tumbler: rotary vs sonic

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luckey

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Hi guys, need some ideas on the tumbler.

I am swinging between rotary tumbler with stainless steel media, or ultrasonic cleaner.
cost aside, which I am ok with, the pros and cons for me are kind of 50/50 which makes it hard for me.

rotary: pro is shiny like new which is not necessary, but i really like. con is that from all the videos I have seen, everyone de-prime first which I don't like due to the extra step and time. I only reload pistol and will use dillon 550b, so the deprime step is a waste of time FOR ME. Or, is it ok to tumble the brass with deprime first? would it damage the pin or brass in anyway?
ultrasonic, pro. could also be used to clean gun parts from time to time when doing a full strip down, or soak the barrel really good. con, potential tarnish, and won't look like new.

So, which one would you choose? Thanks
 
I use rotary tumbler for pistol cases and leave the spent primers in. Just takes a bit of time to dry out, or to use a heat source like, oven, dryer, de-hydrator etc. I throw them in a clothes dryer(non-tumble) for 45 mins, an let them sit overnight. Primer pockets are then dry when i de-prime. Mines a frankford arsenal, have ran about 5 or 6 cycles through so far so good! I usually run about 600-700 9mm at a time. It has more capacity than that, but with this amount of brass it comes out clean in 2 hours. Using dawn dish soap and lemi-shine. I have no experience with the ultrasonic cleaners but hope this helps!
 
With the stainless pin media I regularly see posts saying that they need to poke out pins caught in the flash hole or check the primer recess for stuck pins. Also it's inevitable that you'll lose a few pins with every batch you do. And the pin media does cost money. And it does need to be rinsed clean regularly.

On the other hand the water/vinegar/soap mix I use in my ultrasonic cleaning is cheap, easy to make and I just pour it down the sink when it gets dirty enough with no need to check for any lost pin media. The short and wide 9mm and .45acp casings look like new inside and out. The longer .357Mag and .38Spl cases get cleaned to at least a dull brass look inside, bright and shiny outside. And no need to de-cap first. De-capped rifle brass comes out new looking inside and out. The only downside to wet cleaning is the need for a few days to dry out thoroughly before reloading them. Which you'd need to do with the pin media washed brass too.

So for me it's an easy choice. Ultrasonic wins.
 
I've only tried sonic, but if your going to have water involved I would go stainless with out a doubt. My Lyman 700 crapped out after 3 months of lite use. I'm going to build my own stainless tumbler at some point, just can't be bothered right now.
 
My buddy is going to DIY a tumbler, and I am going to DIY an ultrasonic (of sorts).

There's lots of ideas out there if you are willing/able to tinker.
 
Great! Thanks cody182005 and BCRider. So, neither way needs to deprime first. This is perfect. After posting this, I found one more youtube video talking about ultrasonic solution, in addition to the regular vinegar/water/salt/dawn mix, adding tiny bit of LemiShine would make the brass like brand new, just like the stainless steel media which is the end result I want(sorry, I just can't get over a big pile of shiny brass. :)). In this case, since the ultrasonic cleaner also can clean gun parts, to me, it has the edge. thanks a lot!

BTW. While I am putting up all the details as you can see and waiting to pick up my full set of 550B in States next month, the first thing I am trying is to put some of the 9mm brass I picked up from the range, put them into a coke bottle, with vinegar/water/salt/dawn and shake it like crazy. just for fun.... It actually came out really clean and shine. Real old school. Lol....
 
Or just like I did, grab a couple coke bottle and start shaking.. Lol...

Spawn-Inc said:
I've only tried sonic, but if your going to have water involved I would go stainless with out a doubt. My Lyman 700 crapped out after 3 months of lite use. I'm going to build my own stainless tumbler at some point, just can't be bothered right now.
Click to expand...

ironsighter said:
My buddy is going to DIY a tumbler, and I am going to DIY an ultrasonic (of sorts).

There's lots of ideas out there if you are willing/able to tinker.
Click to expand...
 
ive gone through vibratory, ultrasonic, and now rotary (SS). I will never go back to the first two.

The vibratory was a pain with lots of media and residue getting everywhere, but the case was never as clean as i wouldve liked.

Ultrasonic was better, but the number of cycles and "babysitting" i had to do between different solutions and cycles along with it not being able to get any of the heavier stuff off, was a deal breaker.

Now with the rotary tumbler, I size/deprime all my cases first (rifle and pistol...i have an auto casefeed, so its no skin off my nuts to run them through the press twice), and then run the tumbler for 3-4hrs. Brass is new and shiny (which is nice), but the key is the primer pockets are spotless, and there is no residue inside the case. The effort to do a batch of 100 rifle cases, or a few hundred pistol cases is definitely less than the time it would take me to do a batch of cases through an ultrasonic.

my $0.02
 
There's a guy on youtube who made his own (sub)sonic cleaner for engine parts. All he did was attach the plastic jar to a palm sander, throw in some CLR and engine part, and turn it on. Worked like a charm.

The plan I am exploring is to buy a 60 watt 40kHz piezo transducer ($20) and JB Weld it to a stainless steel pot, then use a cheap amplifier to amplify a 40kHz tone (generated by a pc/tablet/phone/whatever).

Or I might be a really cheap SOB and just glue an old tweeter to the plastic lid of a mayonnaise jar and crank a 20kHz tone into it with the cheap ($3) amplifier. I have all the parts already. My dog might not like it much, but I am willing to bet it works better than "just soaking".
 
Hi Chrisward3, could you please elaborate what's the "heavier stuff"? does it matter to pistol brass at all because that's all I will be reloading? also, for the same reason, I don't care about the primer pocket.


chrisward3 said:
ive gone through vibratory, ultrasonic, and now rotary (SS). I will never go back to the first two.

The vibratory was a pain with lots of media and residue getting everywhere, but the case was never as clean as i wouldve liked.

Ultrasonic was better, but the number of cycles and "babysitting" i had to do between different solutions and cycles along with it not being able to get any of the heavier stuff off, was a deal breaker.

Now with the rotary tumbler, I size/deprime all my cases first (rifle and pistol...i have an auto casefeed, so its no skin off my nuts to run them through the press twice), and then run the tumbler for 3-4hrs. Brass is new and shiny (which is nice), but the key is the primer pockets are spotless, and there is no residue inside the case. The effort to do a batch of 100 rifle cases, or a few hundred pistol cases is definitely less than the time it would take me to do a batch of cases through an ultrasonic.

my $0.02
Click to expand...
 
And from my Coke bottle Human Tumbler.
as you can see, the left two are completely clean inside out and like new. the pictures are not crystal, but they are fresh out of the coke bottle and need a couple days of drying. the inside black can be very easily wiped with an tissue.
So, the question is, are the middle two and the 3 on the right ok to reload as is even though they still have black in them? Not that this is my final cleaning solution, but try to get an idea on how clean is clean.

before:
9mm_Brass_zpswlcrvwtt.jpg


After:
IMG_20150506_175641_zpsjwwyg1np.jpg

IMG_20150506_180213_zpslqcx1vol.jpg
 
luckey said:
Hi Chrisward3, could you please elaborate what's the "heavier stuff"? does it matter to pistol brass at all because that's all I will be reloading? also, for the same reason, I don't care about the primer pocket.
Click to expand...

ive found that after 2-3 firings of pistol with only vibratory cleaning, that there was a lot of built-up fouling that would not be removed by vibratory or ultrasonic. Primer pockets are a bigger deal for long-range which is why i placed my importance in the SS's ability to clean those out.

check out this article for some results: h ttp://www.accurateshooter.com/technical-articles/reloading/brass-cleaning-with-stainless-media/
 
I've heard some old timers complain about stainless cleaning too well. The carbon residue in the necks helps give a more consistent neck tension or something? I don't know enough about long-range benchrest to really comment.
I use a Lyman vibratory tumbler, haven't had an issue, no dust problems. SS tumbled brass is awfully pretty though.
Pretty brass doesn't shoot any better that I know of and I don't want to have to deal with water in my cases personally. That's just an opinion though.
 
got it. yes, I read all those. since we have different requirements, both options are good options for what we intend to do. Thanks.

chrisward3 said:
ive found that after 2-3 firings of pistol with only vibratory cleaning, that there was a lot of built-up fouling that would not be removed by vibratory or ultrasonic. Primer pockets are a bigger deal for long-range which is why i placed my importance in the SS's ability to clean those out.

check out this article for some results: h ttp://www.accurateshooter.com/technical-articles/reloading/brass-cleaning-with-stainless-media/
Click to expand...
 
I started out with the vibratory cleaning and I found that it simply didn't do much at all for inside the cases. It was the frustration at how little the vibrating cleaning did that led me to search for another option. After reading about the US cleaning I risked it and loved the results.

I have to admit that the US cleaning does not do as nice a job as the SS pin media. But it works well enough that I don't want to deal with rinsing the pin media or the occasional pin stuck in the flash hole.
 
I've been using vibratory for many years, it does the job just fine for 99% of my needs and the dust/mess is really a non issue if you maintain some polish in the media. Wet stainless definatley gets the nod for turning out very pretty brass, but I cannot stand pulling pins from flash holes. There are ALWAYS pins jammed in the flash holes, Fuk where are my needle nose pliers???

I just recently bought a large Ultrasonic cleaner, big enough to take my largest handguns and full size automotive carburetors. I haven't cleaned any brass with it yet, but have done several carbs, all my BCGs, several complete pistols (grips removed only) and pretty much everything else I found around the house that was dirty and could fit in the tank. I'd say the ultrasonic cleaner is a much more versatile and useful tool to have around.
 
If you have to be constantly be pulling pins out of the flash holes with SS cleaning then you bought the wrong pins. I have been using the method now for over two years with about 15-20 thousand cases and I have pulled maybe 10 pins from primer pockets and discarded them as they were infact too long compared to the others when I measured them.

I use ultrasonic with small batches of 45-100 brass but mainly for cleaning parts in. I do a lot of shooting and the small amount of brass you can clean in a Ultrasonic and the extreme baby sitting that is required was a non starter for me.
 
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