Quick Fix for Repidly Re-Tarnishing Wet Tumbled Brass

HeavyTread

HeavyTread

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This isn't my idea-- I found it on a post on ar15.com here-- but I just tried it and it works incredibly well.

I was wet tumbling my brass with the traditional mix of Joy and Lemishine. The brass was coming out beautifully clean and brassy yellow. I would then rinse it thoroughly under the tap with cold water, dry it in a towel and pop it in the oven at 170 or 200 degrees until it was dry.

By the time the brass was completely dry, it had tarnished back to a dull golden colour and often had spots and other blemishes. I think it has something to do with me having hard water.

The quick fix is this:

  1. Fill a container with tap water as hot as you can get it
  2. Add a little bit of Lemishine and stir until it dissolves
  3. Add your brass and wait a few seconds. Maybe stir it around a bit
  4. Er..
  5. That's it.

It literally takes about 10 seconds for the brass to revert to shiny yellow. It's like watching a magic trick.

Yes, this is mostly about aesthetics.. tarnished brass is still clean brass. But I save my really thorough inspection for last, so it's nice to be able to quickly scan all over the case and instantly see anything that would make me want to toss it. Tarnish and water spots make that a bit more difficult.
 
Why are you drying it in an oven? The heat is too much and that is what is causing it to tarnish. If you are in a hurry, I could see trying to dry it quickly, but otherwise, I just put mine to dry on a towel...If, I need it to dry a little quicker, I use a light or lamp that I can lower to about 12 inches over the brass....I find it dries quick enough and the heat is not enough to tarnish the brass.
I tried the oven once, back when i started with SS. I forgot about it and about an hour later, it too had tarnished badly.

Problem with your method is you dry it in the oven which tarnishes it. Then you have to wet it again to get rid of the tarnish. So you save no time whatsoever by drying it in the oven and your fix is not really a fix, since you then left with wet brass again. :confused:
 
Wired leader said:
Why are you drying it in an oven? The heat is too much and that is what is causing it to tarnish.
Click to expand...

Hrm. Maybe. I'll try not using the oven on my next batch. I dry it in the oven because it's fast and complete. I've read about a lot of other people doing it this way. Of course you keep the heat on the lowest settings (175 degrees).

I've also just ordered a cheap dehyrator, so I'm going to try that as well.
 
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Oh, PS: this is only a 'when it happens' type thing. I dry plenty of brass in the oven at low heat and it very rarely tarnishes. I'm not entirely sure why it happens sometimes and not others.
 
Oh, PS: this is only a 'when it happens' type thing. I dry plenty of brass in the oven at low heat and it very rarely tarnishes. I'm not entirely sure why it happens sometimes and not others. I'm not suggesting that it makes any sense to dry in the oven and then get the brass all wet again to get rid of tarnish ;)
 
HeavyTread said:
I'm not entirely sure why it happens sometimes and not others.
Click to expand...

I am not sure about why it would only happen sometimes. It only happened to me once and I never used the oven again. My wife has a dehydrator, but if she ever caught me drying my brass in it.....well, lets just say it's better if I don't.

Perhaps it is a time length thing or variations in the actual ratios used in the solution...since most don't accurately measure the same amount ingredients each and every time. I do actually measure the amount of lemi-shine with a 9mm case, but the soap is usually just a good squirt and sometimes I use different dish soaps and sometimes liquid laundry detergents. Both seem to work the same.

Back to the drying....I find the lamp over top for heat dries the brass out quickly as long as the case does not have a layer of water in it(only possible with bottleneck cases).
 
i dry all my brass on a towel and it never tarnishes... if im in a real hurry it goes in the dryer. I'm going to end up buying a dehydrator though, that seems like the best way to dry it
 
I will add that I do rinse all my brass out with clean water and then remove the water from the cases using a strainer or separator. I then put the brass on the larger towel and then grab the towel at both ends and then alternate lowering/raising each end so that the brass rolls back and forth in the towel. This pretty much dries the outside of the brass and then only a little moisture remains on the inside of the case which dries quick enough I find.
 
Wired leader said:
I will add that I do rinse all my brass out with clean water and then remove the water from the cases using a strainer or separator. I then put the brass on the larger towel and then grab the towel at both ends and then alternate lowering/raising each end so that the brass rolls back and forth in the towel. This pretty much dries the outside of the brass and then only a little moisture remains on the inside of the case which dries quick enough I find.
Click to expand...

I tumble them also, but I put a rare earth magnet in with them to catch the stray's.
 
HeavyTread said:
This isn't my idea-- I found it on a post on ar15.com here-- but I just tried it and it works incredibly well.

I was wet tumbling my brass with the traditional mix of Joy and Lemishine. The brass was coming out beautifully clean and brassy yellow. I would then rinse it thoroughly under the tap with cold water, dry it in a towel and pop it in the oven at 170 or 200 degrees until it was dry.

By the time the brass was completely dry, it had tarnished back to a dull golden colour and often had spots and other blemishes. I think it has something to do with me having hard water.

The quick fix is this:

  1. Fill a container with tap water as hot as you can get it
  2. Add a little bit of Lemishine and stir until it dissolves
  3. Add your brass and wait a few seconds. Maybe stir it around a bit
  4. Er..
  5. That's it.

It literally takes about 10 seconds for the brass to revert to shiny yellow. It's like watching a magic trick.

Yes, this is mostly about aesthetics.. tarnished brass is still clean brass. But I save my really thorough inspection for last, so it's nice to be able to quickly scan all over the case and instantly see anything that would make me want to toss it. Tarnish and water spots make that a bit more difficult.
Click to expand...

If you want them dried fast get yourself a 99% proof bottle of rubbing alcohol at the pharmacy.
Pour into a small bucket then add your brass.
Swish around with your hand then take them out, shaking them off and spread them on a towel.
Pour alcohol back into it's container and put container away.
Brass will be 95% dried,let sit for 10 min and they will dry.
 
I don't wet tumble, but as a thought, couldn't you just put the wet brass into a cheap salad spinner for a few seconds? That would get the majority of the water away from both the outside and inside of the case, with the magic of centrifugal force. Obviously the brass would need to be deprimed first. But then you wouldn't have any deposits of moisture anywhere.

Ask your wife/girlfriend/personal chef what a salad spinner is. I picked one up for a different but similar project and it worked fine. It was $8 at HomeSense.
 
TargetAcquired said:
I don't wet tumble, but as a thought, couldn't you just put the wet brass into a cheap salad spinner for a few seconds? That would get the majority of the water away from both the outside and inside of the case, with the magic of centrifugal force. Obviously the brass would need to be deprimed first. But then you wouldn't have any deposits of moisture anywhere.

Ask your wife/girlfriend/personal chef what a salad spinner is. I picked one up for a different but similar project and it worked fine. It was $8 at HomeSense.
Click to expand...

well that might work if each piece of brass was sitting at the proper angle(case mouth facing away from center). Otherwise, any water still inside the brass would just pool at the primer end
 
Wired leader said:
Perhaps it is a time length thing or variations in the actual ratios used in the solution...since most don't accurately measure the same amount ingredients each and every time. I do actually measure the amount of lemi-shine with a 9mm case, but the soap is usually just a good squirt and sometimes I use different dish soaps and sometimes liquid laundry detergents. Both seem to work the same.
Click to expand...

I do measure my ingredients.. I use this guidance:

  • 3.5 L of tap water (cold)
  • 1 Tbsp of Joy dish soap
  • 1/4 tsp of Lemishine

The only things that vary are the brass and the amount of time I tumble for.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the amount of time I tumble for changes how much of the surface brass and oxidization is removed, and changes the amount that the hard rinse water from the tap can cause it to tarnish.

Yesterday I had two batches in the oven at the same time -- one batch was only briefly tumbled (about an hour) to prep for decapping/sizing, and the other was run for 3.5 hours to do a final clean and completely clean out primer pockets, etc. The 3.5 hour batch tarnished quickly in the oven while the one hour batch didn't.

Back to the drying....I find the lamp over top for heat dries the brass out quickly as long as the case does not have a layer of water in it(only possible with bottleneck cases).
Click to expand...

I just ordered a dehydrator so I'm going to try that out, but I think I've found a smarter way of drying them in a towel.
 
TargetAcquired said:
I don't wet tumble, but as a thought, couldn't you just put the wet brass into a cheap salad spinner for a few seconds? That would get the majority of the water away from both the outside and inside of the case, with the magic of centrifugal force. Obviously the brass would need to be deprimed first. But then you wouldn't have any deposits of moisture anywhere.

Ask your wife/girlfriend/personal chef what a salad spinner is. I picked one up for a different but similar project and it worked fine. It was $8 at HomeSense.
Click to expand...

I already use a media separator to get the stainless steel pins out of there.. the problem is that surface tension can easily keep water inside the body of the cases and in the flash holes/primer pockets
 
Wired leader said:
I will add that I do rinse all my brass out with clean water and then remove the water from the cases using a strainer or separator. I then put the brass on the larger towel and then grab the towel at both ends and then alternate lowering/raising each end so that the brass rolls back and forth in the towel. This pretty much dries the outside of the brass and then only a little moisture remains on the inside of the case which dries quick enough I find.
Click to expand...

So I just started doing something similar last night. I used to just roll the cases up in a towel and sort of squish it gently and then let it sit fora while.

Now I make sort of a basket and roll the brass around in there and bump it from the bottom to mix it up. It works very well.
 
I too wet tumble, and I do know what you're talking about (I don't oven dry). The cases fresh are quite a bit shinier than ones that have sat for a bit. Tarnish is probably too strong a word, 'dulling' might be better. I'll try your method on the next batch (I have some in the tumbler now).
 
i use methyl hydrate after i rinse the brass once it comes out of the tumbler. then i lay them on towel in front of a fan to dry the rest of the way.
 
I only started wet tumbling on Sunday but from past experience washing stuff, I give the brass a wash in hot water, shake out the excess water then spread them out on a tray. The outsides will dry out shortly after and the inside case/primer pockets an hour or so later. Then again, my house is a bit dry so that helps.
 
I dry my brass in the oven every time after wet tumbling. Sometimes I've left it overnight
I've never had it tarnish. Therefore I would suggest it's your water (as you mentioned) that is causing this, not the oven drying.

The oven is easy, quick and effective.

I'm really surprised some Safety Sally hasn't been on this thread chirping that oven drying will anneal the brass...Bravo!
 
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