also cleans up an exposed lead tip making it pointy again. I have done it quite a bit. I purchased some OLD 303 Savage ammo that was decades old and was dirty. It cleaned up pretty good too.

Have done it before , will do it again and actually have some .223 I loaded 20 years ago in the vibrator now but haven't turned it on yet. I found a cardboard box of 800 rounds on strippers in the garage that had some green growing on it . Never had any problem with doing it before but I don't leave them in long term , usually 30 minutes or less, more often than not on the less. As someone above stated they get the vibration treatment in the manufacturing process so why not.

You ever load several thousand 45ACP in a couple hours?

And.....yes I like to use lube on pistol using a progressive.

If powder was as fragile as some people believe and degradation by vibration was real I don’t think our military would have lasted long. Think about how much “vibration” the ammunition for military use sustains. Riding around in humvees, planes, armored vehicles, large transport vehicles, etc. Military ammunition spends its life in a vibratory environment but even decades later it still goes bang.

I do it regularly, never a single issue whatsoever.

I do it every so often. No problems so far.

We have a very senior member on a Canadian forum. Among his many credentuals; he has worked for ammo manufacturers, worked for a powder manufacturer at a senior level; spent decades custom loading ammo for target clubs and police and military contracts. He sort of laughs at the tumbling loaded ammo question because factory ammo is tumbled. You know the tumbling
might knock the coating off argument? Turns out that the coating is tumbled on in the first place. Cool cat, with a insight that just can't be guessed.

I quit worrying about it after talking to him. I'll clean my match ammo after loaded and never give it a second thought.