Cement Mixer for Wet Tumbling?

[Slick Pilot]

Harbor Freight has a cement mixer for 150 bucks.

How about that and some stainless steel pins, a few gallons of water, a little soap, and citric acid?

[Bayou52]

Harbor Freight has a cement mixer for 150 bucks.

How about that and some stainless steel pins, a few gallons of water, a little soap, and citric acid?

See Jerry Miculek's video on wet tumbling in a cement mixer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5y_dsP3dsM

[rondog]

Mine in action. I can provide more details if desired. Works very well, but ya gotta have a plan.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dejE4iL9UK8

[Slick Pilot]

Perfect!! Thanks, guys!

[MtGun44]

A friend was a commercial loader 30 years ago. He had two cement mixers
lined with that pour on rubber coating (tool handle dip) and dry tumbled
all his brass in huge quantities. He bought used brass by the 55 gal drum
and used a shovel to load them.

Bill

[jmorris]

A friend of mine is helping out at a business that uses a bunch of them (they have a lot of brass) for cleaning and drying the cases.

He said they just use brass, hot water, soap and lemishine (no pins at all) and that the cases come out very shiny on the outside.


http://i664.photobucket.com/albums/vv5/qvideo/IMG_20140221_191342_zps4ec6891d.jpg

[Slick Pilot]

Thanks again to you guys!

[DaveInFloweryBranchGA]

Slick Pilot,

Your nickname brings back memories for me. Spent some time at Rucka back in the mid eighties working at the test center. Not sure it even exists now. Your answers in red in the quote.


Harbor Freight has a cement mixer for 150 bucks. Very good idea and it works, but only buy it if you have SERIOUS volumes of brass. Watch the videos below and see the extra's you might want to think about. Like any tool, it works better as part of a well thought out system.

How about that and some stainless steel pins, a few gallons of water, a little soap, and citric acid? This is just a personal opinion. I didn't spend any money on stainless steel pins. Instead, I heat my water to raise the effectiveness of the citric acid and just use that. Hot water, dish soap and some Lemi Shine should do quite well without any steel pins. Especially if you allow the interior of the tumbler to corrode a bit like Jerry Miculek's video sows. You could also paint the interior with some coarse bed liner, but that adds costs that are probably unnecessary. My vote is just hot water, some dish soap and lemi shine or just hot water and lemi shine. Then copy Miculek's drying racks and oven if need be. Final polish can happen after sizing trimming, when you remove sizing lube. Jerry does his with a Rock Chucker. I lube/size/trim my lemi shine cleaned brass on a progressive press using a Dillon RT1200 trimmer with an RCBS lube die ahead of it to lube the cases before they go in the sizing die. Use one of the smallest shop vac from Lowe's to pull off most of the brass trimming. Tumble with corn cob when done to remove love and any left over trimmings. Brass looks beautiful and is ready for primer/powder/bullet. I do that on a second pass through the progressive with a powder through measure, a Forster premium seating die and a Lee Factory Crimp die if the cartridges are going into a semi auto or automatic rifle.