Interesting issue in rotary tumbler

[Misery-Whip]

Im still using corn cob and a light abrasive car wax in a vibrating bowl. But ive noticed that there are magnets sold to sort the pins from brass, and while a high grade of stainless such as 304L is not magnetic, this means the pins being sold are (1) a low grade of stainless steel or (2) that they were able to electro plate a stainless jacket over a base material. And this is common practice these days just look at the flatware Target is trying to sell these days.

The OP did mention they were the cheapest he could find so im suspect of (2). I suggest the original poster take a shot glass of 50 or so pins and a half a shot of your washing solution and let them sit over night and see if you get darkened water in the morning.

[NyFirefighter357]

Best practice is a one hour tumble, dump the water and and new water & solution. I now use car wash soap with wax & a dash of citric acid. First wash Dawn & citric acid

[Evoken]

^^^ THIS ^^^^

Check out this Utube.

Good video, interesting indeed. It looks like I'm on the right track cleaning the drum with the purple stuff based on this fellas video. I will report how it looks when I clean it out. The drum did have some of the black stuff on the sides.

[NyFirefighter357]

Good morning gents,

I have been using one of the small rotary tumblers with pins, dawn, and food grade citric for some time now. I believe my pins have worn out. Not rounded or flattened, but they are bleeding the nickel out of the pins themselves.

Last few times I used it I noticed the brass was just not coming clean and had a dingey dark color to it. Now this is uniform and they look clean, just dingey. So, I had a batch of 5.56 that I let go all night. Wow and yuck. Lots of black goop came out of the tumbler and the brass looks almost nickel washed.

This media is most definitely the cheapest I could find and fairly well used. I've had it for at least 3 years and used it for hundred if not a thousand cycles. I have the brass in the tumbler now minus pins to see if I can get it cleaned up.

Has anyone seen this before? What the heck is going on here? My only thought is the pins are degrading. The brass was not that dirty before it went in.

My cousin is a jeweler and they use a similar process to clean jewelry except the medial is several shapes & not sharp. They use a powdered soap like dishwasher detergent that doesn't foam & conditions the water. They call it burnishing. The soap is called Burnishing Compound Powder. I have this media as well and use it to clean jewelry. https://jetsinc.com/polishing-and-fi...1-pound-mixed/ It isn't the sharpness of the pins that clean it's the rubbing again each other. If you look at the picture of that media it's all shapes and sizes to rub the nooks & crannies. He has 40+ year of burnishing jewelry, I have learned the processes through him as well as wet tumbling brass myself and through this forum. The media will last a lifetime if cared for.

[pertnear]

By personal experience, go LITE on the lemishine. A little is good, a little more is bad.....

[mdi]

My first thought was the citric acid wad "attacking", degrading the stainless steel. But I tried wet tumbling an few years ago and found it not worth my time nor did it fit my reloading lifestyle...

[lightman]

Every once in a while I'll get a batch of brass out of the tumbler thats grey colored. I'll tumble my pins in Dawn for a couple of hours and rinse them. Problem solved until it happens again. I tumble my brass with ArmorAll Wash and Wax with a 40S&W case of LemiShine for 2 hours.

[M-Tecs]

As others have stated the tumbler drum and pins need a good cleaning.

[Evoken]

Cleaning the pins and drum most definitely helped. The water was black coming out of it. I have a fresh batch of brass in there now. I changed it up a bit to see if it helps, much less acid and I pilfered a splash of laundry juice from the Mrs.

The other brass looks much better, after drying it is in the walnut tumbler with a bit of brass polish (zep brand) it appears to be shining up ok.


Thanks for all the help and suggestions fellas. We shall see how the next batch looks in about 45 minutes.

[Evoken]

This last batch looks like business as usual. Cleaning the drum and pins cleared it all up. Thanks again gents.

I hope this helps someone else when they have brass not coming clean.

[fast ronnie]

I just found a can full of wet and REALLY dark brass under my bench. Wanted to see if I could save it. I normally run a little over a teaspoon of citric acid and the same amount of Armorall in about a gallon and a half of water with ten pounds of pins. I usually run for two hours. These still looked pretty nasty so changed the water, etc. and ran them for another 6 hours. Looked much better, but still wasn't satisfied. I changed the water , acid, and the Armorall for the third time. Each time the water came out Very black, but the last time brass came out looking like new. No pink (too much citric acid damages brass) and completely clean. I had to run these things for over 12 hours total before they were clean. I have never done this before and will probably will never do it again as the amount of brass and the work that took to get them acceptable was more than I would do again. Brass is good, but just too much work for the time involved. I should have just thrown them out, but sometimes I'm just stubborn. My usual deal is for 2 hours and rinse in clear water in the Dillon case separator. Any less than two hours doesn't seem to get the job done. I have had twice when brass came out black and dirty. Both times I found a steel case in the batch and had to run the pins a couple of times by themselves to get the pins cleaned up.

[lightman]

I have not done any side by side test but I switched from Dawn to ArmorAll Wash and Wax several years ago and I think the Dawn got my cases cleaner. The only thing is that they were too clean. The Dawn removed everything down to bare metal and they tarnished quickly. The Wash and Wax leaves a protective film that guards against tarnish. If I'm tumbling really grubby cases I'll start with Dawn and then finish with a Wash and Wax.

[deces]

It's probably not pulling the nickle out of the pins but rather out of the cases you put in. Either you are nuking your brass or try separating all nickle plated primers and cases out and do them separately from non nickled brass.

[XDROB]

So after reading this thread. I have to say that it must be the pins. I say that because I started wet tumbling a few years ago. Bought a small Frankfort tumbler and got 10 lbs of pins (don't remember the brand). Started experimenting like all of us. Finally got my mix together. As hot as I can get out of the tap about two gallons water. Two cap falls of Amourall Wash n Wax. A teaspoon of LemiShine. 1 to 2 hour (depending on how dirty they are) on the timer. Two hot water rinses. Then put them in a media separater to get water out. Then I spread them out on a towel on the clothes dryer to let them dry the rest of the way overnight. Here is my results.

Sent from my SM-S908U using Tapatalk

[Xathane]

I have been struggling with this issue for a while now and using a process of elimination to determine the cause of my dirty brass. Cleaned pins with vinegar(works remarkably well) and ran multiple cycles of vinegar, citric acid, dawn, etc in the drum but have come to the conclusion that the rubber lining in the drum is either degrading and thus responsible for the carbon film layer on all my brass, or the lining is impregnated with carbon, gun powder, lead, etc.
I can scrub the film off the brass with a towel or scotch bright to reveal shiny brass underneath but it's extremely time consuming and tiring one piece at a time. Curious if a degreaser would help pull out all the black gunk from the liner. (You can rub a towel or papertowel on the liner and it looks like grease stains) Reached out to Frankford Arsenal but I'm not holding my breath.