thoughts On brass cleaning equipment?

[CASTING MACHINE]

Stainless steel pins clean your brass. For long term storage it is the only way to go. Im not going to process and anneal thousands of rounds of brass and load it in cases filled with powder/primer residue and god knows how much polish residue. Good to go for decades. When im gone my son will have safe reliable ammo for sometime. Makes me sleep better knowing this as is well. Just an opinion.

[geargnasher]

After rinsing, let them soak for a few minutes with a pinch of LemiShine in the water. Don't rinse the LemiShine off them, just dry as you normally would.

Correct. The citric acid residue will only help passivate the surface and will hurt nothing. I prefer rain water (or distilled for those of you who live where it's illegal to cache rainwater) for both the cleaning and the rinse.

To the fellow who asked about pin separation: I use a crank type media separator like is used for normal cob media. Fill the separator container with water/Lemishine, dump in brass and pins, crank the brass through the water slowly for about 30 seconds, pull the basket out, let excess rinse water drain back into the container, then pour out brass on a big fluffy towel and saw back and forth (hammock style) to dry the outsides and prevent spots. Dump it out on a second, dry towel and let naturally dry. Sunshine speeds the process but 48 hrs indoors is good to get the primer pockets dry as long as you spread them one layer deep. Suck the pins out of the bottom of the separator container with a speaker magnet inside a jumbo ziplock bag, the bag keeps the magnet dry and the pins separate so you can just peel the bag off the magnet and dump the pins back into the tumbler. Or you can spend $15 plus freight on a pick-up magnet.

Most dark brass is caused by contaminants in water (probably chlorine and flouride as much as the minerals), but sometimes case or bullet lube on the brass will make it all dark if you don't use enough liquid detergent. Use just enough detergent to produce a good foamy "head" of suds when you open the tumbler back up, but no more than necessary (I use 1 TBS per gallon of water, and 1 Tsp lemi-shine.)

Gear

[mold maker]

The STM system advertised at the top of the page is better built than Thumbers. The kit includes the correct pins.
I like shiny brass just because I can, and haven't had a problem with peening or rounding edges. I pick out any really tarnished pieces before hand to keeps the time as short as possible.
I c cob tumble with NuFinish for a while to finish drying, which tarnish proofs the shiny brass.

For those of you using car polish in the citric and ss pin tumble, how much and what brand?

[Swede44mag]

I use a Rebel 17 rotary tumbler with the SS pins dawn and Lemshine.
It works great for factory brass but if you throw in some foreign military brass they will all get a nasty green film that will have to be removed with a vibratory tumbler.
After looking on the web for the reason of the green film on the brass and not finding an answer I tried with some Winchester, Remington, and Federal brass no green film.
Just thought someone out there might have been scratching there head trying to find out what caused the green film.

[mgread]

Just did a other run of 1800 cases. Turn out good. Time to dry and start reloading tonight night for Saturday.




On average how many 9mm are in a pound. I get 112-118. Is it save to say 115.

[W.R.Buchanan]

If I was serious about selling brass I would be buying one of the nice Plastic Drum Cement Mixers from Lowes. It would get a mixture of pins and very fine Pea Gravel for media and be ran wet.

Working out a viable process that minimizes handling for cleaning cases is key to a successful endeavor. The more you have to touch the cases the less you make.

If you could get Morris to build you a machine that would collate the cases with the mouths down and then blow a jet of hot air thru them to dry them I think you'd have it beat.

Randy

[eli]

I simply soak/wash my deprimed brass in hot water with Dawn dish detergent. It works in large and relatively small plastic jars with lids, depending on brass size and volume. For just a few handfuls of straight walled handgun brass, I'll use a harbor freight ultrasonic cleaner with dish detergent. Because I use Lee classic loaders for handgun reloading, it's not a big deal to run each case through a piece of green scouring pad, with each piecho mounted on an electric screwdriver.
It adds a bit of time to reloading prep. but I enjoy it and I can catch-out any defective brass that slipped through my initial inspection.

[toallmy]

About the nu finish added to dry media , do you use the paste in the can ,or the squirt contaner ? I was going to pick some up from Wal-Mart .

[jimofaz]

re: "About the nu finish added to dry media, do you use the paste in the can ,or the squirt container?"

The squirt container is easier to use. Less media clumping that happens with most of the liquid polishing agents. I run my Dillon vibratory CC unit for about 30 mins. after the Nu Finish adder, to make sure it has fully dispersed.

BTW - I also have & use a 30 lb. capacity rotary wet tumbler (Rockford?). Got it from Amazon. I also like the .060 dia. pins sold by orisolo here on our site. They don't get stuck in the flash holes as easily as the smaller ones that come with the kit.

YMMV,
Jim

[jimofaz]

re: "the commercial processed stuff I buy that's pin tumbled always has rounded edges".

The barrels have to have the correct ratio of pins/cases/water, whatever that might be for the tumbler in use. If the commercial brass supplier has too high a ratio of brass in the barrel, I can see where case-to-case impingement would become a problem. Not enough buffering/cushioning to protect the case mouths.

Jim

[toallmy]

Thanks on the nu Finnish advice.