What are peoples recipes for wet tumbling brass?
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What are peoples recipes for wet tumbling brass?
Tablespoon of Palmolive and a smidgen of citric acid. Ad water brass and stainless media an stir lots and lots and lots.
Palmolive as in the dish wash detergent?
I use citric (a pinch), plain old liquid soap (a drip) and car wash (a drip). half the drum filled with hot water and 25 mid sized cases (deprimed). Dump in the steel media, 2 hours, then rinse in fresh water with a pinch of ctric. Then towel them and bung them in the oven at 65deg till the water dries off.
Palmolive dish washing detergent with citric acid (dishwashing machine granules).
I use a tablespoon of each and dump that into the tumbler with tap hot water as cold water doesn’t work aswell.
I generally tumble for a good 4 hours then rinse, towel dry and leave the cases sitting in a tin foil tray.
A little bit of experimenting and you’ll soon fine what works best for you.
It’s certainly the best method for cleaning brass especially primer pockets!
As for drying I used to put them in the oven on low temperature with the oven door ajar but typically I just leave them by the fire when it’s on or in the sun room for a couple of days before they I start using them.
Yes the dish wash Palmolive. Car wash is an interesting one, must try that.
BTW don't leave brass too long in citric acid solution as you will dissolve out the zinc. Easy to do if you are easy distracted like me :x_x:
Never clean mine (except primer pockets).
My 'Tuppence worth."
In hot, to start water with squirt of liquid soap and a citric additive....there are so many, then with stainless medi, one hour does it.
A THOROUGH rinse then onto a towel, hold the 4 corners to make a bag and roll / shake to remove excess interior and exterior water, then into one of these for about 30 mins.
Attachment 157148
The Sunbeam can be expensive, (unless "She Who Must Be Obeyed" has one) or periodically available cheaply from the Op Shops.
The Sunbeam is also great for drying the media as well, but I suggest using paper towels between the media and the trays as the media can mark / stain the plastic trays, then when you thought you were off to bed tonight for a sleep, a long expression her views may delay that considerably. .
I used to use citric acid, but decided that they got shiny enough without it, and didn't have to think about particular elements being leeched from the brass.
So now I just clean dirty brass in the tumbler with plain water and dishwash before sizing, dry, lube/size/deprime, then before loading I clean the lube off in the tumbler again, with a hefty dollop (dependent on volume of water going into tumbler) of cheapish car wash. Car wash stops it tarnishing afterwards.
Oooops wrong thread, I thought wet tumbling was like mud wrestling.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lost In The Hill
It gets warmish a couple of days a year :thumbsup:
I use citric acid/lemon oil mix and a dash of rinse aid for good measure. Comes out better than new!
Same as most above, though I don’t use the steel pins anymore as I don’t really notice any difference in using them. the pain in having to clean them up is why I no longer use them. A good magnet with a release is handy. Citric acid and dish wash liquid and I use the sunbeam dehydrator also to dry the brass. Contemplating getting an old front loading washing machine and doing it in bulk ( one wash to rule them all ) and disposing waste water at our chemical dump at work.
I no longer wet tumblr my 6.5 creed brass as they will peening the case mouse even for 40 minutes.
I used steel pins once....never again because it takes ages getting all the small pins separated from the brass and then dealing with them.Quote:
Originally Posted by G.I_Joel
Anybody wanting a freebie 200 grm packet ( minus a few) ,of 0.3mm Stainless Steel polishing pins, just P.M. me.
Balls of steel, :>) are my choice, a 380 gram mixture of two sizes of steel balls, 2 mm and 3 mm.
After tumbler cleaning, I place a kitchen sieve with the wire mesh slightly larger than 3 mm over a 10 litre bucket, empty the tumbler contents into the sieve then run a tap over the contents whilst shaking the sieve. . A couple of good rinses and shaking of the brass removes all the balls including the smaller ones which clean the primer pockets, inside and out .
Then swap the sieve for another with a less than 2 mm mesh and pour the dirty through it to recover the steel balls then dry them. Once dried, I usually give them a short squirt of CR C and a shake then back into their plastic container
Can you use steel pin into a vibrating umber or does it have to be in a rotary tumbler?
Ditto. The process also works away at the rims but that is probably not a real issue but the peening of my nicely chamfered necks saw me toss the process away.Quote:
Originally Posted by eamars
And guess what, my groups never deteriorated.
Sure, I can understand pistol shooters for example gathering up their spent brass off the range floor and giving it a SS clean when getting home but for me, (mainly F Class these days) it's just an unecessary process.
Over the years I have continued to streamline my reloading processes, without detriment to accuracy. Intense cleaning is one process that went west.
Got carried along with the fads at the time of course, ultrasonic and SS.
However, keeping to topic, when I did clean with SS pins I used, sparingly the Frankford Arsenal snake oil that came with my tumbler. It was very effective. I dried using the Sunbeam dehydrator previously mention in the thread. The pins were dried in the oven, with permission of course. I dried them in the dehydrator a couple of time but then switched to the oven.
No, I have never put cases in an oven.
Have seen a few videos of people wet tumbling without the pins and achieving very good results, anyone else tried it? Solved the peening issue?
Like many others I no longer use the pins. I tumble using a half teaspoon of citric acid and good squirt morning fresh lemon dishwasher (I’ve tried all the Brands and this works best) Also you must use HOT water. I tumble in a Frankfort Arsenal tumbler for between 15-30 min & then rinse clean and dry by putting in a towel sock before putting on trays in the sun.Quote:
Originally Posted by distant stalker
Works a great
@omark
what are your primer pockets like after that method?
And back to an ultrasonic you come
Strangely all my 9mm brasses went very well with wet tumbling and SS media. After 3 hours of tumbling there is no sign of peening at all.Quote:
Originally Posted by zimmer
Been nudging away at processing some 9mm... few up my sleeve https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...12fe9a591d.jpg
Sent from my SM-G950F using Tapatalk
I do it often and yeah it works but usually the primer pockets are not as clean.Quote:
Originally Posted by distant stalker
My recipe is some Hornady case cleaning solution, some Lemishine(citric acid) and distilled water. Works great.
Each method has it's flip side and ultrasonic doesn't agitate like a tumbler, so the ultrasonic seems to break the dirt loose but then you have to wipe it all down. I'd say after an ultrasonic bath you'd almost be served by doing a wet tumble with some water to rinse.Quote:
Originally Posted by longrange308
Also for me I mostly bulk load by the thousands so unless I want to invest in one of those big ultrasonics, I guess it's tumbling for me.
I've never seen that issue myself and I usually tumble for two hours. I could see though for something like 6.5 Creed where people have nicely prepped their brass where that might happen.Quote:
Originally Posted by eamars
Yes no issues at all. Seems to clean them ok. The secret with the citric acid and morning fresh is to use hot water from the tapQuote:
Originally Posted by Lost In The Hill
Cleaning brass - wet or dry, mechanically or chemically - is always a fine line between getting the dirt off and leave as much brass behind as possible at the same time. From that perspective it doesn't really matter what your cleaning regime is, as long as you find that fine medium. This can be the amount of citric acid per ltr of water or weight SS steel pins to weight brass, etc.
