Used a sonic cleaner on BP.....

[Knarley]

After going through a bunch of cases the other night with a bore mop, decided that there has to be a better way. 25 cases of 38-55 and 20 45-70 I was amazed on how much junk is left in them after soaking and agitating them. Basically had a 1/2 coffee can of mud, per cal. I had run a wire brush after they had been tumbled (different batch) and the 38-55's had quite a bit of crud come out, the 45-70 did too, but not so much.
Any way, to make a boring story less trauma, decided to get one of them sonic jobs.

Got home set it up per and found the nastiest,cruddiest cases I have, they are expendables for sure. Dropped them into the solution and flipped the switch.........
HOLY COW do those things work! The soot come out of the cases, like a plume of smoke as I watched.( I know , I'm like a 5 yr. old) It was really cool! The cases came out really clean compared to how thy went in, on the inside too. Now I've had these cases for years, and they have seen nothing BUT BP. And the insides were surprising.

So I loaded up the basket with 45-70's. About 1/2 a coffee can full and let 'er buck.
The directions on the unit say to discard the"solution" after it gets "stained or murky".........by the time it was done running, I couldn't see the brass! I wanted to see just how clean they would get, so I ran them through again, in the same solution. After that the solution was really dirty.

I then tried a "batch" with tap water, dish soap and a dash of vinegar. Ran about the same # of cases, the same amount of time. They came out almost as clean as the store bought washed cases. Another cycle probably would have done the trick. The cycle times I was using was 480 seconds.

I'm thinking the 38-55 cases will be cleaned this way more often than the 45's just due to the smaller diameter, I know there is a debate on if tumbling gets the insides of a case clean...........
IMHO tumbling will do a better job in the larger dia. cases, but not so much in the smaller. But once in a while, a good sonic cleaning can't hurt.


Regards,
Knarley

[Hawks Feather]

I just recently tried Citric Acid in my ultrasonic unit and it worked very well. Of course, the old stuff I used in it also worked very well. Just shorter time with the CA. You still need to tumble them if you want them shiny and bright like new brass. When I first got the ultrasonic I tried it on some .308 brass that had been tumbled and looked great. It didn't do much to the outside, but there was a major difference on the inside.

[Vann]

I fill my ultrasonic cleaner with water and add a cup of vinegar, after about 15 minutes I drain it and fill it back up with fresh water for another 15 minutes. Then I throw into my vibratory cleaner full of corn cob. This does well for me.

Vann

[bedbugbilly]

Interesting Knarley! As I was reading your post, I thought "what would happen if you put in a little citric acid?". Hawks Feather answered that! I don't have either a sonic or a tumbler but have been thinking about doing something to help clean my BP 38 specials. Shiny brass is nice but I'm more concerned about getting the crud out and getting the cleaned. Right now, I'm just washing them well in a small bucket of hot, soapy water and then rinsing. Does a decent job but seems like a sonic would take a lot of the hand work out of it Thanks for the post!

[rfd]

way to go knarley!

i've posted about this before, i'm a recent convert and huge fan of the ultrasonic cleaners for brass. i use a hornady 2L and their solution along with distilled water (4oz mixed with 120oz) and run the brass for 30min, with a preliminary bubble dispersion cycle. super fast and quiet. pull out the basket and rinse the brass in clear cool water, wipe off any residual residue with a paper towel and allow to air dry. spectacularly like-new shiny outside and in, including the primer pocket. just sold my rebel 17 tumbler. ultrasonic is the way for me. maybe fer y'all, too.

[bedbugbilly]

rfd - that certainly does a nice job on the brass!

[AggieEE]

Pop out the old primer so the leftover crud won't get trapped in there. Vann, add a small squirt of dish soap to your vinager. The soap makes the surface tension of the water drop so it "shears" better with the ultrasonic to create the cavatation bubbles which do the heavy lifting in the cleaner. rfd are you sure you didn't post a pic of some new brass?

[rfd]

the thing i noticed with ultrasonics is that if you start off with new brass, it will always come out of the basket just as you see above (that brass was fired nearly a dozen times). but if you've got used brass that was never cleaned properly - either outside or in or both - it will take a number of ultrasonic cleanings to make it at least acceptable *inside*. from a functional perspective, i want the inside super clean to prevent case stretching and separations from black powder explosions. if you aim to clean the inside the best it can be (like new) then the outside will more than take care of itself (though the outside isn't as important to me as the inside).

nope - hand on the family bible, those are not new cases in the pic above - i get that all the time! they are brass that have been fired over ten times each and have only been cleaned in the hornady 2L. if i had used a dry or wet tumbler, they'd never look like that. used brass that been shot a number of times and only cleaned via some tumbler won't have insides looking new, and trying to get that old brass to look new on the insides with an ultrasonic can take many many cleanings.

ultrasonic brass cleaning is the real deal! go check it out for yerself!

[ogre]

May I ask then: which brand of ultrasonic sink are you using?

[rfd]

May I ask then: which brand of ultrasonic sink are you using?

hornady 2L along with their brass cleaning concentrate.

[BrentD]

I spent a couple years with an ultrasonic for cleaning my BP cases. Can't say I liked it much. If anyone wants one cheap, mine is available. Steel pins in a Lortone tumbler for me.

[ogre]

hornady 2L along with their brass cleaning concentrate.

Thank you Sir.

[rfd]

yer most welcome, ogre.

it's all good, one way or another, lotsa good ways to clean the brass. if i hadda clean hundreds of bpcr cases weekly i don't know if a simple u-sonic could cut it. probably need a commercial unit.