Looks like I'm joining the stainless pin tumbling crowd

[OKCHunter]

i'm using an old food dehydrator set on low heat. I'd like to find a way put a thin cat of car polish on the brass to keep the tarnish under control.. This may become the task of the old vibratory cleaner. simple cob media with a capfull of nu finish mixed in very well. about an hour running will evenly distribute an anti-tarnish agent.

Shoot-em before they tarnish and repeat ��

 

[okietom]

I have cases so clean now that I have been reloading them once with out cleaning them again.

 

[swampratt]

Mine do not tarnish after pin cleaning
Citric acid chelates the brass and citric acid passivates the brass, which means that after washing in the solution, the brass is actually made more corrosion-resistant.

I have some I cleaned over a year ago and they look just fine.

During a rainy hunt I removed brass cased ammo from my gun to get into my car many times during the weekend.\
It got dropped in the grass and stuck in my pocket tossed in the center console and wiped off and back into the gun when I went back out.

Now the Virgin Lapua cases that were not cleaned had funky scratch patterns looked like spider webing on them corrosion setting in.

But the once and 2x fired cases that were pin tumbled did not have this funny look to them.

After you pin tumble and they dry they will look really bright and shiny. a couple days and the shine will dull just a bit and stay there at that stage.
At least that is what I noticed in my 1000's of cases I have played with.

 

[Jedabug92]

I heard SS will scratch the brass

Sent from the Armory

 

[Reloading Rod]

I've used it on thousands of pieces of brass it doesn't scratch it, in fact if you trim your brass and then clean it it will de-burr your brass as well. For tarnish control I use armorall car wash, it is orange in color and I use 1/2 a cap full, it's available at Walmart.

 

[OKCHunter]

I've used it on thousands of pieces of brass it doesn't scratch it, in fact if you trim your brass and then clean it it will de-burr your brass as well. For tarnish control I use armorall car wash, it is orange in color and I use 1/2 a cap full, it's available at Walmart.

Please elaborate. Do you mix the Armorall with your cleaning solution or is this a final process?

 

[Reloading Rod]

Here is how I do it, a little different than most. I use regular dawn with lemishine and usually run it 45 minutes to an hour. I dump out the old water and rinse until water comes out clean I then refill it and and lemishine and the the armor all car wash and tumble about another hour to 90 minutes. I then put them in a dehydrator and in about 15 minutes they are dry. If you don't use a dehydrator shake them real good in a towel and let them sit overnight. Another tip is if you do the process and the brass comes out dingy, clean the inside and bottom of the barrel with a scour pad (not a metal one) and soap, they residue from the cases cling to the rubber. They come out with a little slicker feel to them, and don't tarnish near as bad as without the car wash. I have picked up brass that is several months old and so black you would think it was steel, but it cleans them up like new. I usually clean out my barrel every 10 or so times of cleaning to get rid of fine sand and for that I just remove all the pellets with a ziplocked covered magnet (pull the magnet out of the bag and the pins fall into a container), and wash the barrel out good. I shoot a lot of 300 blackout so I make cases from 223 rem I will trim them and throw them in there to clean out any brass shavings and as I said in the above post it does a great job of smoothing out the case mouth.

 

[jc5420]

I just got one of the Frankford SS tumblers and have been pretty impressed so far. I just received 500 cases in the mail on the 24th and have everything processed and ready to load... Brass looks brand new. Sadly I have started running my other "clean" brass through it to satisfy my eyes...

 

[Jedabug92]

Yeah, thats a pretty slick process! I tossed in a bunch of misc brass, some of it very old and tarnished after years in the weather, and it came out pretty good. Even the steel cased stuff that got accidentally mixed in turned out great. It's almost a shame to have to toss it! I didn't deprime, this was mainly just to try out the new toy. I was surprised how warm the motor on the tumbler got. I may need to set up some cooling.

before
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after
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.....I'm sold!!!

Sent from the Armory

 

[Reloading Rod]

Another thing I like about SS Cleaning is all of us know how tough Oklahoma clay is, if you pick up some brass with clay in it (talking rifle brass), with the corncob or walnut media I just don't think it has the abrasive power to cut Oklahoma clay, also the inside of the brass is usually still usually dirty. With SS media the inside is as clean as the outside so you can actually look in each case prior to loading, just makes me feel safer knowing I don't have anything 'extra' in my cases. I swage a lot of 22lr cases in to 223 bullets, and the priming compound in those don't always get all used up, so when you go to de-rim them they go off, since I've used SS media that problem has gone away.