so been doing a lot of research into cleaning brass and so far ive found this to be the cheapest and best way to clean brass. between the harbor freight tumbler, stainless steel media and a little bit of dish soap. it works amazing!
Developed a complete CHEAP brass tumbling process, with Harbor Freight single drum. Works perfect every time. This set up is for 50 9mm cases. In rubber tub fill within 1/2" from top. Add on 22 empty case of Lemi Shine. Now add 1/2 tsp original Dawn dish soap. Finally add about 250 to 300 steel BB's, same as bb gun bb's. Tumble for 3 hours. when done rinse well. Clean shiney brass. Don, from Wisconsin.
Great video. Put the brass on a towel and hit it with a hairdryer. Works very well. Let the brass set overnight to make sure the primer pockets are dry.
Two or three points. One - dump the tumbler buckets into a much larger pan before you flush with water. This is to keep the pins from washing out and down the drain. Two and three - when I used my oven, I would heat the oven to 250 degrees, turn it off and put the brass in. It couldn't change the temper of the brass but got it dry. I now use a 'food dehydrator' (yard sale for cheep). Keep up the good stuff.
I have been using 2 Lyman tumblers for 30 yrs. Had both rebuilt by Lyman prob 20yrs ago. I use walnut hulls to clean (2hrs) and corncob media to polish(2hrs). Gets them clean, but not very shiny, except for nickel plated cases. I like the thought of the lemon stuff or citric acid for the shine, maybe I will give it a shot someday.
Thank you for s good and informative video. I've been shooting a long time and must admit that I am very cheap and not the best at cleaning my brass. In most cases it was one by one with a wire brush. This method looks way better!
1/4 tsp Lemi shine and 1 TBS of dishwashing liquid for 4 hours tumbled in a pound of pins in my HF tumbler and my brass cones out to a shiny mirror finish. I tried the $1 store no name equivalent to lemi shine. It works fine but doesn’t give a mirror finish and clean out primer pockets completely like lemi shine does. It turns the bottom of my white sink grey when I wash it out the same way you do. I use a dollar store strainer with bowl under It to dumb my brass and pins in. The pins fall into the bowl when I shake my brass in the strainer. I then dump my pins back into my tumbler.
I switched from dry to wet several years ago and I’ll never go back. I get excellent results, the brass is clean and shiny inside and out. My process is different than yours. I de-prime, tumble before I trim and resize.
I am SOLD on dry tumbling, much less PITA that messing with pins & leaky wet tumbling. I got a cheap vibratory tumbler, a bag of crushed walnut shells & NuFinish car wax & man am I impressed. I will never go back to wet again.
Use a similar cookie platter but place a couple of paper towels to absorb the moisture. Then I place them in my B B Q on OFF (its in the sun) for about 45-60 mins. Works every time. The temp inside the BBQ gets up to 220 degrees.
I add 1 tbsp lemon juice to the mix,same equipment, add hot water and tumble for 30 minutes,and the cartridges are clean golden brass,dry with hair dryer,ready to reload...
I do the same thing. You can't do a whole hell of a lot of brass. But you can do enough to keep you busy. 1 to 2 drops of any dish soap. And a dime size bit of lemi shine.
I use the exact same tumbler however I use 1/3 tablespoon Limon Shine, & for the soap Turtle Zip Wax. Zip wax leave a wax residue, the retards the tarnish. I also use a $1 store plastic colander in the Tupperware to strain the dirty water...
Love the video....it really helped as im just learning. Im weighing each way to tumble but I really like this method. But ill do it in the Frankford rotary tumbler.
Consider draining tumbler int a cheap plastic kitchen colender like the sold at the dollar stores ..then rinse with clean water. This will help . Thanks for sharing your thoughts
I always use stainless media. But,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, before you resize your brass, give a tumble without the media, just in soapy water for about 20 to 30 minutes and then a rinse and a dry, then do your press and sizing work on the brass and tumble again with the media that you show. You will be surprised at how much more shine you will have after most of the dirt and powder residue is washed from the cases prior to the final tumble.
Holy shit that's a lot of work. I use a vibratory tumbler with corncob or walnut. Mix cleaner in a spray bottle with water and give it a few squirts. Because of the multi step process of 223 it gets tumbled at least twice. I do the bare minimum prep and the last tumble deburrs the casings. By the time I'm done they're lovely. I load about 1,000 at a time, tumble about 150ish pcs at a time. My tumbler stays cranking all day every day when I'm loading. I've got a cheapo kitchen strainer and plastic bowl to quickly separate my media and go again. I dont care about wasted media bc it's so cheap, unlike stainless. I get media everywhere and vacuum up afterwards. I'm sure the SS method is "better" n some ways but ain't got time for all that.
Hope you wear a face mask because you are breathing in a lot of toxins and lead from the dust! Hope your vacuum has good filters too! You see how black the waste water is well that’s carbon and lead etc. 🇬🇧🏴
i use 4 drops of brasso brass polish to polish each brass case individually spun on a drill...... mind you i only reload 5 rounds at a time. after sub 0.3moa groups rather than 100 holes in the side of a barn :D to be honest, once you add up all the time spent with other methods, i could probably polish 100 shells cheaper and in less time using brasso. nice thing about this method is how closely you end up inspecting each shell as you go, burs get removed, and the finish doesnt tarnish easily once its done.
Not to argue, but your Brasso is only working on the outside of the case. But to say your method gives sub MOA while other methods give poor accuracy is BS. Pure and simple. Brasso will also cause discoloration on the cases after time and the stainless media method will not. Each to their own, but it is the sizing, trimming, powder dump and bullet seating that will give accuracy, not fondling the cases with a cloth. It's also easier to inspect large numbers at a time when they are spotlessly cleaned.
Some people get obsessed with clean brass. Yes I like mine clean. Is it required it looks like factory new? Not by a long shot. The reason to clean is to keep from wearing does excessively or even scratching it in extreme cases.
Robert Fugate - been reloading for 5 years, started off using a salad spinner and still use it. It gets all the media out of the brass and gets all the water off the brass also. Mike
@@mikebigelow9057 Good to hear. This is the hardest part of water tumbling for me. Absolutely great results as far as cleaning. I used dry media vibratory for years until recently. Gave the walnut media and machine to a buddy just getting into long range shooting and loading.
Think I’ll stick with hot water, dish soap, lemishine, and walnut media. I can get a 25lb box of walnut media for $20 and a bottle of car polish for $3, and that does a great job of cleaning up my brass, even the dirtiest brass I find on the range. Brass only needs to be cleaned to reload, not shiny and polished. I do like my brass shiny though, but I’ll stick with the dry tumbler. To each their own though, if it works, it works.
You know I went to this method and it does clean brass better, but the water is a pain. You don't have the dust like walnut media, but I resolved that by putting pieces of drier sheet in with my dry walnut media and brass. The drier sheet gathers up most all the dust. Just pick it out when sorting your brass when done. About every 3rd time will work. I used it everytime because it cut the dust mess way down. Hope this helps.
If you have a air compressor, I use it to blow the water out and.then hit them with a hair dryer for about ten minutes and they will be good and dry and it’s surprisingly how fast it goes . Merry Christmas and happy new year.
buy a flower sifter and dump the shells along with the media rinse with water then pick out the cleaned shells and dry them....a lot easier and less water wasted
Take your de-primed brass and let soak (or use an ultrasonic cleaner) with pickling vinegar (9% acidity) available at most grocery stores for about $3 a gallon. When done, rinse in clean water with some baking soda to neutralize the acidity. Give a final rinse in distilled water so you don’t get hard water deposits on the brass. I use some old large bath towels to get them mostly dry and let air dry for the rest. The vinegar will clean even badly tarnished brass and break down the powder residue. When you pour the used vinegar down the drain, it will even clean your drains.
I bought some fine stainless screen sheets off Amazon, (couldn't find just one). Flipped my rotary tumbler container lid down. Used a permanent marker to trace around it. Cut out the circle. Now when done tumbling I remove the clear plastic cover on my Frankfort tumbler, place screen under lid, tighten, drain and rinse. No losing media into drain. I've been doing this for about a year now. Works great and the sheets were like 5 bucks or so from Amazon. Most give the screen size. Just make sure its smaller than the pins of course.
Everyone who does a brass cleaning video has the best process. 🤨. Dry tumbling works great for me and I don’t have the mess, don’t have to worry about pins going down my sink drain, don’t have to start the oven to dry my brass, and so on. If you happen to like wet tumbling that’s great, it just seems like a lot of excessive cost, and effort to me. I’m done watching brass cleaning videos.
Get a cheap dry tumbler off amazon, buy some cheap crushed walnut shells at a pet store, tumble a couple hours and it’s ready to reload right away. I have no idea why there are 1,000’s of videos trying to make a cheap and easy process, cheaper and easier!
Greetings from New York Snowboard4133: I like the way you did the video! But I found that if you use a hair-blower it'll work just has good as oven. I don't like the idea 💡 of using the oven! Just a thought 💭! Everyone has their own little way of doing things.
Depending on were you live drying a few brass cases in a big oven might be pretty costy. So i have to agree. But im in Sweden and taxes are high here so.
You couild try some silicone spray like the stuff people spray on car door rubbers in cold climates on the rubber seal might come off easyer or evin soap
I tried the water and stainless pins and had a mess, never again for me. Walnut shells or corn cob with car wax works for me. Although the tumblr is a great idea, but I had steal pins all over the place and lost most of them in just a short time and water all over the place, clean up was not fun. If I had to do water and pins all the time I would give up reloading. I really believe that if a person bought the same tumblr and used dry media the price would be almost the same.
One says you don't need pins with lemi shine and soap. One says you don't need lemi shine but use pins. Next I expect to hear I don't need water with my soap and lemi shine. I think I will just have a beer.
I also think this is silly. As long as brass is clean load it . Why try to make it look new . I tumble in dry media about an hour and it's ready. If it's stained a little no problem your going to shoot it again anyway.
Murrel Gray it’s the dust that comes airborne when you dry tumble that’s the problem, very nasty stuff! You don’t get this safety issue with wet tumbling. I wet tumble cos I find it’s a lot cheaper on equipment cost, mind you I only need to do approx 100 cases at a time . 38/357 and 243/303 British. Don’t fuff about like this gentleman though. Lol
100 rounds at a time? If be tumbling round the clock. I finally broke down and bought a bigger tumbler after being disgusted with only doing 500 at a time. Now 1k.
@@mikebigelow9057 I understand I had to go to my sister's house and use my brother in law's tumbler at the start. That's where I started. I hunted and finally found a Lyman, the smallest they made. Think it was close to$100. That was more money back then. I saw a huge tumbler at HF. In real$ it's probably close to the same price. Reloaders have many more choices today. And to all new reloaders, you will never have everything you think you need but at some point you will feel well equipped and able to do a lot. Sorry if I came off as abrasive. It was meant to be more tongue in cheek.
There's no way that is the cheapest and best way to clean brass. At Wal-Mart, $2-$4 for a women's mesh bra bag. Put in no more than 100 .223 cases (deprimed) so it's not too heavy, toss in clothes washer with a load of jeans. Tide cleans brass well. I spose you could toss in dryer, too but I've never done that. Spread on cookie sheet, lined with foil, put outside on warm, sunny day for 1-2 hours. Done. I noticed an air hose under your bench. If you take your brass right out of the rinse water, blow them out with an air compressor. The rubber tip on a blow gun seals the mouth and shoots all the water out the flash hole in an instant. Turn your hand over and hit the primer pocket. Pick up three at a time. It doesn't take long at all. Who is responsible for this stainless steel pins craze? I've reloaded for 35 years and if I reloaded for 500 more years, I still wouldn't resort to pins. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of.