Great 'fun' with a tumbler

[jonk]

So I was in a hurry and dumped 45/70, 7mm, 9mm, .45, .38 special, and 7.62X39 brass all together....

It took me an hour to pull the .38 special cases out of the .45/70s, the 9mm out of the .45s, etc.

I often mix brasses when tumbling but have rarely mixed such disparete types.... oh yes, great fun.

On the other hand, i've rarely had my tumbler this full and I have to say the brass was cleaner than usual. Against all reason, it seems that filling it more led to better cleaning- perhaps the brass bumping into itself sped things up?

[ktw]

I ran into this recently for the first time, too. In my case is was mixing 45 Colt and 32 H&R in a tumbler. [smilie=b: Trying to save some time... :roll:

Lesson learned. Won't do that again.

-ktw

[scrapcan]

I got to help a commercial ammunition reman facility that was located here a number of years ago do this. He used an electric concrete mixer full of media and just put the brass in. He had new help and the new help put 3 five gallon buckets of different size pistol brass in the big tumbler. It took some time but I got some free components out of sorting for him. That was while I was in college and before life started to take more time. I sat at home with a beer and sorted brass for many hours.

I too learned my lesson from someone else's mistake.

[TCFAN]

I use the Lyman Brass Baggies #7631391 in my tumbler. Use a different bag for each different size case,works great......Terry

[trickyasafox]

some brass tumbles okay together- 38spl/357/380/9mm/9x18 all goes fine . . .223 can be thrown in with this batch too. sometimes the 9s will stick to the necks of the 223s but not too bad.

i don't have a 45 colt, but i would guess 45/70, 45acp, colt et all go together- i try to tumble more by bullet size then cartridge. it seems to help.

if you want to mix really different cases in the same tumbler load, i've separated the brass using those onion bags and thrown those in. it works reasonably well. then your cartridges come out exactly as they went in. so i'll throw 45acp in a bag, and just leave 40sw loose, and boom its all separated. :)

hope i explained that well.

[NVcurmudgeon]

So I was in a hurry and dumped 45/70, 7mm, 9mm, .45, .38 special, and 7.62X39 brass all together....

It took me an hour to pull the .38 special cases out of the .45/70s, the 9mm out of the .45s, etc.

I often mix brasses when tumbling but have rarely mixed such disparete types.... oh yes, great fun.

On the other hand, i've rarely had my tumbler this full and I have to say the brass was cleaner than usual. Against all reason, it seems that filling it more led to better cleaning- perhaps the brass bumping into itself sped things up?

jonk, I learned that one pulling 9mm out of .44 magnum cases, so now I mix cases that will not enter each other. Haven't tested scientifically, but I also think that the fuller the tumbler the cleaner, or sooner cleaned, the brass.

[Marshal Kane]

. . . and for many years, I thought I was the only one that made this mistake. Have pulled .38 Special out of .45 ACP cases only to find the lower half of the .38's polished, the upper half still tarnished. Grrr! Now I check to see if any case can enter another because Murphy's Law will see to it that it will happen. Have found that .44 Specials will tumble OK with .45's but .44 WCF will NOT.

[dromia]

Ditto brass baggies or more cheaply net laundry bags that come with some washing machine products, don't ask I know nothing about that side of the domestic divide. :roll:

[Bret4207]

32 S+W and 35 Whelen. Bad news.

[Jim]

Same story here. All 9MM, .38 spl. and .357 in one batch. All .40 S&W in another batch. All .45 ACP, .45 Colt and .45-70 in another batch. In other words, tumble by caliber, not just designation.
ON THE OTHER HAND, all my bottleneck cases(.308, .303, '06, 8MM, etc.) can go in together EXCEPT the .223s. They get their own ticket and private ride.

[mooman76]

I learned that long time ago or at least it seems like a long time. I'll put all my bottlenecked brass together but I have to be selective on my staightwalled cases. Some have gotten so jammed together I ruined a few cases getting them apart plus as stated earlier some cases only get half cleaned. If there is a big difference in size like 9mm vs. 45 I will go ahead and put them together but I don't run into that often. Also I don't run my brass as long as I used to. The longer you run it the more it will jam.

[38-55]

Hey Ya'll,
A kinetic bullet puller works well to get the stuck cases apart.... Ask me how I know...
Stay safe
Calvin

[mike in co]

ask a guy with 5 tumblers/////

really big lots of sorted brass....1000 223/1400 45acp/ 1000 357 sig/ 12-1500 9x21

( and i use a dillon large media seperator with a cover....about than 30 sec to seperate)

its a midway super tumble
one mid sized tumbler will do 500 acp
and three small midway tumblers....

anything else....lyman brass baggies or they go in by themselves

i just started using grainger sandblast media.ground corn, 20/40...very fine but works great!

30 bucks for 50 lbs

[fatnhappy]

Hey Ya'll,
A kinetic bullet puller works well to get the stuck cases apart.... Ask me how I know...
Stay safe
Calvin



As does an air gun. It was the only time I was grateful my tumbler is small. [smilie=1:

[mooman76]

Hey Ya'll,
A kinetic bullet puller works well to get the stuck cases apart.... Ask me how I know...
Stay safe
Calvin

How do you know?[smilie=w:

[38 Super Auto]

It's easier for me to collect my fired cases by caliber and then tumble a batch of one caliber at a time. I need to devote time to casting/sizing/lubing.:-D I've tried it a lot of ways, and found out along the way that 9mm/38super get nested into .40 s/w very nicely.

I agree with mike in co, the dillon media seperator is very sweet. It makes tumbling huge batches easy.

[Billwnr]

I had someone tell me they throw their cast bullets in a tumbler and an equal number of gas checks...and a little later the gas checks are on the bullets.

I haven't tried this tip but will at some time.

[Nueces]

Sometimes, in the early morning, when I'm too sleep-stoopid to dress myself, I throw my clothes in the dryer and climb in for a short cycle. I come out nicely dressed and with my hair all fluffed. On occasion, my shorts are on backward, but I'm working on a design for 'vents' front and back. :mrgreen:

Mark

[Jim]

Nueces,
Don't the tumbling vanes in the drier cause a lot of bruises?

[jhrosier]

I had someone tell me they throw their cast bullets in a tumbler and an equal number of gas checks...and a little later the gas checks are on the bullets.

I haven't tried this tip but will at some time.

Do you suppose that throwing in bullets, cases and primers and then using powder for the tumbling media would result in loaded ammo?:???:

[Nueces]

Oh, heck, they don't color much. Sorta like gettin' one o' them 'rough' massages.

Mark


Nueces,
Don't the tumbling vanes in the drier cause a lot of bruises?

[Sundogg1911]

I just wanna know why everytime I pick up my brass at the range, sort it and tumble it, I find a few .22 LR's in there. :roll: I swear I don't put 'em in the tumbler, but there's always one or two when I take 'em out. they're like little David Copperfields! :???:

[Billwnr]

Do you suppose that throwing in bullets, cases and primers and then using powder for the tumbling media would result in loaded ammo?:???:

This came from a guy who's not given to practical jokes...so I took his tip as genuine.

[Salmon-boy]

Sundogg, .22 shells are one of the cosmic equalizers... If you count your shells at the range you'll find 1 or 2 missing - they show up in the tumbler, kind of like losing one sock out of the dryer will mean an extra coat hanger in your closet. :-D

[chinewalk]

This is an older thread, but I thought I'd share one of my lessons learned.

This summer I was developing some loads for a S&W 500 and had a couple of hundred cases that needed cleaned so I could restuff them. While filling my tumbler with the dirty .500s I noticed a box of .45 ACP cases on the shelf that were dirty, so with the brain in neutral and the body in gear, I dumped them in with their big brothers.

When the tumbling was done, I dumped all of them in my media seperator, sorted the .45s out and jumped into resizing the .500s. All went well until about the tenth case and when I bottomed the press handle to size the case and eject the primer, something was obviously bad wrong.

A .45 case had stuck in the very bottom of the bigger .500 case (with the mouth up) and by pressing the handle down I deprimed both cases, bent the depriming pin as well as the decapping rod and locked the .500 case in the die. It took quite a while to get the mess out of the sizer die (that is when I discovered what had happened).

Yep, I was in a hurry and sure didn't expect to find a squatter living in the .500 case. So by the time I felt a resistance in the press handle ... it was too late. After "inspecting" the other cases, I found two more .500s with a .45 case stuck in them (both with the mouths up).

All the other calibers I reload play together well in the tumbler, but I now tumble the .500s by themselves.

Ed

[Forester]

I will add last night's smooth move here...

I was annealing some gas checks in a piece of pipe on the grill...well I had the bright idea to drop the tubes in a bucket of water so I could handle them right away...That went fine except now I had tubes full of charred paper towell, water and gas checks.

Now how to dry 1000 gas checks?...The tumbler of course!

That worked great,, except that the slots on the separator will let a gas check through,,2 hours of picking gas checks out of the media later I decided next time I will just let the checks air-cool.

[Swamprat1052]

I had someone tell me they throw their cast bullets in a tumbler and an equal number of gas checks...and a little later the gas checks are on the bullets.

I haven't tried this tip but will at some time.

Bill, Aint no way. Thats would be what you want to happen. It dont work that way. I learned this running 45 Colt and 30-30 brass at the same time. It wasnt any trouble to seperate but who'd a thunk it.

Swamprat

[moulton]

I was depriming a ammo can full of brass the other day from range pick up. I had .223, .45, .40 S&W, 9mm luger and .380 auto. I found a few 9 mm in my .40 cases and even 2 or 3 that had 9mm inside .40 inside .45