I went to the range on Saturday and shot off 250 rounds thru my M1 Garand and found some range 30-06 laying in some dirt and ice and brought them home to try and clean up with my recently made stainless steel tumbler.
For the drum I made one out of 8" PVC and one out of 10" PE pipe that is available at work. With the 10" PE stuff I made two ends out of Plexiglas that I had and some gaskets and it works great. Wrapped the PE with some hockey tape for extra gripe on the rollers.
10 Lbs. of stainless steel pins.
270 rounds of 30-06
2 gallons of water, 4 tablespoons of dish soap, 1/2 tablespoon of Lemi Shine
Drum and contents weigh 53 lbs, far cry from the 15 lbs allowed by Thumlers or Lortone.
Here is a picture of the 250 rounds in the container and the range pickups beside them. They all went into the drum together.
Here are some before pictures of the range pickups. Really nasty, scaled on dirt and green rust (not sure what it is), and I thought were basically just throw aways.
Look at how nasty the insides are.
Now 3 hours in the tumbler later.
You can still see the soap in the primer hole on this one. Still need to dry.
Now look at the insides. Much cleaner. They are the same brass as before and you can see that they are by the mouth of the brass was squished by people walking on them in the dirt.
This stuff really works and I wish I had made my own tumbler earlier. Hope this dispels once and for all people not believing that it works. As they say Pictures are worth a thousand words.
For the drum I made one out of 8" PVC and one out of 10" PE pipe that is available at work. With the 10" PE stuff I made two ends out of Plexiglas that I had and some gaskets and it works great. Wrapped the PE with some hockey tape for extra gripe on the rollers.
10 Lbs. of stainless steel pins.
270 rounds of 30-06
2 gallons of water, 4 tablespoons of dish soap, 1/2 tablespoon of Lemi Shine
Drum and contents weigh 53 lbs, far cry from the 15 lbs allowed by Thumlers or Lortone.
Here is a picture of the 250 rounds in the container and the range pickups beside them. They all went into the drum together.
Here are some before pictures of the range pickups. Really nasty, scaled on dirt and green rust (not sure what it is), and I thought were basically just throw aways.
Look at how nasty the insides are.
Now 3 hours in the tumbler later.
You can still see the soap in the primer hole on this one. Still need to dry.
Now look at the insides. Much cleaner. They are the same brass as before and you can see that they are by the mouth of the brass was squished by people walking on them in the dirt.
This stuff really works and I wish I had made my own tumbler earlier. Hope this dispels once and for all people not believing that it works. As they say Pictures are worth a thousand words.
