shotgun hulls in my tumbler

What is a fibre basewad?

I got a ton of old hulls from a guy, nice high-brass stuff some of it, but many are in sub-optimal shape. I figure to make another pass through my sorted bags of the stuff, see what the tumbler can clean up and bin the rest.

Give me something to do until I have time to sit down and learn how to re-load them, if I even can use them for what I want to.
 
I would (pending how many) get some polish, I use headlight lens polish, and do them by hand or use a buffing wheel on them. Since they are big and there is little brass on them.
 
I saw a post on an americian site that said to put them in a mesh laundry bag ( the kind women wash their bras in ). and put them in the washing machine with dish washer detergent. then stand the outside on the drive way to dry .i plan to try this as soon as spring comes and all the flippin snow melts WINTER SUCKS .
 
ilikeoldguns said:
What is a fibre basewad?

I got a ton of old hulls from a guy, nice high-brass stuff some of it, but many are in sub-optimal shape. I figure to make another pass through my sorted bags of the stuff, see what the tumbler can clean up and bin the rest.

Give me something to do until I have time to sit down and learn how to re-load them, if I even can use them for what I want to.
Click to expand...

I have found that high brass shells are brutal to reload or more specifically to resize because the brass is so high & the resize ring on MEC reloaders is steel so there is a lot of drag & they are hard to get out of the size die. Structurally there is not much advantage to high brass shells either.
 
I once on a hunch tumbled a 410 hull for 4 straight days in walnut media.. The brass was shiney as hell and te hull felt weird but no real damage to speak of
 
I've likewise tumbled .410 hulls but never anything bigger. I've cleaned up a lot of high "brass" hulls with steel wool as mentioned above.

Federal low "brass" hulls are still largely fibre base wads. To see if they are fibre just look inside the hull. If the inside bottom looks like cardboard, it's fibre. If it's smooth plastic, it's plastic. Fibre base wads can deteriorate with any moisture and become somewhat risky to reload.

I put "brass" in quotes because the vast majority of hulls are brass plated steel bases; not solid brass. Most of the Federal, Remington, and Winchester high "brass" hulls I have attract magnets; solid brass doesn't. Only ones I know for sure are still solid brass off the top of my head are Winchester AA's.
 
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