First crack at SS tumbling

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Great Crouton

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Spent Christmas out on Vancouver Island and received a Franford Arsenal SS tumbler. Because we flew and had a fair bit of stuff already, I had to sadly leave it behind and wait for my parents to drive back home. They will arrive tonight and I have TONS of brass I want to start cleaning. :)

Only issue is, I forget what to add to the water. What do you guys use? I think it's lemonshine or something from Canadian Tire? Is that it or should I be adding something else?
 
Lemishine is what you add... but only a pinch or two
It depends on what kind of water you have at home
And also add dish soap. People say to use dawn but I have beer success with Palmolive
You will figure out what you need to do as you go lots of trial and error but you will figure it out
Use hot water it works better
And I sometimes change the water out after a half hour or so
Good luck
 
Same as Potasz says but Dawn works well for me, but only the US Dawn, it seems like it's a different formula than what we get, for some strange reason. I also change the water as it does get filthy.
 
Agreed, lemishine and palmolive.

The only thing against using hot water is that as it cools it can create a bit of a vacuum in the tumbler, I tend to use "room temperature" water.
 
I wouldn't go past a hour. More tumbling means more brass on brass contact, peening the case mouths. I use a Red dq spoon to measure, two each of dawn and tide low E and 1/2-3/4 lemishine for 60 minutes. 100-200 308 win cases come out sparkling.
 
It's crystals. You can also get it in liquid form but almost everybody uses the crystals.

Interesting on the laundry soap.... I've used dish soap but the biggest pain is rinsing the brass and all the bubbles.. High efficiency soap for a washer wouldn't create these bubbles..... Going to try that!

I run mine for longer than a hour. Often 1-3 hours. I have a home-made jobbie though.
 
I've tumbled up to 4 hours on rifle brass, as I trim after cleaning, but yeah for pistol brass I stick at somewhere around an hour or so.

I ran the water from a long tumble through a 100 micron sock some time ago, and honestly there was negligible amounts of brass powder in it, even under a microscope, I think a chamber and ignition does a lot more to brass than tumbling ever could :)
 
Good stuff all, thanks!

Now as for drying. When i started looking at this 2 yrs ago, seems the preferred methods were dumping then in a bucket and pointing a hair dryer at them or placing them on a cookie sheet and putting them in the oven? With option 2, what temp?
 
I use 200 F in winter and 175 in fall/spring for 20-30 min (depends on amount and wetness). In the summer I just throw them in an aluminum disposable pan on the patio in the morning, come home from work and they are dry. I dump all the brass into a big beach towel and just get the big stuff off then onto the oven or patio.
 
I'm ridiculously excited to try this out.

My parents THINK my offer to help them unload the car is just to be helpful, little do they know it's so I can get my hands on the tumbler tonight. Eheheheheh
 
The tumblers are usually set up for one gallon/5lbs of SS media.

I deprime all cases before-hand. The lee Universal decapping die is a great tool to have.

My recipe is:
8lbs./1 gallon of hot water. The cooling/contacting effect also helps keep the lid tight and the O-ring sealed.
2lbs of brass to be tumbled
5lbs of SS media
1 tablespoon of dish detergent

I usually tumble for 3 hours. Bigger batches (ie bigger tumblers/containers) scale uniformly with this recipe.

I don't bother with the Lemi-Shine because I don't actually have any, or know where to get it. It's also not really necessary. If everything else is right, the cases should come out just as clean, though perhaps not quite as shiny.

Seems to work for me.

Once the batch has finished tumbling I drain as much water out as possible, just to get rid of it.

Next step is to pour the contents of the tumbler into a coarse strainer that is in/over another container. I use a very deep wok/pan thing I got at Goodwill. Use the strainer to sift out as much media as you can and let it fall into the container below.

Next I start picking handfuls of brass (which due to be bottom heavy are not mostly neck up), tip them over and rap them to dislodge and pins trapped inside. I then put the empty brass to the side. Once all the brass has been cleared of pins it gets tossed back into the strainer and is rinsed with cold water.

Once rinsed and the water is shaken off, the brass gets put onto a cookie sheet/pan and placed into the oven for 30 minutes on low. I set mine for 250F. This dries the brass completely.

Return to the SS media. Pour it from the pan/container into a very fine strainer and rinse it thoroughly. Dump it back into the tumbler to be used again.
 
A food dehydrator works well for drying brass. It is much faster than air drying and does not tie up your oven.

Make sure you use enough detergent. The amount will vary, depending on how hard your water is. When you open up the tumbler after running it, there should be some suds on the water. If you find that you haven't used enough detergent and your brass is gray/black, just add more detergent and continue tumbling.
 
I have been unable to find any reason why the type of soap makes any difference. If someone can point me to a source I would be grateful. I use laundry low e detergent because it's extra handy. Soap and hot water remove oil, wax and soil. The cirtic acid also helps with any wax.

Any source of citric acid is required to brighten and remove the tarnish from the brass. Any acid will work, but a very weak acid solution using citric acid is a better choice than salt and vinegar. Vinegar with salt creates a small amount of very strong acid in the presence of free oxygen and can rapidly turn shiny golden brass into dull pink pink brass. Too much acid and you get that pinkish coloured brass. Strong acids, although they do the job well, do it too much too fast due to the fact that you end up tumbling for a longer period to use the SS pins for an abrasive. Use a small amount of a mild acid source! Even one big squirt of pure lemon juice works.

If you can find it, powdered Kool aid (no sugar, just the powder) works very well. I found a couple of bargain boxes of Pres. Choice tangerine grapefruit which contain citric acid, colour and artificial flavour. 10g packets and smells kinds fruity. Lemishine is very good but you can't make a tasty drink from it. At 5g or so a use, you'll lose it before you run out.

Use water as hot as you can get it out of the tap. Your hot water might be up to 120-140 degrees depending on the hot water tank setting which should be fine.
 
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