Frankford Arsenal Tumbler - Who Has One?

[JohnH]

Intriguing.

It's gonna be warm in the day now, so you can leave your brass sitting in the sun an hour or two to dry after tumbling. Best solution though is to get a dehydrator for drying. I bought mine at wally world but they now make a dryer specifically for the task. The trays for food dehydrators have to large holes in the trays and cases fall through. I resolved the problem with mesh for grilling fish. Prolly easier to get something made for the task.

[308Jeff]

Thanks, John.

Plenty hot here in AZ, and I'm lucky enough to have an Excalibur dehydrator. I'll get them dried one way or another!

[NyFirefighter357]

I use a car chamois to dry my brass.
After my brass is clean I remove the top and replace the plug with the screen. I then dump off the excess water and dump the pins and water into a 1 gal. ice cream container it's wider than tall. I shake the tub around a few times to remove what ever pins I can. I then refill about half way with water and tumble for a minute or two to rinse. I repeat the first step. I then drop in an 1 1/4" rubber coated magnet and shake the tub. I then remove the magnet with what ever pins are stuck and place the pins in the container. I put the magnet back in with the brass, now I drop in a few strips of car chamois. Tumble 2-3 minutes. The chamois absorb all the water and the magnet catches the few pins left. The brass comes out dry to the touch. I then just dump it onto a towel and run the F/A magnet over it maybe you catch a few stragglers. At this point it's dry but I'm in no hurry so I leave them there for a while to "air dry". This whole process takes longer to type then do. 7-8 minutes or less. I then just set the chamois out to dry for the next batch a full chamois can make a good amount of strips so if you are doing several loads you can use others or ring the ones you used out. BTW, I love the tumbler. I use 7-10 lbs pins and fill up to 2/3 full with what I'm tumbling. I also have 10lbs of the "chips" the nail cuts they work too. I also tumble anything that will fit into my tumbler from tools to home made knife blanks to brass house numbers, I even tumbled my tractor carb. to remove corrosion. I also cleaned all by copper pipe fittings most were very old and dirty. If I have a piping project I'll tumble a bunch of fittings so I don't need to clean them as I'm assembling just flux and sweat. Hope this info was helpful, Jason

[cmdr_zero]

Ive got an old frankford arsenal tumbler that has been an absolute trooper. I usually run about 150 pieces of 308 at a time. I bought it on the cheap, but it didnt come with a lid. Never have had any issues with media flying out of it as long as I don't overload it. Only thing I do is let it run in a well ventilated area, as I'm sure that not having the lid results in airborne particulate. Overall, couldn't be happier with it.

[1_Ogre]

NYFirefighter357 put me onto the Frankfort pin tumbler. It may take a little more time and effort, but you end up with brass that looks like new Starline Brass, and that makes me HAPPY. The brass is even shiney INSIDE lol. Good investment

[308Jeff]

Thanks, guys.

[tstowater]

Hopefully mine gets a good workout after this week. Heading out to see if the prairie dogs will cooperate with our plans. If we are lucky, the pups will be out.

I'm thinking that I fill the tumbler about 2/3rds to 3/4ths fill and cover with an inch of water and whatever goodies that you add. You end up with really nice looking brass.

[coatessey]

Wouldn't you know Amazon drops the price a few days after I bought mine?

https://www.amazon.com/Platinum-Seri...rsenal+tumbler

$132.42

Only $1.00 less than I paid, but I didn't get my Amazon credit card points.

It is 121 and change now on Amazon. Give them a call they price match themselves for 7 or 10 days I believe.

[308Jeff]

It is 121 and change now on Amazon. Give them a call they price match themselves for 7 or 10 days I believe.

Dang!

I actually bought mine from Jet.com. First time I've strayed outside of Amazon in a while.

Double regret now. LOL.

[Lloyd Smale]

I bought one years ago to use as a third tumbler. It ran like a top for about 5years and one day I plugged it in and nothing. So rather then fool with it I bought another just like it. Had nothing to do one day last winter so I pulled the bottom plate off of it to see if I could match up a new motor for it. Well when I took the plate off I found that the wire going to the motor had just broke off at the spade connector. crimped on a new spade and plugged it in and it worked like a charm. Ive used it since to tumble pc bullets. Now that will test a tumbler dumping a couple hundred lead bullets in it. Its held up to MANY loads of cast bullets. Id have to give it a best buy rating. Compared to my Dillon it doesn't hold as much. Compared to my lyman it doesn't agitate as well but it keeps on going like the energizer bunny.

[308Jeff]

Question for those who have one of these: Do you fill it completely up with water, to where there's no air in the cylinder, or do you leave a little air in there?

Ran some LC 30-06 brass last night for 3 hours. Looks absolutely great, except the primer pockets aren't clean.

Put in about 300 pieces of brass, maybe a teaspoon of Dawn, 1/2 teaspoon of Lemi-Shine, the SS pins, and filled it completely full of hot water.

[tstowater]

There are people with more experience than me, but I recall getting better results if you don't fill completely with brass and water. Seems to get better movement. Some of the pockets are harder to clean out than the rest of the brass. Seems that some of the guys are presoaking for better results in a shorter time period. Try several different ways and see what happens.

[308Jeff]

Thank you, sir. I'm gonna give it another go tonight without completely filling it up.

[1_Ogre]

Jeff: Yeu used way to much of each. You only need 3-4 "DROPS" of Dawn and 1/4 tsp of LemiShine. Doesn't sound like much but too much Dawn will leave residue that's not fun to get off. When I fill my container, I fill it to about 1" below the top, that leaves an air gap that lets the LemiShine and Dawn room to work. That's how I do it and it works super

[308Jeff]

Great to know! Very much appreciated.

[coatessey]

My early fathers day present this year was a FART. Got it running today used a few drops of gain dish detergent and no pins, no lemishine or anything else. I must say that I am impressed. I also left the spent primers in. The brass is outside drying right now.

[308Jeff]

Quick wet tumbling "What If" question - What if your ran a load, and forgot about it over night. Any harm done? Should it be reran again for a short time before dumping and rinsing, if it happens? Not saying it has happened, but knowing me, it will happen.

[coatessey]

Not sure. I deprimed and resized all of them after tumbling and then re ran them with the stainless media. I think I put too much gain dish soap in this time bubbles everywhere. I did pick up some dawn blue dish soap for next time. No leaks so far. I think I also lost a lot of those damn little pins, too bad there isn't a strainer attachment that doesn't let the pins fall out.

Speaking of which I used the frankford arsenal magnet to pull most of the pins out of the bottom of the bucket with just a little water left in the pail. What do you guys do with the pins after? I put them back in the tumbler and left the top off hoping they would dry. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[308Jeff]

Not sure. I deprimed and resized all of them after tumbling and then re ran them with the stainless media. I think I put too much gain dish soap in this time bubbles everywhere. I did pick up some dawn blue dish soap for next time. No leaks so far. I think I also lost a lot of those damn little pins, too bad there isn't a strainer attachment that doesn't let the pins fall out.

Speaking of which I used the frankford arsenal magnet to pull most of the pins out of the bottom of the bucket with just a little water left in the pail. What do you guys do with the pins after? I put them back in the tumbler and left the top off hoping they would dry. Any help is greatly appreciated.

I bought one of these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It's not worth the $36 bucks though, because even with hand agitating the brass in the top part, you still have some pins remaining in the brass. And some of the pins still manage to fly out on the ground and you have to pick them up with the magnet.

Best method I've come up with, although it take a few steps: Dump everything into a rotary separator. Rotate the basket, and all of the pins fall through into the pan of the rotary separator. Then dump the pins and water into the wire mesh bottom portion of the Frankford Arsenal Separator (a cheap wire mesh colander/strainer would work just as well). Rinse off the brass while it's in the rotary separator. Then put the brass in my dehydrator to dry.

Your brass looks great, by the way!

[edp2k]

The best separator to use for SS pins in either of the 2 sizes of Dillon media separators.
not inexpensive but very strong, well built, and will last for decades.

I do this outside on the asphalt driveway.
After tumbling, pour off all the water you can without dumping any pins or brass.
This gets rid of most of the soap and most of the lemishine water and helps avoid brass water spots.

at this point dont leave the brass exposed to air for more than a min or 2, since the lemishine water still on the brass
will cause the brass to tarnish after a few minutes.

to prevent this I fill up the drum with water and dump 90% a couple times
to do a quick gross rinse of the brass.

I then empty the drum into the Dillon separator cage which is on the Dillon separator
and 100% filled with cold water.

Rotate cage for a couple minutes until I sense all the pins are out of the brass.
noticed that the cage and brass has been rotating 1/2 submerged in the water bath.
remove cage. pour off 99% of the water out of the tub. then pour wet pins from tub back into drum.
put cage back on empty tub a do a few more spins to get rid of any remaining water.

dump brass on towel and make a hammock and do the bowling ball polish.
to dry brass I use a custom built drying table made out of 1x2 scrap wood.
looks like a small coffee table without a top. use fine nylon mesh for top.
I use a large mesh laundry bag.
toss brass on top and aim fan on brass.
let fan dry for a few hrs.
if brass has primer removed should dry internally within a few hrs.
I hand agitate the pile every once in a while.

if primer still in (esp. rifle brass), need gentle warmth PLUS airflow to dry.
in the summer I use sunshine, in the winter I use the heating vents or park by the wood stove.
too much heat will cause the brass to tarnish.