Agreed! Nothing more than lazy.
I have enough brass to cycle thru as well so I clean one batch while loading the other. Dirty brass does not go in any of my dies regardless if they are carbide.
Not cleaning before resizing?
- Thread starter Camoman1
- Start date
Agreed! Nothing more than lazy.
I have enough brass to cycle thru as well so I clean one batch while loading the other. Dirty brass does not go in any of my dies regardless if they are carbide.
TheNatural21
CGN Regular
- Location
- Fort Nelson, BC
I recently threw a die away because it had some scratches inside that were marking up my brass. It was a 308 FL die with thousands of rounds through it. I give brass a 20 min tumble before sizing to get the bulk of dirt/carbon off, and then I tumble for 8 hours to polish them up real nice before loading. Seems like that die was good until it suddenly wasn't, so I might have run a case through with something on it by mistake. I don't see tumbling as much of a time killer though. Only takes a minute to load up the tumbler and I do other things while it runs. For the longer polish I usually turn it on before I leave for work and let it run while I'm away all day.
Me too!
That's why I use machines. Throw brass in tumbler (one minute time) Go do something else. Load ammo, go to the range, go to bed, go to work- whatever. Return to tumbler, dump contents into brass/media separator (2 minutes) Presto! Clean brass.
When I do large quantities of brass (a bucket of 9mm is about 7500 cases) it goes in the cement mixer for 45 min. I'll go have a shower and get ready for work then come back and spread the brass onto a 4'x8' screen. Toss it around with a scoop a bit to get rid of excess water then leave it to bake in the sun while I'm at work. When I come home it's dry. (this only works in summer of course)
If you have a system that works for you then I am sure not going to try to change your mind. But it's easy to not spend too much of your actual time cleaning brass. Let the machines do the work.
Do you clean your primer pockets Chuck or just do it DIRTY ??RJ
Why in the world would I clean my primer pockets?
Haha I’m not lazy. Thats an insult I don’t appreciate. I’m away from home for work half the time, I practice as much as I can when home, so loading takes too much time from my family as is. I have enough brass to rotate, regardless this is a great time saver, actually I watched a video from Eric cortina a few weeks ago and he does the same.
I tumble before sizing, but I don't stand and watch the tumbler working so I don't use any reloading time doing it. Tumbler has a timer on it, start it whenever and let it do it's thing. How is that too hard to do?
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Falconflyer
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
I only got a tumbler about 15 years ago, for the 25 years of reloading prior to that I just made sure the cases didn't have any dirt on them and ran them through the die. I never had any problems scratching dies and it had nothing to do with lazyness and everything to do with what equipment I had at the time.
I always wipe the cases with a rag before lubing and resizing, it gets rid of most of the gunk. seems to work ok for me
Once in a while I will wet tumble the brass to really get it clean
If I get a bunch of range pick up brass I always wet tumble those
Once in a while I will wet tumble the brass to really get it clean
If I get a bunch of range pick up brass I always wet tumble those
I do the same, run my brass through a decapping die to pop the primer, then a quick tumble before resizing. Lube and resize, clean the primer pockets and chamfer the case mouth, then give them a long tumble before loading. Works well. If they need to be trimmed I'll do that before prepping the case mouth.
I GUESS there's No NEED too as long as you don't get a PROUD one - BUT that probably won't Matter either ! Right ?
RJI GUESS there's No NEED too as long as you don't get a PROUD one - BUT that probably won't Matter either ! Right ?
I have never in my life ever had protruding primers because of “dirty” primer pockets. Do you have an example of this happening or tested this theory?
Bubba Yugga
CGN frequent flyer
- Location
- Midwestern Ontario
I had a bunch of Salo & Blyat brass in 7.62x39 that actually had shallow primer pockets.
I used a Lyman pocket uniformer to deepen and square the pockets so the primers wouldn't sit proud.
I used a Lyman pocket uniformer to deepen and square the pockets so the primers wouldn't sit proud.
I suspect for “hunting accuracy” (say about 1MOA) there are a lot of steps in the brass prep process that are not absolutely necessary. IE: Not critical to clean the carbon of the outside of the neck or brush the inside. Not critical to clean the primer pocket. I guess each reloader determines their goal regarding what they consider to be acceptable consistency. Regarding group shooting, my goal is always sub 1/2 MOA so I have no issue with including practices like cleaning the primer pockets which makes sense to me given that it adds no more than 3 seconds for each reload.
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Funny, most of the guys disagreeing with me have like 20 000 posts. I see why you guys aren’t worried about saving time haha
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I have the extra time because I don't waste it watching youtube, haha.
But seriously, tumbling a batch of brass takes like 3 minutes of my time, not hundreds of hours.
I think it depends on your shooting discipline . For example benchrest where your brass is well taken care of and more than likely will never see the ground and is probably even ejected onto a towel , a good wipe down is probably all that is needed. Same for fclass depending on your setup. Now hunting or prs where the brass will probably end up on the ground i can see the need for tumbling.
There are benchrest and fclass guys that like to leave carbon in the necks with only a light brushing from a nylon brush.
There are benchrest and fclass guys that like to leave carbon in the necks with only a light brushing from a nylon brush.
I assume everybody does it the way that works for them - or they've changed how they did it before to how they're doing it now.
I clean my brass every time. At a rough guess, maybe a minute to throw it in the media. Then another two or three minutes to run it through the media separator at the end of cleaning. Soooooo.... three to five minutes time invested in cleaning my brass. The time that it's being cleaned doesn't count, because I don't stand there watching the machine while the brass is cleaned. Nor do I hear it, because I'm somewhere else while that is going on. That makes time required a none issue for me.
I have never bothered to trial whether it gives me some tiny improvement in accuracy because I don't shoot in any of the precision accuracy games. I know it doesn't hurt anything and I prefer really clean cases as opposed to clean cases.
If the brass may sit for some time before being loaded and used again, I also passivate the brass. That does take a little bit more time.
I clean my brass every time. At a rough guess, maybe a minute to throw it in the media. Then another two or three minutes to run it through the media separator at the end of cleaning. Soooooo.... three to five minutes time invested in cleaning my brass. The time that it's being cleaned doesn't count, because I don't stand there watching the machine while the brass is cleaned. Nor do I hear it, because I'm somewhere else while that is going on. That makes time required a none issue for me.
I have never bothered to trial whether it gives me some tiny improvement in accuracy because I don't shoot in any of the precision accuracy games. I know it doesn't hurt anything and I prefer really clean cases as opposed to clean cases.
If the brass may sit for some time before being loaded and used again, I also passivate the brass. That does take a little bit more time.
