Cleaning Casings in Tumbler with Stainless Steel Media.

Brassman66

Brassman66

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Victoria BC or up the Creek northeast of Prince Ge
To be honest I never cleaned Rifle Casings more then absolutely nessesary. I use Guns in Guiding & Outfitting and pretty well only care about functionality.

Yes I do have a Tumbler and Regular Media but If I use it it will be for Handgun Casings only.

The other Day I purchased a bunch of used Casings from an Cinese Guy and Boy are they ever clean and shiney. I even Wire checked each and every one of them just to be sure no Casehead separation has started which could be hidden by super clean Casings.

Now I need to reload a few rounds (40) for a small project using (old mixed 7mm Remington Mag. a Calibre which we very rarely use) but while my available Casings are suitable for reloading, they look atrocius which I cant have for this project.
I heard of cleaning with Stainless Steel Media and would like to give that a try. So if you are using SS Media perhaps you can find the time and chime in what from your own experience are the pros and cons.

Thanks in advance and Cheers
 
Pros: your brass is cleaner than new unfired brass.

Con: none really, maybe if you’re only cleaning small batches it seems like a waste of water/volume.
Smokinyotes said:
Cons are it is time consuming and doesn’t make a difference in group size.
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As for it being time consuming, that isn’t my experience, I find wet tumbling with SS pins to be quicker than dry media tumbling. I just cleaned 4 batches of .308 brass, separated into batches by head stamp (80-100pc per batch). I threw one batch in my Lyman vibratory cleaner and did each of the other 3 batches in my wet tumbler separately for 2hrs each, when I changed batches in the wet tumbler I checked the batch in my Lyman.

These were once fired brass from my own rifles that had sat in ziplock bags for 2-3 years, light tarnish from sitting and usual powder fouling but relatively clean.

It took 6hrs for the vibratory cleaned batch to come close to one 2hr batch of wet tumbled brass with pins, primer pockets were not close to being clean in the Lyman vs wet tumbled. So you clean quicker and can clean way more volume in a Frankford Arsenal wet tumbler, separating pins while you rinse is a piece of cake if you use a media separator to spin them out.
 
It's best to use a rotary tumbler for wet cleaning. So if all you have is a regular vibratory cleaner and you want as nice and shiny as you can get then use new walnut shell media, squirt in some car polish and let it run overnight.
 
I like my diy wet tumbler with stainless pins a lot.
Also have a Lyman vibration tumbler with walnut media but hardly use it since I have the wet tumbler.

I’m decapping used brass with a Lee universal decapping die before tumbling, this way primer pockets get cleaned and brass dries faster.

Usually I run the tumbler for like 10-15 minutes then drain off (most of the) dirty water then add more clean water, dish soap and a bit of citric acid and run it for another 45 minutes.

Tips:
-Go easy on the citric acid and use only cold water!! Or you will end up with pink spots on your brass.
-put a large round magnet (from speaker or microwave) in the sink drain or strainer to catch stray pins.
- once done and brass is removed from pins I rinse it with very hot water, roll it back and forth in a large towel to shake out water and then it dries pretty fast.
 
bertn said:
I like my diy wet tumbler with stainless pins a lot.
Also have a Lyman vibration tumbler with walnut media but hardly use it since I have the wet tumbler.

I’m decapping used brass with a Lee universal decapping die before tumbling, this way primer pockets get cleaned and brass dries faster.
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THIS.

I got a Lee APP for depriming. It is SOOOO fast and easy and clean. There simply is no better way to deprime.

The one thing nobody seems to recognize about dry tumbling is that those machines produce a cloud of fine lead dust that spreads out around whatever room the tumbler is located. I would NEVER go back to dry tumbling for this reason.
 
bertn said:
Tips:
-Go easy on the citric acid and use only cold water!! Or you will end up with pink spots on your brass.
-put a large round magnet (from speaker or microwave) in the sink drain or strainer to catch stray pins.
- once done and brass is removed from pins I rinse it with very hot water, roll it back and forth in a large towel to shake out water and then it dries pretty fast.
Click to expand...
Try this instead of a magnet, get a strainer from the dollar store and catch 95% of the pins in the rinse. A media separator spins out the remaining pins and water.

I’ve never seen a difference between hot or cold water, I generally add a .45auto case of citric acid to rifle brass and a case of citric acid of whatever caliber I’m cleaning for pistol brass. Always shiny, never had any discoloured brass.
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Tallcooldrink said:
What’s your process?
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This is my process but you can just scale it down a bit with a normal size rotary tumbler :)

My procedure for wet tumbling.

I dump a 5 gallon pail of brass into a cement mixer, fill the pail with water and give them an initial rinse for about 15 minutes. Drain and rinse then add a pail of HOT water, squirt of Dawn and a heaping tablespoon of citric acid. Let it roll in the cement mixer about an hour, drain, rinse and spin then drain into a strainer bin. Then dump the brass into dryer rack screens and let sit in the sun to dry. In winter the brass goes into dehydrators. So I usually try to get as much brass as possible cleaned and dried in the hotter months.

Gets the brass nice and clean and no effing pins to deal with! :)
 
bertn said:
I like my diy wet tumbler with stainless pins a lot.
Also have a Lyman vibration tumbler with walnut media but hardly use it since I have the wet tumbler.

I’m decapping used brass with a Lee universal decapping die before tumbling, this way primer pockets get cleaned and brass dries faster.

Usually I run the tumbler for like 10-15 minutes then drain off (most of the) dirty water then add more clean water, dish soap and a bit of citric acid and run it for another 45 minutes.

Tips:
-Go easy on the citric acid and use only cold water!! Or you will end up with pink spots on your brass.
-put a large round magnet (from speaker or microwave) in the sink drain or strainer to catch stray pins.
- once done and brass is removed from pins I rinse it with very hot water, roll it back and forth in a large towel to shake out water and then it dries pretty fast.
Click to expand...
Pour the dirty water on the lawn. The nitrates in the cases will fertilize the grass.
 
I went several routes to clean brass cases.

All of them were a pain in the butt, and even created issues of their own.

Now, I don't bother to clean the cases, other than the necks, which I do with fine steel wool with a few drops of Wipe Out soaked in it.

Every once in a while I will get some serious sooting, which will almost always come from "light" loads or starting loads.

I have a plastic bin which easily holds a gallon of Lemshine and just dump all the cases into that and walk away, until the next day, but only if it's at least 50 cases.

A quick rinse under the garden hose and let the sun do the rest.

I don't mind or think anything negative about folks who like nice shiny brass cases. Good on them.

However, I believe that unless the cases are extremely dirty, with other grit, such as range dust/sand/etc, the bit of powder fouling will not harm loading dies.

I have a set of 30-06 dies which I first purchased over 60 years ago, and they are still nice and shiny, inside and out and size perfectly.

They've likely sized fifty thousand cases or more over the years. They're CH, the predecessor of Bonanza and excellent dies.
 
Brassman66 said:
To be honest I never cleaned Rifle Casings more then absolutely nessesary. I use Guns in Guiding & Outfitting and pretty well only care about functionality.

Yes I do have a Tumbler and Regular Media but If I use it it will be for Handgun Casings only.

The other Day I purchased a bunch of used Casings from an Cinese Guy and Boy are they ever clean and shiney. I even Wire checked each and every one of them just to be sure no Casehead separation has started which could be hidden by super clean Casings.

Now I need to reload a few rounds (40) for a small project using (old mixed 7mm Remington Mag. a Calibre which we very rarely use) but while my available Casings are suitable for reloading, they look atrocius which I cant have for this project.
I heard of cleaning with Stainless Steel Media and would like to give that a try. So if you are using SS Media perhaps you can find the time and chime in what from your own experience are the pros and cons.

Thanks in advance and Cheers
Click to expand...

Pros: Really clean brass, clean dies

Cons: rinsing, drying, etc - what a pain in the a$$. I also don't like dumping toxic sludge into my septic system too much - that's just me though.

When I wet tumble with pins, I'll use a bit a LemmiShine and just a drop of dish soap.
 
Brassman66 said:
Thank you all. Now I am more confused about using SS Pinns but get the feeling this is more then I want to get into at this time.
Thanks again !

Cheers
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Really simple, hot (soft) water, a small amount of laundry soap, a pinch of lemmishine, a vey small amount,100 grams or less, stainless pins.
Tumble for one hour, rinse, separate pins, spread on the carpet downstairs , next morning brass is dry and looks like new, inside and out including primer pockets.
 
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