Who does not tumble their pistol brass?

[fecmech]

I didn't tumble my pistol brass for the first 30 or so years that I reloaded. I would occasionally rinse the alox off the cases with solvent when they got messed up bad. Since I went to the "dark side" (hard lubes) my cases stay pretty clean after firing and I only tumble after 4 or 5 reloads. Personally I look at the targets for results, there are some really "pretty" commercial reloads that don't shoot worth a darn.

[unique]

I guess I never understood the purpose of cleaning brass. Sure it is nice and shiny but I am not really attracted to shiny things and if I ever get a strong desire to clean something then my wife is there to point the way.

As I understand it, the residue left over after tumbling has a fair amount of lead dust which you have to be carefully with. Lee talked about someone being poisoned a result of being careless while tumbling. I know Hatcher made comments about it dirty brass lasting longer than clean brass in some tests he ran.

Tumbling is an extra step in the reloading process. Someone will say I need to wipe each brass individually before sizing and that is true but since I inspect each case as I reload it doesn't really add an extra step.

The consensus seems to be the reason people tumble is to have shiny brass.

[quack1]

If I have a bunch of range pick up brass or just plain gritty brass, I'll tumble it before using just to keep from scratching my dies. Other than that, my opinion is shiney brass isn't any more accurate than tarnished brass so I just shoot and load pistol and rifle.