I've been toying with the idea of buying some of those stainless-steel pins to use as my brass cleaning medium for a few months now but, with the holiday season coming around I really didn't have the expendable income to buy right now.
I was out cleaning up the storage shed yesterday, and I came across some brand-new stainless-steel scouring pads used for cleaning up the barbeque grill. They were still in the package, and I didn't think I'd have any need for them until closer to next summer so, I cut them up with my upholstery sheers into tiny little coiled pieces.
I did it as just an experiment to see if I really did need the more expensive 30-plus dollar stainless-steel pins or, if I could just cut up these eight-dollar scouring pads into small enough pieces to use as a sort of addition to my corncob cleaning medium I use now.
The only pitfall would be that since I cut them up into varying sizes from small coils to tiny pieces of coils, I'd have to make sure to check the inside of my cleaned cases for any of those stainless-steel pieces becoming lodged in the cases and primer pockets. I do that any ways so, what I've labeled as a "Pitfall" really isn't one. It's just one more thing to keep an eye on during the prepping process of the brass.
Anyway, I got my tumbler running right now as I write this. I had about 75 pieces of tarnished Lake City brass laying around that I've had for years. I threw them in the tumbler to see what kind of results I get and, how long it takes to get any results.
I checked it in about a half hour later to see if there's anything positive happening and darned if it seemed to be working. With the plain corncob medium, it can take up to three or four hours to really get any semblance of a shine on them. I'm too impatient to wait that long so I remove my brass when I determine that it's "Good-Enough."
I was just wondering if any of you guys had ever tried reproposing stainless-steel scouring pads for this application, or maybe you used BBs or something else as a replacement for the more expensive stainless-steel pins or beads?
HollowPoint