Can I tumble live rounds in my franklin vibratory tumbler and corncob media?

S

sgt.rock

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I found some rounds I loaded a year ago in an ammo box I had in the back of my truck. They have some mild green corrosion on the sides/bottom of a lot of the brass (about 40+ rounds)
Is it safe to tumble these for a half hour or so to polish them a bit? I worry the threaded center post that the cover screws onto will damage the rounds. Should I just go ahead or not?
I dont want to damage or detonate a round, or break up the brittle primer compound giving me a hangfire or squib.
Probably ok to do but seeking advice.
Cheers CGN'ERS!!!!
 
The only problem is that it will foul your tumbling media with whatever crude was on the rounds but if you're saving more in what the rounds are worth than the cost of a new batch of media then have at it.
 
Lots of myths abound surrounding this topic. I have tumbled WWI ammo and then shot it out of my .303, 8mm, 6.5mm without any problems. Hell, yesterday I was shooting CIL Canuck that ceased manufacture in the early 1960s. They all killed pheasants.
 
I started reloading in the 1970's. There wasn't an internet and relatively few reloading manuals. The big one that everyone used was "The ABC's of Reloading"
In it the author stated that tumbling live ammo would cause the detterent coating to come off the powder resulting in a ticking time bomb. No proof of this was given but it was there in the Bible of reloading in big black letters.

This was then repeated over and over again because everyone that started reloading read that book or was taught by someone that read that book. The big name gunwriters for Guns and Ammo and Shooting Times repeated that story too giving it an extra layer of credibility.

Nobody ever really checked it out or questioned it because nobody dared tumble their loaded ammo and of course they didn't blow up..... so it must be true!!

A few years ago some guy did a very careful study where he tumbled ammo for days on end and then fired it with a control group of ammo and found no difference in velocity, SD or ES. In fact he found that the tumbled ammo had slightly better accuracy. He put this on the net somewhere, maybe it was Accurate Shooter (I forget). Anyhow you know what happened of course, he was subjected to so much online abuse he entered witness protection.
 
When I was using a dry media tumbler I never hesitated to clean whatever in it, including live ammunition. Going past that I recently put 300+ heavily corroded and nasty looking .30 Carbine rounds through my wet tumbler.... The rounds came out beautifully shiny and pristine and so far everyone has gone off as it should. I even put twenty random rounds over the chronograph and velocity is right where it should be!
 
I do it all the time. As mentioned above if the cases have been lubed this last reloading step cleans them up beautifully. I personally believe from my experience that I have had less FTF and FTE issues once I made tumbling the final reloading step. I also have found with .22LR ammo that my guns, and I mean all of my .22LR chambered guns, pistols and rifles operate far better with CCI ammo which is very polished and free of lube.
 
Tumbling after reloading? Why? Can you not clean your cases enough before reloading?

Tumbling after reloading as amateur reloaders is not the same as OEM tumbling after manufacture. Reload, then tumble, means that all the excess dirty crud & dust cleaned from your last tumble time gets to contaminate your new loads. Plus now you must extract the loaded rounds from the media, a hazzard in itself. You'll never get it all off & any surface that has excess lube, moisture or other, now has tiny fragments & bits of media attached. Scratches ensue.

Tumble after reloading adds another pointless step, unnecessary, & a time waster.
 
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