Wet tumbling sans SS pins, with near SS pins results!

[TCB]

They’ve been out there for 2-4 hours and yea...totally dry as far as I can tell. I’ll let them sit most of tomorrow just to be sure.

[mmc45414]

They’ve been out there for 2-4 hours and yea...totally dry as far as I can tell. I’ll let them sit most of tomorrow just to be sure.

I will usually push a primer out and check one before I declare them ready to load. In my climate (Ohio) I just lay them out in my basement, I have enough brass I can easily do this a week in advance. The tumbling is so fast I just do a bunch when I think about it and I pretty much always have clean cases.

[Ancient1]

Because of this topic I'm no longer in trouble with my wife. I was using a vibrator... pun intended... My wife could not stand the noise and neither did my cat. I could get my brass clean with it but it took many hours of horrific noise. Then Mr. Little L. You changed all that. I could not justify wet with pins, nor the hassle.

Yesterday I went to Harbor Freight and I purchased the single barrel (hiccup! that was good) and today I tried it out. 45 minutes for my first pass and it is 90% as clean as 6 hours in the vibrator with coated corn cobs. The biggest change is the noise and the shaking of the house is gone. Now I can pop the primers and then they go back into the soup and spin it again for my final cleaning. On that pass, I'll add my touch of polish and acid before I start reloading that brass. The single barrel holds just over 100 rounds of brass which is good for me.

Mr Little L. You changed my life and did it on the cheap.

Just a note on my first formula. I had to improvise a bit. I didn't have the citric acid, but I did have some ascorbic acid (vitamin C) so I crushed 2 tablets into powder (I'll but some citric acid from amazon today, till it gets here the ascorbic acid seems to work great but much more expensive). I used a few drops of Dawn on top of the acid with hot water.

Thanks so very much,
Jim

[Malamute]

I found some old 556 brass in dads basement that was submerged in a basement flood several years ago. The bag was still wet inside. I ran them through the dual drum harbor freight rotary tumbler for one cycle, maybe an hour or so. This was the result. Not perfect, but it removed the corroded stains better than the Dillon dry vibratory tumbler has, and I wouldnt worry now about running it through my dies.

Ive also done some of the same bunch of brass without the tumbler, just in a bucket, add the stuff (dish soap, lemishine and warm water), slosh around now and then and mostly sit for a couple hours, then rinse. The results were still surprisingly good, removing much of the corrosion stains. i think it may be quite good enough to average brass.

Walmart has small bottles of lemishine for very cheap. Perhaps not as cheap as one can get it online, but cheap enough to not have to deal with shipping costs or waiting. The one I have will probably last a couple years or more.