Hows my case cleaning strategy sound?

[steves86ta]

hey guys im new to this whole reloading thing, as well as the site. Trying to get into this reloading as a hobby and to save money as i was just laid off last week. Ive been using an old ultrasonic cleaner i have for jewlery to clean my brass, the mix consists of Pure Lemon juice, liquid cascade, and water. I put them in the cleaner for about 15-20 minutes, then wash them off with cold water and let them air dry, do you forsee any problems with this method? I can get some pictures of how clean it gets them if you are curious.

[jonk]

Given that lemon juice is acidic (like the vinegar I use) I'd dip them in baking soda/water mix to neutralize it. Your rinse may or may not remove all the acid. Over a long time it could etch the brass. But I have no proof of that.

[steves86ta]

what about to dry them? Is it okay to just let them air dry, or hit them with compressed air?

[jonk]

If you have compressed air, all the better. Air drying is fine but I speed it up by putting them on a black towel in the sun in the summer, or in the oven at 150 degrees in the winter. Dry in about an hour.

[deltaenterprizes]

How many can you do at one time ? How long will it take to do 500?

[steves86ta]

i have a really really small one it can do about 25 .45ACP shells at a time, but harbor freight has a two quart one which could easily do 50 or more 45 cases. Takes me about 10-15 minutes per batch.

[BoolitBill]

I also use an ultrasonic cleaner to clean my brass. I use distilled white vinegar as the cleaning solution. 10 or 15 minutes, dump out the liquid, fill with water and a teaspoon of baking soda for anothe 10 minutes and they are clean. After that I polish them in a rotary tumbler with water and a teaspoon of Cream of Tartar for a few hours. Air dry on a towel and the brass looks better than factory fresh.

[grumman581]

When I get a new batch of range brass, I just pour it in a 5g bucket, fill it with water and some Joy dishwashing detergent and then shake it around / tumble it for a few minutes... Cleans the outside well enough... Not a polished look, but at least no longer nasty... The inside doesn't look as good though... I've also used white vinegar and it makes the brass look even better... Do any of the methods actually result in the inside of the brass looking really good?

[RKJ]

When I get range brass that is discolored I use a jug and cheap koolaid, let it sit overnight, dump and rinse the next day. If the brass is dirty or clogged same jug and clean water shake well. Then the koolaid. It leaves a slight tint to the brass but I then throw them into the tumbler and they're good to go,

[Bret4207]

I've seen these ultra sonic cleaners around. How exactly do they work? Sounds waves in water?

[largom]

The ultra sonic is not really necessary, just speeds things up a bit. The vinegar or lemon juice is the cleaner. A rotary [RCBS] case cleaner works great, or just put the cases in a bucket with a lid and roll around for a minute or two and let sit for about 15 min. rinseing with baking soda after. Have cleaned thousands of range pick-ups this way.
Larry

[grumman581]

The ultra sonic is not really necessary, just speeds things up a bit. The vinegar or lemon juice is the cleaner. A rotary [RCBS] case cleaner works great, or just put the cases in a bucket with a lid and roll around for a minute or two and let sit for about 15 min. rinseing with baking soda after. Have cleaned thousands of range pick-ups this way.
Larry

A 5g bucket will hold about 2000 pieces of brass and still be easy enough to shake around as kind of a human powdered vibrating cleaner... My last batch of range brass was a bit over 5000. If I had more to do in a single batch, I would probably get one of the 30g plastic barrels with the removeable lid, put them in it with the water, detergent, & maybe a fine abrasive and then rig up a way to rotate it like you see with the rock tumblers, albeit on a larger scale...

[c3d4b2]

Here is some of the information I found when researching ultrasonic cleaning.

Ultrasonic cleaners use sonic wavers to generate pressure fluctuations on the brass surface. The pressure waves cause cavitation bubbles and when these bubbles collapse enough energy is released to remove contamination from the surface.

The reasons that the acidic cleaners (vinegar = acetic acid, lemon = citric acid, cream of tarter = tartaric acid half neutralized with potassium hydroxide) do a quicker job of cleaning the brass is because they etch the brass undercutting the carbon and particles.

These acids are weak and should not remove much brass, however, without doing some etch rate studies you cannot determine the amount of brass you are removing. As a conservative precaution, it would be prudent to minimize the amount of time in the acidic solutions.

Normal rinse procedures at work call for a minimum of 3 separate rinses in water after an acid bath. (It may take additional rinses depending on the water quality and temperature.) To save some money the first rinses can use tap water and the last rinses should use distilled water. If you are using vinegar, you can tell when the rinse is complete when you no longer have the vinegar smell. Once you no longer can smell the vinegar, switch to the distilled water for the final rinses. If you want to increase your rinse effectiveness you can use warm water and add some agitation (Ultrasonics would be effective here also).

Baking Soda is Sodium Bicarbonate (a base) and is listed as attacking brass. Because of this trait, it provides no real benefit to use this as a substitute for a good water rinse. The reasoning behind not performing the baking soda step is you will need to remove the baking soda to prevent it from attacking the brass. To remove the baking soda you will have to do a thorough rinse, so basically you are adding a step with little benefit.

Dave

[technetium-99m]

Or you can be lazy and just throw them in a tumbler, that's my practice.

[BLFD1]

A tumbler and walnut media is pretty easy...

[sheepdog]

Cheap walnut media cna be found in the pet stores or walmart. Can even find a coupon now and then.

[GSPKurt]

Lemon juice can leave a pink cast to the brass.

[OBXPilgrim]

Talk about firing line faux pas!!

Showing up with pink brass cases ranks right up there!!

[GSPKurt]

[jonk]

Oh don't get me wrong, I use a tumbler too.

But nothing gets them squeaky clean like an ultrasonic.

Better yet, ultrasonic THEN tumbling.