I like to remove the primers prior to tumbling the brass. Also, instead of drying the brass in the oven I just give every individual shell a quick blast from my air compressor. Works great for me.
Lookin good! I fill my media separator with water so that the hopper is partially submerged. Helps to wash those pesky SS pins off of the brass, and acts as a rinse cycle for the brass. Also, it’s kinda of a pain but I decap at the brass before wet tumbling. Personal preference I guess. Thanks for the vid!
I've heard drying them in anything over 180° can damage the cases. Make them brittle. I've heard to dry them anywhere between 120-160°. Just something to consider.
Hello, just a quick note to you. I use the same Lyman tumbler setup that you have. In order to prevent the rubber gasket from not forming a good watertight seal after loading your drum with brass and detergent as well as lemi shine this is what I do. After using this tumbler for the first time I noticed it leaking from the seal as soon as it started tumbling .What I have done with other wet tumblers as well as this one is simply this. 1) Wipe out the inside of the drum and seal itself. This is make certain that no media is trapped under the lip, or seal.2) Apply a small amount of liquid dish detergent to the lip and make certain to use your fingers and lubricate the rubber gasket as well as the outside threads on the screw down orange cover. Just a tiny amount will be sufficient in order to keep the gasket pliable and moist. I place it on the OD threads of the drum before tightening the orange cap.( If you have ever had to struggle with the removal of the cap after tumbling trust me this is a god send. Your seal is tight and the cap will easily come undone.#3 NO MORE LEAKING !
I have a franklin tumbler. It came with an extra end cap that is grated and allows the water to be poured off while the brass is retained. FYI, I don’t use SS pins to clean. Anyway I tumble for 90 min and then put in the grated cap and empty the canister and refill with water. Tumble for 5 min and rinse and repeat again. I then empty and bake at 250 for 20-25 min. I have found that too high a temp will cause the cases to tarnish and look “case hardened”. Anyway, works for me. Not saying it’s the best method but an alternate option. I will also sometimes put wet brass into my walnut shell vibration polisher. It will dry and polish in about 30-40 min.
Some have stated this already: 1. Separate by caliber. 2. Use a universal decapping die. I don't check the flash holes after (who has time for that). For pistol calibers, I actually use a the sizing die to deprime and resize before cleaning. 3. I've found that mine gets cleanest by filling the water level about 80% full. 4. I don't think you need quite that much soap. 3. I dry mine with a dehydrating machine. 4. Your wife must love you doing all this stuff in the kitchen. I don't do it indoors anymore, but my wife got sick of finding those steel pins everywhere. I even found one in my master bathroom one time. Have you considered using distilled water from the store? I haven't tried it yet, but it may be worth it.
I have never been overly concerned about the primer pockets unless i intend on using the ammo im making for high accuracy stuff... yea, i heard from many that was too much soap... I tried a dehydrator and it left spots, so I was trying to go a bit hotter but with out compromising the brass with too much heat. thanks for the useful information, now go out and learn about the numbers 5 and 6 :-P juss kidn.... thanks for watching man !
If you have a dehumidifier you have plenty of distilled water. Otherwise you might be spending about 5 dollars per batch. I use dehumidifier water for the tumble cycle and tap water for rinsing. I then dry the brass vigorously with a couple of towels. Then I put the brass on a couple of cookie sheets lined with the paper shop towels. I put the cookie sheets in my oven the turn the oven on the "warm" setting for three minutes, then turn it off. I leave the sheets in for 1 1\2 to 2 hours. I never have water spots.
Always check your flash-holes after pin-tumbling. you can get pins stuck in the flash-hole, which you won't notice til you try to seat a primer. Some can go "bang", some seat fine but leave a blocked primer hole, and some shoot fine but can leave stainless steel pins in your barrel for the next shot ( extremely unlikely, but Murphy's Law doesn't suffer Fools.).
Thank you for this tip. I live in Greenville, SC and we have clean water. I guess that's why I've never noticed much spotting before. I used to be in the reloading brass business so I've washed tons of brass (literally). My partner used "Lemishine Rinse" to "combat" the spotting problems but I viewed it as a wasted step. I am about to produce a video utilizing Dishwasher Magic. Works dramatically better than Lemishine. .
Nice video, thanks! It also helps to use distilled or RO water to RINSE off your cases ... RO water is cheaper to produce if you handle a lot of cases.
Pour the majority of the dirty water out directly into the sink without pouring out the cases and pins. Fill it up again, pour it out again. Repeat a few times so it's coming out pretty clean. Then fill your media separator tub with hot water with lemishine to soften the water. Then put the the cases and pins into the basket and spin gently through the water to drop out the pins and rinse the cases. You don't even need the lid. Then lift out your basket and pour the cases out on your towel. No water spots because you rinsed in soft water. Then you can use that rinse water to fill up your tumbler for the next batch.
@@WTFSoCal Or after you have separated the media and the brass... as a final rinse use distilled water in a bucket.... that what we do in the car detailing world... instead we use deionized water as a final rinse... but if you have access to a deionized water its the same.
Almost NONE of the related videos I've EVER seen have included profanity. I don't know where you've seen these. ALL of the people I've met on the range have been more polite than I am ... I either shoot alone or come away humbled.
Try using Simple Green ( about one cup) for 500 cases and two 45 ACP of Limi shine. I put a towel in a cookie sheet that has sides on it and spread the cases out and hit them with my hair drier. It’s faster than the oven and no water spots. The brass looks better than brand new brass. I also have a Lyman tumbler and I let it run for three hours. I also use the two part media separator that came with the Lyman. It is much easier to get the pins out of the cases. Hope this helps.
"Lemishine Booster" you use eliminates the hard water effect and "Lemishine Rinse" eliminates water spots. Use the oven at its lowest setting for 1/2 hour and turn off but leave it in there for an additional 1/2 hour to 1 hour. It should be dry and spot free. That should reduce the time you spend on wash and dry. There are many good suggestions people have left below. SoCal, you are well liked!!
. Here is a trick for you. When your done rinsing and getting all pins out, stuff the tumbler with the brass you just cleaned and a couple 12" x 12" or so micro towels and let it run for 15 minutes. Brass dry and shiny. No more ovens, dehydrators or waiting for it to dry in open air!!!!! Try it, you'll like it😀
This recipe is the same as I use and it works perfectly. I deprime first. Yes, I know it has been proven that clean primer pockets make no difference. Someone has proven the earth is flat also. I also use the Lyman Cyclone tumbler and love it. Like imbezol and others said, rinse in the cyclone tub three times or until the water being poured off is absolutely clear. Then I dry it in a food dehydrator from a thrift store. I do a lot of brass. To make things quicker, I sort the dirty brass by caliber before tumbling. To keep pistol rounds from sticking inside each other, I do one pistol and one rifle caliber together. Then sort by headstamp after they are dried. I also wet tumble .22LR cases to be swaged into .22 jacketted bullets. They get tumbled alone. Thanks for the excellent video
My process for cleaning brass is lengthy. However, it comes out looking like new brass. First I sift my brass to remove the majority of the dirt and pebbles in a 12"X12" screen made from 1/4" hardware screen held together by 1"X3" boards.. I then wash my brass in my Lyman wet tumbler with just soap and water for about 30 minutes. Or you can use a 5 gallon bucket with a secure lid you can toss this with a mixture of soap and water into the bed to bounce around and agitates of your truck while you run errands for the day. This removes any fine grit that would scratch my dies. At this point you can dry, deprime, and resize the brass and dry the brass again to remove any traces of water from the primer pocket and flash hole. The brass doesn't have to be shiny to function. Then I lube and full length resize and deprime my brass and run it again through the wet tumbler with stainless steel pins and a couple drops of Dawn dishwashing soap for two or three hours for final cleaning of the pocket primer and brass. Next I separate the brass from the stainless steel media and rinse my brass twice. Then I use an old towel to roll and toss my brass around to dry most of the water from the brass. I then place the brass out in the sun to dry. I have a lemon tree so I use the strained lemon juice from surplus lemons instead of Lemi Shine. I freeze a couple of gallons of lemon juice to get me through the year for cleaning my brass and for lemonade. I've tried putting the brass in my old clothes dryer with a couple of towels but it scratches the paint in the tub. The sun is free. I think i'll go have a glass of ice cold lemonade.
In my rebel 17 tumbler I use: 4 lbs of brass 2 tablespoons dish soap 1/4 teaspoon lemishine 5 drops of silicone oil for rc car diffs. Leaves the slightest film on cases and won’t tarnish and lubes them a bit.
Try cutting back on the soap and lemishine. Fill one 9mm case with lemishine and fill one with Dawn dish soap. Then rinse in the clean soft water like imbezol recommends. Also the warm air brass dryers are very efficient and you don't run the risk of getting your brass too hot like in the oven. I've just finished up 100K of 9mm and have played with the ratio quite a bit.
First, I never wet tumble with the spent primers still seated in the brass. Deprime first. If you don't, the primer pockets never completely dry. As an added bonus with depriming first., the pins will clean the primer pockets very nicely. Before putting the brass in the oven, I single stack them on the bake pan and roll a paper towel over them. The brass will 'roll' with the towel thereby drying the outsides before drying. This alone will alleviate much of the spotting. In the summer time I put the brass out in direct sun for about 20 min. This does the trick also. Winter time, oven.
I decap the brass & put it in mesh pencil bags according to caliber when you pull them out you can just shake the pins out of it inside the drum at least a majority of them also keeps the cases from intertwining with themselves and you can keep your calibers separated if you wish
I also have hard water and use basically the same wet tumble process with steel pins. I do the rinse differently, but that's not important at this point. I also use a media separator, but before I start turning the crank, I throw a plain old paper towel in with the cases. You'll be surprised how much water the paper towel absorbs. I throw in another paper towel and repeat the process. Usually takes three paper towels before it comes out fairly dry. I also throw them in my oven for 45 minutes at 185 degrees. Haven't had any water spots.
IMHO , use distilled water in a Isonic cleaner with some Dawn dish soap & Lemi Shine and leave the wet tumbling behind. You'll wonder why you didn't do it long ago . FYI Just saying ! It works so well and less Time.Take care .
I remove the spent primers, use regular tap water. Dry the brass with a towel, then use Acetone to dry the inside of the brass. Been doing that for years and it works great.
Want brass so shiny, when people look at it, it'll "BURN THEIR EYES OUT OF THEIR SKULLS"? LOL Like everything else in the Reloading world, everyone has their own "Best Way" to do it. You may like and feel this is the most important thing, or you may think it's stupid to go through this much trouble, for something as stupid as Shinny Brass. As long as it shoots, it's good enough for you. The Lemishine has Citric Acid in it and cleans your brass, right down to the brass surface. About a month after you've cleaned your brass, it'll start to oxidize and will start tarnishing your brass. For this reason, some people, like to use just dish soap. No Lemishine for them. Others love and live by the Lemishine. Also Super Long Range Shooters, are supper picky about their seating pressure. Many use just one finger, to seat their projectiles. Corn Cob and other ways of cleaning your brass, leave some carbon on the surface of your brass, that acts like lube. Stainless Steel Pins, with Lemishine added, leaves no residue, so a person who is use to seating their projectiles, with One Finger, will have to use Two Fingers to seat their brass. You'll need to slightly increase your seating pressure. The typical reloader, will never notice much of a difference, but super long range shooters, will absolutely freak out, when all of the sudden, they have to change their seating pressure. Any deviation, at all, from what's worked, for years, is a valid reason to "Freak Out". Here's the Secret Sauce for super shinny brass. I have a customer, who said, when he goes to the range, NO ONE will have shinier brass then him. He said he wants to "Burn their eyes out of their skulls". LOL What he and other people do, to achieve this Super Shine is, after they're done cleaning their brass in their Rebel 17 (Dawn dish soap, Water & Stainless Steel Pins), they wash out the barrel. Then they put just the brass back in the tumbling barrel, with fresh Clean Water. No Stainless Steel Pins. They then add some liquid car polish. Usually about a spoon full. You can use any brand your like. They tumble their brass, just long enough to coat them with the liquid car polish (NOTE: I've never heard anyone say it had any affect on powder burn). The liquid car polish will keep oxygen from getting to the surface of your brass and prevent the oxidation. I don't know how long this Super Shine last, but from the customers I have, that do it, many of them have 3 to 5 year old brass, that hasn't tarnished a single bit. Still "Burns your eyes out of your skull"!!!!!! Bill@AccuBrass.com
Great video. The only recommendation that I have is that you do not need that much Dawn soap. Only about 1/4 of a tablespoon. This is my personal preference...I will de-prime my brass before I put them in my water tumbler. That way the primer pocket will be much cleaner, and will seat the new primer much better. Oh..also not sure if you're already doing it. But I will check the inside of each brass to make sure that there aren't any steal pins still stuck inside. It's happened to me numerous times, no matter how my I spin the brass after they come out of the tumbler.
Distilled Water is one possible solution. Of course it's $1 per gallon. I couldn't tell how much soap you used but it seemed like a lot. I wonder if that is causing spots. Especially if you're oven drying. Could be soap spots? The Lemishine is very acidic which should be neutralizing your water. Glad to see you only used a small part of that Lemishine. Too much will definitely dull your brass. Did you fill the tumbler with water? I thought you were supposed to only fill just above the brass and media in the tumbler. However, you still ended up with pretty good looking brass. Good video, thanks
If you do not deprime before the tumbling, lemishine will after about 3 to 4 months corrode out the primer pocket, I have seen it and done it. Cases have to be at least deprimed immediately after a tumbling somehow the citric acid gets in the area between the old primer and the pocket and turns it white and corrodes out the brass.
yeah you probably need to cut back the lemi shine. i only use a 1/2 of a teaspoon. also it would be a good idea to not use the pins on the first pass. just use hot water and soap. then after you lub size and deprime run them again through the tumbler with the lemi shine and soap hot water and pins. if you want crazy shiny brass then use a old corn cob tumbler and use liquid car wax.
when i wet tumble i dont bother with the steel pins until after i have deprimed and resized. for the cleaning i just run dawn soap and hot water! that way the steel pins can clean the primer pockets! i also sell my brass to friends and when i do i go one step further and after the 5.56 is sized deprimed cleaned trimmed then i throw it in a dry media tumbler with a little bit of car wax. it makes them brand new looking.
Get a food dehydrator The heat from the oven dole the brass and if you let some water on the shells will spot Let the tumbler run for 3 hours And use hot water always decap before wash Thanks for you video
Personally I run my brass through a decap die then wash. Gives me a chance to spot things I don't want to wash or can't reload. I found that for a 7L bin with 800-1000 .223 cases I only need 2 tablespoons of dish soap and 1 tablespoon of lemishine. I run the bin for 3hrs(experiments with lesser time). I drain the bin with a screen mesh on one side so not to lose pins. Then refill with fresh water. Shake up the bin and drain again. Repeat this twice to get rid of the acidic lemishine and grungy water. Roll the brass through the same media tumblr you have and may rinse while in the strainer basket as well. After I lay out on a large beach towel and use a heat gun and roll them around the towel while blasting with hot air. Usually dried within 10-15 mins and cool to the touch or warm anyways in 5 mins. This way while running through large batches of cases I can catch bad cases while decapping, again while drying, again while sizing, again while trimming ect. Don't usually have many questionable cases make it to sizing or trimming. Prevents accidental loading of a bad case and wasting a primer, projectile or powder. Or worse.
I’ve done this and it anneals the whole case and changes the color of the brass. I remove the primers first. I then shake them in a towel just like you do and then move them to a dry towel and roll them back and forth with my hand or with another part of a dry towel till they look dry. I’ll come back and do it one or two more times in a half hour. Takes care of all the water spots.
The cases are not annealed by this process. Annealing takes at least 500 degrees F, ( where brass' crystalline structure begins to change, or 600 F to bring it to a red glow for 10-30 second annealing.) What you are seeing is either 1) Very clean brass showing the case's original annealing more clearly, or 2) discoloration by having too much acid in contact with the brass for too long, which allows the copper in the alloy to be shown at the surface when the zinc is dissolved by the acid. That means you're adding too much acid, or are letting it soak too long. Annealing the entire case is DANGEROUS, because it softens the head/web area of the case and may allow excessive expansion of the head, which can "flow" into your action making it extremely difficult to open the bolt/ action to get the case out, or can allow the primer-pocket to open and vent hot , high-pressure gasses out of the action ( right where your face is). That's why all annealing is done at the mouth/shoulder junction and front 1/4 of the case.
After drying mine I sometimes throw them back in my media tumbler with a little wax or polish if I'm not going to use them soon, then seal them in a Ziploc or other container depending on how many I have waiting to load. The wax or polish keeps them shiny.
I just got a Franklin arsenal wet tumbler, ans i use bb's as a media. Don't have to worry about them sticking. Sometimes you got to shae the case to get em out but works great. I use lemishine ans Dawn.
Use rechargable silica hydrosorbent 40gram packs. A few times a year the color indicator will turn pink or green/blue (depending on brand) and you'll bake them in an oven to recharge. Good for a lifetime.
I humbly give a couple of tips that I have found work well and you can choose to use them if you like. I am very sparing with Lemmi shine. Using too much Will pull the sink out of your brass and make it rose-colored. It's not good for the alloy. Take a 45 case and use that as a measure. Also try using a quarter teaspoon of jet dry. Very sparingly. I also use a small amount of barkeepers friend. That's about it. No mineral spots on your brass after that. But about the biggest one for me is to get rid of those primers. You don't want to be tumbling that junk around 😖
Well other than cooking live rounds, lol. Why don't you deprime them before you clean them to clean the primer pocket as well, not to mention preventing the oopsy daisy with the live rounds?
I hear you. I left some .40 brass in a container several months..outside....my brass turned ugly brown...just took it to the recycler...could not stand looking st it.
I don't even think it's necessary to "Wet Tumble" brass, especially with the primer removed. A primer pocket unforming tool and/or wire brush powered by a cordless drill is insurance that the pocket is clean and uniform prior to priming.
Those are okay, until you shoot at a range with a lot of IPSC shooters. Then you still have to manually separate out the .380, 9mm, 9x21, 9x23, .38 Super by hand. ( not that anyone shoots .380 in IPSC, but you still find them in the bin, or on the ground and the flipping things get mixed-in.)
Why not use distilled water in the media separator? Fill to the point where the hopper bottom is spinning through the distilled water. Rinses the media out and eliminates water spots. Win Win. Wife is happy that you did not use here baking sheets and oven and super clean brass.
I have tried dehydrators and like you said, I get water that sticks in the primers and in the pockets... Im unwilling to de-cap before i clean due to my impatience, so I have to deal with the water that stays in those pockets,... the oven seems to work for me. thanks for the input !
Maybe the camera but your brass looked a little to orange, if that is there true color and not just the camera, you are putting to much lemon shine. Brass is a mixture of copper and zink, the lemon shine is an acid and it leaches the zink, that isnt good for your brass as over time the brass becomes softer. Very little lemon shine is required, about a 45 cal pistol cartridge full is all you need for what you just cleaned and it appeared to me you used 2 to 3 times or more than that.
So i tried that method, i once was drying my brass after tumbling, i rinsed it under my tap and tried to get all the media out of the cases, then, after 'drying' it in the towel, i noticed a lot of little towel fibers inside the cases and figured that was the end of that. The one vid i watched, buddy laid out his towel lengthwise, put all of his brass in the middle of the towel, then folded the towel in thirds (like a piece of paper for an envelope) twisted the ends so the brass would stay in and shook it left to right like he was playing tug of war with himself. thinking back, i wonder if it was the motion of the brass sliding inside the towel that very gently shaved the towel and picked up all kinds of fibers? your method seems to not grab them, or does it? have you ever run into this issue?
Don't use a "New or Newish" towel... Use one that's very old and so well worn that there's very few fuzzy fibers left to come off.I Also just lay the brass in the middle, gather the corners at the short sides in one hand per side, and pick it up like a hammock. Then just tip one end up and the other down and let the brass slide along the length of the towel... or rock it back and forth. Then in the Cheapest food Dehydrator you can find for an hour at about 140 F. Rinse-aids like Finish Jet-dri work great in your second-to-last rinse of your brass. just let the brass sit for a few minutes in the water with a tablespoon of rinse-aid, then rinse, towel, and dry. Spotless.
Here is the name of it. The link will not work. Go's to spam.. Shell Sorter Brass Sorter 9mm Luger, 40 S&W, 45 ACP 3 Bowl Set and you get it from midwayusa, Sorry about the bad info. I love mine WELL worth the 45 bucks..
i do about an hr to 90 minutes, then take all the pins out and then pat them dry with a towel before i cook em... at least now adays that is my process
That's why you don't pour it in where you wash you eating essentials. Your wife will be very upset if she found out all that carbon and and toxic lead is in the house kook video sir
