Over the past 8 years, I have been tumbling in stainless steel media. I know it’s unnecessary, so anybody who wants to comment on that can save your breath. I’ve never considered myself to being a bling excessive person, but I do like shiny brass. So I tried Dawn, Lemi-shine and stainless pins and using the Dillon powder through dye, the brass started sticking badly. I researched it and then started using car wash and wax instead of Dawn. It was kind of better, but not perfect, so I got out the old, vibrating media polisher and mixed up some NuFinish with the walnut media, and after drying the brass, I would run it through the media and polish to try and put a wax layer on the brass. That also worked OK but what a pain in the butt and way more work. So I went back to car wash and wax, and started having a problem with the wax from the car wash and wax sticking to the inside of the Tumblr and making a bad black mess. It was probably just the brand of washing wax I was using, but I needed to find a better solution. The Dawn dish soap did the best job out of anything to clean the brass and it kept the inside of the container clean also.
Fast forward to this last week and I decided to try and make a dip that I could put into a 2 gallon bucket with a lid and immediately upon rinsing the brass after removing it from the stainless steel media Tumblr I could dip it and then dry it and it would be lubed inside the cases and a very light coat on the outside. I tried two different brands of waterless car, wash and wax to try and dip some brass, and let it dry, but they failed the brass expander die test. The brass would still stick somewhat, even with the wax layer. I tried water soluble floor polish that also failed, so as I was digging through my cabinet, I found a quart of yellow 77 wire lube that I purchased years ago when I was chasing this, same problem. I checked a little bit to see if it was soluble in water and it mixed up great. I mixed it 20 parts water to one part yellow 77 and it turned out very thin. I mixed up a little over a gallon worth at 20:1 of the mixture and put it in my 2 gallon bucket. I’ve been watching it for several days and it has not settled out of solution.
So now my process is to use my Frankfurt Arsenal wet/dry media separator to remove my pins and rinse my brass, it then goes straight into an old salad spinner strainer (fits perfectly into the 2 gallon bucket) and gets dunked into the wax solution. It only takes a second or two in the wax solution. Pull it up out of the solution shake off any excessive liquid and put it on an old beach towel, shake it around a bit and lay it out to dry. The brass then goes into gallon Ziploc bags, and in their respective boxes for storage until I need it. The outside surface wax is so thin that you can’t even feel it and the inside of the case also has very little wax that you can’t see it but you can definitely feel it’s there when using the Dillon. This also helps in keeping the brass from tarnishing in the air after cleaning.
Solution stays clean because you’re dunking super clean, brass into it and has a lid to put on after you’re done and in between uses. I am still not sure if the wax solution will go rancid after a certain amount of time, but I will find out.
You can see in the pictures that there is no visible wax inside the cases but you can defently tell it’s there when reloading. The cases come out of the sizing and expander die like the press was empty and there is no residue on the cases after sizing. If I could find a way to spin the brass in the wax solution while still in the Frankfurt, Arsenal media, separator basket it would be even faster and easier. I just want to be able to seal up the wax solution when done.
Note that I deprime my brass before tumbling. Your results might vary if you leave the primers in. The solution would have a harder time getting out of the cases.
This brass was picked up from the dirt. It was very dirty with fuzzy white/green corrosion growing off it. It was 50 shades of gray dirty and it turned out like new.
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