Brass Cleaning

[coyoteking]

As for my method for rifle cartridges:

Decap
Clean pockets and brush inside of necks on my prep station.
Tumble for 1 hour.
Salt bath anneal.
Wash off salt and dry in oven for 20 minutes.
Size and trim.
Tumble again for 1 hour to remove sizing lube.
Prime. Charge. Seat bullet.
Shoot stuff.
Repeat.

 

[Deathrawt]

Try tumbling with .22 brass vs ss pins if you want shiny insides as well. Not such a pita like the pins.

Interesting, never though about doing something like that
Will definitely give it a try and see how it works thanks for the tip!

 

[BigRobb]

For rifle:
Decap
Wet tumble/air dry
Anneal
Size
Wet tumble/air dry
Trim/chamfer
Sort
Prime
Load
For pistol:
Wet tumble/air dry
Load progressive

 

[track]

After resizing I wipe off all the case lube with a cloth rag
Trim to length, chamfer, deburred
Primer pockets are cleaned-out
Neck and shoulder cleaned-up using 0000 steel wool
Into the RCBS Vibratory with walnut and corncob media combined
This process is conducted after every firing

 

[Potshot21]

I used a dry tumbler for a long time but recently switched over to wet tumbler and the difference is night and day. The brass comes out of the wet tumbler looking like brand new, process is quicker and easier to me than dealing with walnut media and dust. I'm not too worried about peening mouths, a quick camfer and debur should knock that down enough it shouldn't matter much.

 

[colombe]

I wet tumble with stainless steel pins, 1 teaspoonfull of lemy shine, and a good squirt of dish soap.
I clean all kinds od brass, over 1000 a year.
They come out shining like gold.
I only run them for 1 hour.
I have a thumblers tumbler, [the big one].

 

[salon_1928]

I wet tumble but rim peening is an issue just as bigedp51 said. For shouldered cartridges this is less of an issue since I often trim. For brass that I usually don’t trim I just limit the cleaning time to about an hour max.

 

[Maple57]

I wet tumble with stainless media even for 223 and getting the pins out is no big deal, but you have to look closely.

The worst is when a pin gets stuck in the primer pocket and if I don't notice, I will when I try a seat a primer and that sucks. But when I find such a pin I throw it away to keep it out of the Gene pool.

Sure tumbling with stainless does mess up the case mouths just a little and most shooters would never even notice. But I simply accept it and deburr the case mouths after tumbling, so it's just not an issue anyway.

To deburr case mouths on the inside, I've found nothing better than a 1/4" shank cone shaped carbide burr. Nothing produced by any reloading company is worth a nickel in comparison.

It puts a perfect lead angle for when seating bullets. They are not very expensive and last forever.

 

[Eynhallow]

1.) Brush the inside of the neck with a nylon brush.
2.) Wipe down the outside of the neck with Hoppes. Gets rid of some of the carbon which does not get into your dies.
3.) Lube inside of neck with a Q-tip.
4.) Decap and neck resize.
5.) Measure case length and trim if necessary. Doing this after resizing gets rid of any case stretch in the resizing process.
6.) Chamfer (and deburr if necessary).
7.) Clean primer pocket.
8.) Tumble for several hours in a rotary tumbler with walnut media.