How Do You Get The SS Pins Out Of Your Brass?

Dmay

Dmay

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The only method I have been 100% comfortable with it shaking each one (or couple at a time) upside down submerged in water.

In the past, I bought one of those Franklin Arsenal plastic tumbler-things that mounts on top of a pail which is filled with water. Found it wasn't completely reliable to remove them all.
I have let the brass dry and then try tumbling them out, but the odd one "dries in" and sticks.

I'm a little anal about it because I live in fear of dropping one into my AMP annealer...which might not be the end of the world, but I don't want to find out.
 
Darrel, I also shake each case, but not under water. It doesn’t take that long to do. Then the empty clean cases get dropped into clean water. Then each has the flash hole blown (by mouth). A quick wipe with a towel, and the onto the drying tray.

Doing this by hand also gives you the opportunity to inspect each case for rouge pins. I have had pins lodge themselves across a neck. Really weird, but easy to get out. Doing it this way gives me the confidence that I won’t drop any into my AMP.
 
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I use a Graff dry media separator aka “The cat turd spinner” lol, I don’t find any pins in the cleaned cases. I do a couple rinses into a pail with a strainer on top and catch the majority of the ss pins and then tumble out the rest, I tumble slowly so the cases roll around. 1-2 good rolls in the separator and they’re out, if I spin too fast the pins stay in the cases.

After spinning I spread them out on a towel on a big oven pan to dry by the wood stove, they get rolled around on the pan a bunch while drying and I don’t find pins on the towel or in cases while prepping. This is both pistol and rifle cases.

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I don't use SS pins in my cleaning system. From what I see, its not for me. But I am interested in the technology, and have watched many YT videos on the pros and cons. I remain interested in learning what may be new and improved.

I noticed that some advocates of using SS media, use SS media that are not pins, and are more angular shaped chunky pieces in a variety of sizes. The sizes are smaller than a neck or case body diameter, so should just fall out with the spinning media separator. It would be critical that these media are larger than the flash hole of course. :)

The corn cob media I use does get stuck in the flash holes, but its an easy punch-out with a Lee de-capping pin.
 
I use a salad spinner to separate and let the cases dry up.
Once dry, I inspect cases and shake them one by one.
 
Biologist said:
I don't use SS pins in my cleaning system. From what I see, its not for me. But I am interested in the technology, and have watched many YT videos on the pros and cons. I remain interested in learning what may be new and improved.

I noticed that some advocates of using SS media, use SS media that are not pins, and are more angular shaped chunky pieces in a variety of sizes. The sizes are smaller than a neck or case body diameter, so should just fall out with the spinning media separator. It would be critical that these media are larger than the flash hole of course. :)

The corn cob media I use does get stuck in the flash holes, but its an easy punch-out with a Lee de-capping pin.
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I have some that I haven't tried yet look like little space ships came from a place in California for jewelry making is what I assume.
 
I submerge a sieve into another container filled with water. Agitate the cases. That gets 95% of the pins out. The salad spinner gets the remaining pins.

Sometimes I don’t use pins.

I mostly reload pistol cases.
 
Making sure the cases fill with water in the rinse bath then pulling them out base-upward leaves any pins that were in a case on the bottom of the bath. Dump that back in the tumbler for the next run.

Also, mine are deprimed before tumbling.

I found the pins are the type of stainless steel that picks up with a magnet, so the magnet-on-a-stick is handy for nabbing pins that got loose.
 
old303 said:
Making sure the cases fill with water in the rinse bath then pulling them out base-upward leaves any pins that were in a case on the bottom of the bath. Dump that back in the tumbler for the next run.

Also, mine are deprimed before tumbling.

I found the pins are the type of stainless steel that picks up with a magnet, so the magnet-on-a-stick is handy for nabbing pins that got loose.
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Check out the Frankford Arsenal pin magnet, it’s cheap and fits inside the mouth of the drum. Works great to load the drum with wet pins, pickup a load on the magnet and drop them once inside the drum mouth. Picks up any that fall on the ground.
 
If some pins stick to the cases then they come out when the brass is dry I find.
And checking the primer pockets is a must I think, I sometimes have two pins parallel stuck in a flash hole.

A tip for pin users: get a large round magnet from a microwave and drop it in the sink drain/strainer when rinsing and dumping water.
Any stray pins or accidentally dumped pins will stick to the magnet and don't go down your drain.
 
First I use the screen that comes with the tumbler, it's more of a plastic grate.

Empty the tumbler drum into a 20l pail with a few holes drilled in it about 1in from the bottom. refill and dump and shake until there are no more soap bubbles. By the time there are no more soap bubbles most of the pins are in the pail.

I have a magnet from a speaker handy (you could buy a 5 dollar magnetic tray from princess auto and rob those) and I run that around the rim of the tumbler and then pour the brass into a mesh basket. I shake that a bit over an oil change drip tray thing for protecting your drive way. I run the magnet over the brass (maybe 1200pc 9mm) one more time in the open basket and then set the basket by the fire sitting inside the lid of a rubber maid.

There's usually zero or 1 pin found in the Rubbermaid lid after everything dries out and I shake one last time.
 
A thing I learned years ago is to always visually inspect inside brass before reloading. Each handful of brass gets set on the bench mouth-up, then with a suitable light I take a good look down them all, looking for any crap stuck inside, dual-flash-hole monsters, visible damage, or the like. Now that I'm wet tumbling any errant pins are something this will catch too.
 
old303 said:
A thing I learned years ago is to always visually inspect inside brass before reloading. Each handful of brass gets set on the bench mouth-up, then with a suitable light I take a good look down them all, looking for any crap stuck inside, dual-flash-hole monsters, visible damage, or the like. Now that I'm wet tumbling any errant pins are something this will catch too.
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Agreed, I do this as well after powder charging before bullet seating. While in the loading block I take a couple seconds to visually inspect powder levels, easy to catch a double charge or low/no powder charge.
 
I've got 2 5 gal pails . I use a stainless strainer that fits onto the top of the pails the first one I drain the tumbler dirty water off into. move the strainer too the 2nd and rinse the brass and pins off. Then I pick up about 6 pieces of brass at a time check flash holes then turn upside down and tap together over the strainer. places brass on an old towel too dry, Only takes about 10mins or so to go through it.
 
I started using SS pins and like the end results of how clean the brass is and doing a visual inspection on every piece after cleaning and drying. I don't mind the time it takes but I don't do that much shooting and a batch of clean brass will last some time for me.
 
I have a big tupperware container and a big vegetable strainer basket thing. The strainer basket has like 1/4" squares. I dump the contents onto it, which is on top of the tupperware. The bulk of the pins fall through. Then I tap out each case and put them aside for drying. I typically do batches of 100 rifle brass (200 if 5.56) or 250 pieces of pistol brass max. I'd say it only takes 10 minutes to sift and tap out all the brass and I'm never in a big hurry
 
Having wet tumbled and dry tumbled. I now exclusively dry tumble for the better overall results and less hassle. Brass comes out perfect every time with a polished mirror like shine.
Sold wet tumbler 10 years ago.
 
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