No_1
01-26-2012, 09:35 PM
This is a product review of stainless tumbling media provided by Trevor & Cory from www.stainlesstumblingmedia.com . I have read many post of how stainless media cleans like no other and I will admit to being a little skeptical of these claims. Going to their website I found it to be very informative with a tutorial (http://www.stainlesstumblingmedia.com/tutorials) and a tips (http://www.stainlesstumblingmedia.com/tips) section. From the home page you can purchase anything from media to complete packages that include everything you need. The price seems reasonable considering you will never have to purchase brass cleaning media again. Since I already had a small rotary tumbler and Lemi-shine (citric acid) on hand I chose media only. It arrived quickly in a small USPS flat rate box. When I opened the box I found a sealed bag of stainless media (stainless pins) along with a nicely printed instruction sheet.
I now had everything on hand so I placed about 50 deprimed 45-70 cases in my rotary tumbler, added a couple pounds of pins, a squirt of Ajax liquid dish detergent, a 1/4 tablespoon of Lemi-shine, topped it off with tap water and set the timer to 4 hours. After about 1 hour curiosity got the best of me so I took a peek at the brass. The primer pockets were starting to look cleaner but the brass was not shiny yet. I turned it back on and waited out the remaining time. When the timer finally turned off I took the tumbler drum along with a bucket to the kitchen sink. I drained as much of the now dirty water as possible without losing any pins then ran more water into the drum until the overflow was clean. At this point I dumped the contents from the drum into the bucket which was now in the sink positioned directly below the faucet. I allowed the tap water to run directly into the bucket while I sifted through the contents to pick out the brass and found the media easily fell to the bottom of the bucket while rinsing the cases under the flow of clean water. I dried the brass using my compressed air nozzle as recommended on the website but feel any of the other recommended drying methods would work just as well. I finished by draining the water from the media then placing it back into the rotary drum. It was not dry but the website indicates it can be stored that way.
Final inspection proved this stuff does clean like no other. The inside of the cases as well as the primer pockets were spotlessly clean and the outside of the cases were shiny. Is it worth the cost and effort? In my eyes, yes, considering how long it takes to hand clean primer pockets which I feel is absolutely critical for some of my loads.
I now had everything on hand so I placed about 50 deprimed 45-70 cases in my rotary tumbler, added a couple pounds of pins, a squirt of Ajax liquid dish detergent, a 1/4 tablespoon of Lemi-shine, topped it off with tap water and set the timer to 4 hours. After about 1 hour curiosity got the best of me so I took a peek at the brass. The primer pockets were starting to look cleaner but the brass was not shiny yet. I turned it back on and waited out the remaining time. When the timer finally turned off I took the tumbler drum along with a bucket to the kitchen sink. I drained as much of the now dirty water as possible without losing any pins then ran more water into the drum until the overflow was clean. At this point I dumped the contents from the drum into the bucket which was now in the sink positioned directly below the faucet. I allowed the tap water to run directly into the bucket while I sifted through the contents to pick out the brass and found the media easily fell to the bottom of the bucket while rinsing the cases under the flow of clean water. I dried the brass using my compressed air nozzle as recommended on the website but feel any of the other recommended drying methods would work just as well. I finished by draining the water from the media then placing it back into the rotary drum. It was not dry but the website indicates it can be stored that way.
Final inspection proved this stuff does clean like no other. The inside of the cases as well as the primer pockets were spotlessly clean and the outside of the cases were shiny. Is it worth the cost and effort? In my eyes, yes, considering how long it takes to hand clean primer pockets which I feel is absolutely critical for some of my loads.