I need some brass tumbling tips.

Polish-Jack

Polish-Jack

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Kelowna, B.C. Canada
I bought a tumbler a week ago and I am having trouble getting some of my brass clean. It's a small Lyman 1200 turbo (I think) and I have a batch of brass that had been tumbling in crushed walnut lizard bedding for a little over ten hours and they look stained.

I did a bit of reading here on CGN and a bunch of people say they use a cap full of Brasso with their media. I went to a local hardware store and bought a small plastic bottle of the stuff. I put in a cap full and let it run for another ten hours and they come out looking almost the same.

What am I doing wrong?



 
Brasso will eat your brass. Don't use it. I would get some metal polish that does NOT contain ammonia.

I would use some corn cob media with some polish, and if that doesn't work, you might try throwing 1 or 2 cap fulls of CLR into the media before adding the brass.
 
Some old brass does not come clean, more so if it has been sitting for some time (6 months or more)---dump all cleaning media in to another bucket and put in App 250- 300 45acp brass and add brass till about 1/3 to 1/2 full to a max of say 400 brass then dump cleaning media on top do not over fill or underfill with media if ( should be below rim) when you start up cleaner running media will vibrate down and fill air pockets and media and brass should swirl around slowly and fold over from out side to in side ( if it just kind of sits there and vibrates you have to much or too little of something

use metal polish that does NOT contain ammonia or get come case cleaner from a gun store.
 
Old used bounce sheets tossed into dirty media really helps to cleanup both your media and the brass. I save my old used ones after they are done making my clothes nice and fresh ;)
 
Jordan Smith said:
Brasso will eat your brass. Don't use it. I would get some metal polish that does NOT contain ammonia.

I would use some corn cob media with some polish, and if that doesn't work, you might try throwing 1 or 2 cap fulls of CLR into the media before adding the brass.
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I've never had a single problem with brasso eating my brass. Case mouths split or casings get lost long before any deterioration sets in.


To the OP, I use a tablespoon of brasso with a 50/50 mix of walnut and corn cob.

I accidentally left some pistol brasss tumbling for about 10 hours the other day and it was so bright you'd need sunglasses. I'd say give it a shot, a lot of guys also use Nufinish car wax.
 
to get the stains off, try soaking in vinegar. brasso with render your brass brittle becasue it has ammonia in it and that reacts with the brass and you will not get any life out of the brass. the vinegar will rid your brass of the stains that are pitted in to it, then if you wish you can tumble after. a good way to see if you have toomany pieces in your case vibrator is they will all bunch up and seem to be all standing straight up and not "flowing" through the media. try this stuff, and see what happens. there is a thread recently, thaat went in to detail about the vinegar to wash off stains.
 
Johnny G1 said:
As long as the brass is clean of grunge and mud, should be all rite, don't have to be super shiny, your not taken it to the prom are you?? a lot of stains will not come off in a polisher, must be done by hand.
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Maybe not the prom, but I like to have my things look nice.

Thanks for all the advice guys, I'll try the NuFinish in fresh media and see if it will do any better.
 
Nu-Finish works well, any liquid wheel or car polish will work the same as they all have an abrasive in them. I find I put quite a bit more in than a capfull, probably more like 2-3 table spoons in a full tumbler. Change the media out every 1000 cases or so (I usually do 100-200 rifle cases at a time depending on size)

3hrs in my Lyman and my brass comes out Prom Date shiny clean.
 
I have a Lyman 1200 and have had for years. I use corn cob and a capfull of brass cleaner from Dillon. I set me tumbler in my green house and generally let it run overnight. In the morning my brass comes out like new. I change my product every10 or so cleaning.

Grijim
 
Jordan Smith said:
Brasso will eat your brass. Don't use it. I would get some metal polish that does NOT contain ammonia.

I would use some corn cob media with some polish, and if that doesn't work, you might try throwing 1 or 2 cap fulls of CLR into the media before adding the brass.
Click to expand...

John Y Cannuck went to a lot of trouble to dispell that theory by way of a multi day experiment. You sir are dead wrong. Brasso will NOT damage brass.

At any rate.....I've picked up brass that had been laying on the ground all winter and was almost completely black. Put it in my 1200 with crushed walnut. Add NuFinish car polish a bit at a time until you see the media slow down a bit. By slow down, I mean the speed at which it's cycling through the tumbler. Left it on overnight and presto.....99.9% of the black tarnish is gone.
 
Jordan Smith said:
Brasso will eat your brass. Don't use it. I would get some metal polish that does NOT contain ammonia.

I would use some corn cob media with some polish, and if that doesn't work, you might try throwing 1 or 2 cap fulls of CLR into the media before adding the brass.
Click to expand...

Yep, the Brasso MYTH is BUSTED. You would have to soak your brass in 5% or 10% ammonia for HOURS or more to make any difference to the structural integrity of the brass.

As for the CLR, I think it's pretty funny that you stomp on ammonia, yet promote using an ACID on the brass without rinsing it off afterwards.


The tarnish will come off quite quickly using a mild acid solution (vinegar), and rinsing the brass afterwards. Then dump the brass into your tumbler and it will come out shiny.
 
A number of people have again dispelled the supposed down side of using Brasso and I agree. As part of a reloading equipment upgrade, I decided to add a polisher/tumbler. With the possibility of running into some harder to clean 'stuff' I decided to get an RCBS Sidewinder. The Sidewinder has the option of using either the usual crushed walnut or corn cob media or for the tougher jobs, a chemical solution.

For just the touch up cleaning and polishing jobs I run the brass with the crushed walnut then through a short tumble with cw and some polish added.

For some of the more difficult cleaning requirements, to the first batch of cw, I'll add a couple of table spoon of Brasso. Then when sufficiently clean, run the brass through a short tumble with cw and polish.

If there are a few cases with bad stains etc, I'll clean them individually rubbing them with Brasso on a cloth first before putting them through a tumbling process.

As of yet, I haven't found the need to tumble with the chemical cleaner supplied by RCBS for use in the Sidewinder.
 
If I may "butt in" on this thread, I also recently acquired a Lyman tumbler and have used it with corncob media on .45 ACP brass and it did a good job. (I'm not looking for "factory bright", just clean.)

However, I deprimed the brass first and found that the media got stuck in the primer holes to the extent that shaking the brass in a bucket still required a lot of work to manually dislodge it. It also got seriously stuck in bottleneck cases (.303, 6.5, .222).

Does anyone know where one can find smaller grades of media? I vibrated a bunch of the corncob through 1/8" wire mesh and the smaller stuff did much better, with only a few cases requiring manual attention. However, the yield was pretty small, although I guess I could always use the bigger stuff on straight wall cases w/o depriming first.

BTW, I found an interesting webite in the US (kramerindustriesonline.com) which has a lot of interesting info on equipment and media of all sorts and stock both corncob and walnut in different sizes. I may contact them if I can't find anything locally.

:) Stuart
 
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