Knarley
07-05-2015, 06:05 PM
After going through a bunch of cases the other night with a bore mop, decided that there has to be a better way. 25 cases of 38-55 and 20 45-70 I was amazed on how much junk is left in them after soaking and agitating them. Basically had a 1/2 coffee can of mud, per cal. I had run a wire brush after they had been tumbled (different batch) and the 38-55's had quite a bit of crud come out, the 45-70 did too, but not so much.
Any way, to make a boring story less trauma, decided to get one of them sonic jobs.
Got home set it up per and found the nastiest,cruddiest cases I have, they are expendables for sure. Dropped them into the solution and flipped the switch.........
HOLY COW do those things work! The soot come out of the cases, like a plume of smoke as I watched.( I know , I'm like a 5 yr. old) It was really cool! The cases came out really clean compared to how thy went in, on the inside too. Now I've had these cases for years, and they have seen nothing BUT BP. And the insides were surprising.
So I loaded up the basket with 45-70's. About 1/2 a coffee can full and let 'er buck.
The directions on the unit say to discard the"solution" after it gets "stained or murky".........by the time it was done running, I couldn't see the brass! I wanted to see just how clean they would get, so I ran them through again, in the same solution. After that the solution was really dirty.
I then tried a "batch" with tap water, dish soap and a dash of vinegar. Ran about the same # of cases, the same amount of time. They came out almost as clean as the store bought washed cases. Another cycle probably would have done the trick. The cycle times I was using was 480 seconds.
I'm thinking the 38-55 cases will be cleaned this way more often than the 45's just due to the smaller diameter, I know there is a debate on if tumbling gets the insides of a case clean...........
IMHO tumbling will do a better job in the larger dia. cases, but not so much in the smaller. But once in a while, a good sonic cleaning can't hurt.
Regards,
Knarley
Any way, to make a boring story less trauma, decided to get one of them sonic jobs.
Got home set it up per and found the nastiest,cruddiest cases I have, they are expendables for sure. Dropped them into the solution and flipped the switch.........
HOLY COW do those things work! The soot come out of the cases, like a plume of smoke as I watched.( I know , I'm like a 5 yr. old) It was really cool! The cases came out really clean compared to how thy went in, on the inside too. Now I've had these cases for years, and they have seen nothing BUT BP. And the insides were surprising.
So I loaded up the basket with 45-70's. About 1/2 a coffee can full and let 'er buck.
The directions on the unit say to discard the"solution" after it gets "stained or murky".........by the time it was done running, I couldn't see the brass! I wanted to see just how clean they would get, so I ran them through again, in the same solution. After that the solution was really dirty.
I then tried a "batch" with tap water, dish soap and a dash of vinegar. Ran about the same # of cases, the same amount of time. They came out almost as clean as the store bought washed cases. Another cycle probably would have done the trick. The cycle times I was using was 480 seconds.
I'm thinking the 38-55 cases will be cleaned this way more often than the 45's just due to the smaller diameter, I know there is a debate on if tumbling gets the insides of a case clean...........
IMHO tumbling will do a better job in the larger dia. cases, but not so much in the smaller. But once in a while, a good sonic cleaning can't hurt.
Regards,
Knarley