why did I put off using ss media until today

[corey012778]

I am a be leaver in wet tumbling now. I got a little bored did not feel like casting or reloading and could not mow because of rain (again) so I did some test on brass cleaning
used armor all wax and wash lim-shine in a sonic cleaner to see how it does (normally dawn and straight citric acid) not bad

walnut media/nufinish/ slash of heet to keep the dust down in a hf rock tumbler looked good

found a pound of ss media I bought a couple years ago. used the sonic cleaner mix (OH MY GOD)
vibration cleaning using an old peanut butter jar and my old vibration tumbler (lids broken way before these ) about the same as the sonic cleaner

raised out the drum and used my normal sonic cleaning mix on brass from the sonic cleaner and jar test let run for 3hours. dirty water from cases that was just cleaned and cases looking brand new.

all the brass I used was cleaned before storage. 20 each


old rifle case cleaning method

deprime
sonic clean
size
sonic clean
dry tumble
prime
load


thinking about now
deprime
sonic clean
size
wet tumble
prime
load

[NyFirefighter357]

Save yourself some steps, deprime, tumble, size, prime & load. You can make a really easy wet tumbler using a wiper motor &small bucket.

[corey012778]

second cleaning is to removed case lube off.

[robg]

Why not decap size ,trim,sonic clean,let dry ,tumble polish prime,load .?

[dyecocker1]

With my typical cleaning method would be to decap and resize. Wet tumble/dry and load. There is really no need for dry polish when wet tumbling. If you just started using SS pins your going to be mad when I tell you you dont even need to use pins anymore! Relatively new product called brass juice. Mix it in the correct ratio and go, no pins to separate! Very comparable to tumbling with pins, id say the primer pockets might not be quite as good but that does not concern me. You can also use the mix multiple times before it runs out of cleaning power. I can usually get 3 perfect batches then I use it for 1 batch of initial cleaning before I would resize. These Lake City 308 were tumbled for 2 hours, it can also be used in ultrasonic machines. I am not a paid spokesman lol, just dont miss trying to catch 50 lbs of pins with each batch of brass I cleaned.
308 lake city by Dan Minick, on Flickr

[JimB..]

You guys size your brass dirty? Isn’t that hard on the brass and the dies?

Brass Juice has almost got to be citric acid and soap.

I deprime, wet tumble w/o pins, size, wet tumble w/ pins, trim, anneal, prime, load.

[dyecocker1]

You guys size your brass dirty? Isn’t that hard on the brass and the dies?

Depends on what kind of dirty we are talking about. I run suppressed bolt action brass right through the sizer, after all it rarely hits the ground. Semi auto suppressed brass that I picked out of the dirt is a different story, I use my burned out Brass Juice to do an initial cleaning just to get the big stuff off.

[JeepHammer]

I freely admit I got carried away on the soap!

In my defense, this was brass that was caked in red clay mud...
A low foaming cleaner (dish washer detergent) wouldn't have done this.



GO EASY ON THE LEMI-SHINE!
Too much and the brass is hard to flush, and dulls quickly,
Way too much and the brass turns pink!

When it's just carbon, grease cutting soap works fine, no pins needed.
Corrosion needs pins or chips. Chips clean the inside & primer pockets better.

DECAP BEFORE OR IMMEDATELY AFTER!
Letting brass air dry or storage after cleaning will corrode primer to brass and make the primer much more difficult to get out.

[JimB..]

@JeepHammer that is quite a project! The Lemi-shine serves 2 purposes. In areas with hard water the acid makes the water acidic which makes the soap work better. It also removes the oxidation from the brass.

Oh, and do you want to sell a LFRB of uncleaned mil range pickup?

[JeepHammer]

What's LFRB?

I sell some brass to outside folks, but it's at the very least cursory cleaned (FOD removed, washed) and neck qualified.
Neck qualification machine rejects mangled, blanks, loaded rounds, etc. Some case dents get through. 95% neck size or better for .223/5.56mm.
It also rejects .222, .204 etc.

I roll size lower case so they fit EVERY chamber, usually decap, swage & trim.
Roll sizing restores the lower case body, rim & extraction groove, we all know how hard military firearms can be on brass...
... And speed gunners insist on brass that functions each & every time.

I also anneal in volume, just depends on what the customer wants.
Some want the primers in the case so they can verify it's once fired, some want the works...

Neck issues (anything under 95%) gets cut for .300AAC/BO.
95% or better mean no kinks in the mouth.
My customers aren't getting something that will immedately crack because someone decided form out a kink...
Blanks & mangled are just scrap, I won't cut a blank for .300BO like some guys do.

[LUBEDUDE]

LFRB- large flat rate box from the post office. Cheap way to ship. I forgot the exact price with all of the increases in the past few years, it’s aroung $15ish.

[JimB..]

LFRB- large flat rare box from the post office. Cheap way to ship. I forgot the exact price with all of the increases in the past few years, it’s aroung $15ish.

Not rare at all, but flat rate. A medium flat rate box holds about one 50cal ammo can worth of brass, a large holds about two.

[LUBEDUDE]

Not rare at all, but flat rate. A medium flat rate box holds about one 50cal ammo can worth of brass, a large holds about two.

Sorry, autocorrect is my worst enema!

[JeepHammer]

I hate auto fill... Nothing like divorce instead of Disney...

I don't do piece count, I do weight since flat rate boxes is how I ship small batches.
About 75-ish milbrass to a pound (depends on headstamp, which I don't sort), closer to 80 with most civilian brass.

I haven't sold small batches in so long I don't even know what the going rate is, most people I deal with pick up or I deliver.
Since it's deprimed and rocks/mud removed, it's a few more to the pound.

What did you have in mind? PM me and we can work out details...

[Gunners Mate]

pinch pf lemishine
3 table spoons of dawn
1 table spoon of cream of tartar
1 gal of water and ss pins

[RogerDat]

I too wish I had gotten into the SS pins awhile ago, wouldn't have had to re-run so much brass after I discovered how well it worked

Lee Universal de-prime die is just the ticket for removing primer before cleaning so primer pocket gets cleaned without sizing brass. Quick swap of the case holder and one can do a different case. Especially useful when doing a mixed batch of 30 caliber brass. Quick switch between 30-30, 30-06, 303 etc. seem to run in the tumbler fine together and avoids having to do 3 tiny batches in favor of one larger batch.

• Lee universal deprime die.
• Tumble in SS pins using a FART pinch of lemishine and dab of Dawn or dish detergent.
• Knock any remaining pins out of the case and toss on towel - may sort mixed brass into different piles at this step.
• Spread flat on towel where I tossed them and run a fan to dry.

I don't polish any more as a routine step but some brass does get run through vibrating tumbler of dry media (walnut hull or corncob) with some Nu-Finish car polish to coat and give it long lasting shine for storage. Tend to do this for brass I know won't get reloaded soon. Having a lot of 38 special or .223 brass I can expect some to sit in containers for a long time.

Well not a lot of .223 compared to the pictures above but sufficient I won't get to reloading some of it this year, or probably the next.

Less is more (effective) with the Lemishine. Making it strong or letting it sit too long leads to pink brass. With Dawn, little goes a long way and avoids hassle of extreme suds or rinsing repeatedly trying to get the soap out.

[JeepHammer]

Low suds soap helps, dishwasher type...
Just remember the grease cutting stuff works best.

With an open container (like cement mixer) extra foaming carries off a lot of the crud, particularly if you get grass/leaves/mulch (organic debris) in with the brass, but you are correct, it takes a LOT of rinsing to get heavy soap off.

The only time I use steel pins is when there is heavy tarnish/corrosion, or I want the inside as shiny as the outside. Then a mix of stainless pins & chips works quickest, but you get that whole separation issue when using stainless...

I find tumble separation works fastest, and every reloading company sells a brass/media separation tumbler of some sort... Most of them work pretty good, depending on the volume you do.

[David2011]

How much Lemi-Shine are you using and for how long is it soaking? I use straight citric acid and the only pink I get is small spots on mil surplus 5.56 that’s laid in the weather until it was dark brown. Just some minor zinc loss that polished right out with corn cob media. Never got any pink on any other brass.

[RogerDat]

How much Lemi-Shine are you using and for how long is it soaking? I use straight citric acid and the only pink I get is small spots on mil surplus 5.56 that’s laid in the weather until it was dark brown. Just some minor zinc loss that polished right out with corn cob media. Never got any pink on any other brass.

I use powdered Lemi-shine which I think is cheaper but can be added in different concentrations. Less than a teaspoon works fine, a table spoon worth and I better watch how long brass is in there. I doing this in a FART (Franklin Arsenal Rotating Tumbler) with about a bread loaf pan (or half a coffee can) of brass. When doing a 5 gallon bucket about 2/3 full of water as a soak before tumbling in dry media I have used a table spoon of citric acid and not had a problem and that amount is effective.

Military brass does seem to be more inclined to become pink, I see it most often in Military head stamp 30-06. Sometimes in 8mm Mauser, and 303 British brass which is military surplus or at least older brass. I don't see any improvement in outcome for going stronger with the powdered Lemi-shine. I'm generally tumbling for 2 - 2.5 hrs. I would do a soak of almost the same length of time in a bucket for dry tumbling. Where one is pretty sure to get some pink brass is if you start a batch and then go to run errands or do some other job that takes longer than expected and forget the brass so it just sits and soaks for hours. Or doze off for a nap, wake up because wife says it's dinner time and then after dinner suddenly remember what it is that you have the nagging feeling you forgot. Weaker solution extends how long you have before your brass turns pink without diminishing results. I suppose stronger might allow for shorter time? But it takes time with the SS pins to clean up the inside and primer pockets.

Lot of the brass I do is range brass so none to clean and often none too shiny. End result looks pretty close to new brass. Works for me but certainly isn't the only way to get the job done.

[Moonie]

My proceedure for rifle brass:

Decap, tumble with dawn, lemishine and SS pins.

Lube and resize

Run through tumbler without SS pins with car wash and wax to remove the lube and leave a long lasting shine