Cleaning SS media

Ruger007

Ruger007

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I bought some used brass. Little did I know that some happened to have grease in the cases. I missed them while depriming. Now all my cases have a black film and so do the pins.

Tried soaking the pins in some solvent and stiring. Still has a waxy greasy film. Not about to clean each individual pin!

Used varsol, brake cleaner and gas.

Any ideas?

Thanks
 
Do not know what "grease" would be deliberately put into cartridge cases - so hard to guess how to get it off the S.S. pins - a cheap-to-try - warm / hot water, dish washing soap (Dawn) - run them for 15 minutes in the tumbler and then rinse???
 
Ruger007 said:
I bought some used brass. Little did I know that some happened to have grease in the cases. I missed them while depriming. Now all my cases have a black film and so do the pins.

Tried soaking the pins in some solvent and stiring. Still has a waxy greasy film. Not about to clean each individual pin!

Used varsol, brake cleaner and gas.

Any ideas?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Try tumbling them in powder laundry detergent and hot water. Do a tumble rinse in cold.
 
Put the pins back in your wet tumbler, add 3 or 4 tablespones of dish washing liquid and let it run for a few hours.

If when you open the tumbler if the water is not soapy, then rinse and run the tumbler again with plenty of soap.

Bottom line let the tumbler and soap clean the pins.
 
Munkey1973 said:
Propane torch ? ..... fire cleans all !
Click to expand...

jethunter said:
Spread the pins on a pan and put in 300F oven for an hour. Probably going to smoke so not in the house.
Click to expand...

Many others have mentioned various kinds of detergents (laundry, dish soap) and de-greasers.

The OP had mentioned that he already used brake cleaner and they still have a greasy feel to them.
I really can't see how any household detergent could be stronger than brake cleaner.

If it were me, I would put my the pins in my steel strainer that I use to dry them out after use and then proceed to put some form heat (namely propane) to them.
I really think that extreme heat is the only thing that will do the trick. Heat until they no longer make smoke.

An acetylene torch would certainly be too much, but I doubt propane torch has enough BTUs to damage the pins.
 
I have seen that black film before when I put too much lemi shine in the tumbler with dish soap. Could that have happened here?
 
It's definitely grease.

I will try just an empty tumbler with lots of soap. Then keep draining it every hour.

Brake clean seemed to cut it but only for a second but need to wipe them to get it off. Tough to do given the size.

Never thought about heat. I have toaster oven I use for powder coating. Put it on high for a couple hours. Smoke it off outside.
 
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Citrisolve, if this won't clean the pins then it is time for fire! Citrisolve is used in the oil patch for cleaning everything/anything and is hell on grease,oil and stuff like that there. Should be able to find it in agri store, hardware or auto motive stores.
 
If you know anyone in industry or a mechanics shop, they have spill pads that repel water and soak up hydrocarbons (oil, grease, fuels, etc). Put your pins in a bucket and add as hot of water as possible, the oil should "melt off" and be lighter than water and float to the top. Use the spill pad to soak it up, then you can retrieve your pins without having to bring them through the mess at the top of the water. I've never done this with pins, but have done it with parts at work
 
I have been through this, pretty sure RCBS' nasty case lube was to blame. I used some Mr. Clean and Dawn then ran the pins by themselves in the tumbler for 30 minutes, problem solved. It couldn't have been much easier and I doubt you'll need even more than 5 minutes to get the grease out.
 
So I put the pins on a cookie sheet. Set my toaster to 375. Ran it for 3 hours. Let cool and spread them around a towel and rolled them to try and clean them.
Cleaned out the tumbler.
Put 100- 308 brass in. 3/4 full of warm water. One squirt of dish soap. Just a smiggin of lemon shine. Maybe 1/8tsp.
Ran the tumbler for 2 hrs.
Brass is dirtier than when it when in. I can wipe off the black film with a rag.
The brass had very little or no lube on them just in the neck if any. I wiped them clean with a rag and brake clean to take off the sharpie.
Now tumbling with the hottest water and a dish detergent pod.

Might just dump and get new pins.
 
Oh man... sorry to hear (as well that I advised you) that heat did not solve the problem -perhaps made it worse.
I thought for sure that heat would do the trick.

I advised heat based on my experience with an old Lakefield 22lr that I bought for my son.
Long story short, I had about 100 rounds of CCI that seemed to very greasy/waxy.... so much that you could actually see clumps of wax on most rounds.

After about 50 rounds at our first trip to the range with it, the chamber was sticky, sh##ty mess of wax build up.
Because of that grease build up and along with an high mileage extractor, I had to use a knife to extract the empty cases.

I threw out the ruined ammo and cleaned the sh#t out of the gun with a few different solvents.

Next trip I switched to CCI powder coated (red & green) 22lr... they were also sticking in the chamber and had to use a knife yet again.

Took it home again and took a propane torch to the chamber and kept going until it stopped smoking (to male sure the grease/wax 100% gone).

400 rounds later I have not had one failure to extract since.
 
Maybe do a review of temperatures? There are extreme temp / extreme pressure greases rated to function up to nearly 1,500 degrees F (tungsten di-sulphide grease like Lubra Plex 4000 and others). A propane torch usually runs just over 2,000 degrees F. If OP used a toaster oven at 375 degree F, that was no where near those numbers. A thought for OP - if the pins were so contaminated that they were messing up the brass, now, then likely the inside of your tumbler is also now coated with stuff?? Might not be the pins, now, at all??
 
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