How Do You Clean Your Brass?

[ridurall]

Decap the brass, put it in a rotary tumbler and use stainless steel media. A little detergent and a little lemishine and run for two hours perhaps more if you have really nasty range brass. Looks brand new when done.

Dittos for me, I've one of those red 15lb tumblers with the stainless steel media and with the Lemon shine and a dash of dawn in hot water 4 hours will clean up the nastest brass and make it look brand new.

 

[Fyrtwuck]

Has anyone tried using a vibratory tumbler using a mixture of the stainless steel pins and the regular tumbling media?

 

[swampratt]

I tried BB's and tumbling media.. first 2 batches looked really good.
Then it happened.. the bb's pulverized my walnut media..SOOOOO DUSTY..
No matter what i put into my vibratory they would never ever get as clean as pin tumbling.

Primer pockets are shiny clean are is the inside of the cases all the way to the bottom.

 

[xtremepilot]

I use the large Dillon case tumbler with ground corn cob media. Every 1/3 load or so i add a cap full of the Dillon case polish.

 

[ragsflh]

stainless steel pins no dust brass like brand new

 

[Blitzfike]

I have both the large and small Dillon vibratory tumblers, did all the above and got pretty good results, but kept hearing about the rotary tumbler and stainless pins. I got mine in two days ago and boy does it work. Brass looks like new. I tried using liquid laundry detergent instead of Dawn, but it tarnishes the brass slightly. I'm going back to the dawn now. Love it above all other methods I've tried. Mo, how much lemshine do you use in the large Thumlers Tumbler? Blitzfike

 

[acp]

Stainlesssteeltumblingmedia.com says a 1/4 of a teaspoon. I use about a full teaspoon. I don't measure it, I just pour a little in. Works fine for me. The only thing I hate about it is that I don't have one of the rotary media separators. I have a home made set up that I use. One of these days I am going to get the rotary set up.

 

[swampratt]

I have no idea about the thumlers tumbler..
But my homemade tumbler has a 2 quart container and i am cleaning 150 45acp cases at a time and get excellent results with pin cleaning
I use 1/8 teaspoon lemishine and a couple drops of palmolive or dawn.
the liquid gets dark from the dirty cases in about 1/2 to 1 hour..I can tumble for 2 hours and rinse.

I have found if i change the water after 45 minutes then rinse and add another batch of soap and lemishine
I can be tumbling in 1.5 hours...

 

[Blitzfike]

Thanks for the info guys.. I hate to try to reinvent the wheel. Bllitzfike

 

[Mhostetter]

I don't care for the LSD method but do tumble with dryer sheets and nu finish but I use corn cob instead of walnut. If I'm out of nu finish I've used flitz metal polish and it works as well.

I gave the LSD method a try and I must say it works and works well. Id say if you had too you could use the LSD dry and load if you wanted to do so. The inside of the brass seemed cleaner than when I've just tumbled in a 50/50 mix of lizard litter and corn. However, it's also a messy process especially when I decided to LSD a mixed bucket of range brass. I think if I had some really nasty stuff I'd use it but for my normal standards a good tumble and some new polish does the trick.