bucket of 223 brass to clean

Cocked&Locked

Cocked&Locked

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Ok, my massive pistol case backlog has been tumbled. I now have a 5 gallon bucket of 223 to do, and no way i'm tumbling all that it tuffnutt. I have heard various members talk of washing brass in water mixed with cream of tartar, viniger, citric acid, ect. Which of these work well and easily, and do you simply soak and rinse or do you have to mix the cases around in it?

in a perfect world i'd just fill the bucket with solution and soak,,,,but i'm sure thats gonna be too easy....
 
I use 4L warm water, 1/2 spoon dish soap and 1/2 cup concentrated lemon juice in a bucket for 9mm brass. Works extremely well, only drawback you have to dry the case in an oven on low setting ....if your wife let you..... or you put them on a table and turn them once in while.

I have an industrial dryer at work which helps a lot.

Hope this help.
Gaetoune
 
I sometimes get lazy and just wash my brass in soapy water, rinse off with water and put in the oven @ 150f for 45 min.

You could skip the oven step and let them air dry on a towel, but you'll have to turn them from time to time, and it can take days.

It gets them clean enough, but you won't be winning any shinie brass competitions!

I have tried the same process with my walnut media (I must be part scottish!) just to try and get a few more tumbles out of it..... it actually works farily well.

Cheers!
 
If you just want clean brass deprime it and give it a hot water & soap rinse followed by a couple of hot water rinses. You can put it in a low temp oven to dry it or wait for summer and dry it in the sun. If you want pretty,shiney brass you will need to tumble polish it. You might even try a lemon juice/water soak before the final rinse which would tend to pretty it up a bit. That's how the Arab shopkeepers used to keep at their brass whatevers looking spiffy.
 
Get a $2 paint sprayer filter bag, put brass in it. Fill bucket with HOT water, 100ml lemon juice and a few DROPS of soap. Throw the bag in the bucket, soak an hour or two, and simply rinse and hang the bag up. Best if deprimed first. Super clean brass for cheap, does not polish though.

Can wash 500+ 223 at a time easy.
 
Saw a guy around here who has a small electric cement mixer that seems to do a pretty good job on mass quantities of brass.
cement-mixer.jpg
 
Soak in white vinegar for 2 hrs., rinse with hot water, spread out on old towel to dry, tumble clean.
Gets the dirtiest brass clean.:)
 
I did the CLR trick with my loads of 9mm brass. Fill the bucket maybe an inch or two over the brass with hot water, add a couple of drops of dish soap and a capfulish of CLR. I stirred every 5 minutes or so (yes, glove on my hand). After a 30 minute soak, strain and dry somehow. Any that were still severly discolored got chucked, the rest I'm shooting. Won't get them bright 'n shiny, but they were clean.

(E) :cool:
 
Buy a big Dillon case tumbler. I recently did about 10K of 5.56mm brass, could get about 1300 in the Dillon case tumbler. Solid unit built for lots of work.

I would never clean brass any other way, especially with water, soap etc. Seems like such a labour intensive process for little in return.
 
too bad i am not located in a more central location....i have a 35 gallon electric mixer that i used to use for a parts washer, now it is a bulk brass tumbler, takes 5 large bags of corn cob media and 10lbs. of ceramic stones. not sure of the capacity yet, but 3 - 5 gallons pails of 223 cases just disappears into its bowels..........
i think storm and i will have to have a tumble-off someday.....lol
 
I don't know anything about washing the brass but I did Macgyver dry some recently.

I had a box of nicely tumbled brass I was going to take to the reloading press when I dropped them in the snow. They were still clean but now wet and didn't have time to airdry (and my wife had a roast in the oven).

So I threw them into a couple of mesh laundry bags, put my shoe drying rack into my dryer and ran them through. Worked like a charm.
 
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