SS pin cleaned brass problem

Anyone else have problems with pistol brass having to be inside and outside chamfered after being tumbled in the SS media? I bought some brass that was cleaned with the pins and it is smashing in the expander die and in the seater die unless I chamfer the brass. What a pain!

I know I will not be switching over to the pins if this is what I will be looking at. I even tumbled the brass in my walnut media because I read that the pins clean so well that it will do this with out a little dirt or whatever on the case. Well that did not work. It looks like the mouth of the brass is rolled over a little bit.

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Originally Posted by tomme boy

Anyone else have problems with pistol brass having to be inside and outside chamfered after being tumbled in the SS media? I bought some brass that was cleaned with the pins and it is smashing in the expander die and in the seater die unless I chamfer the brass. What a pain!

I know I will not be switching over to the pins if this is what I will be looking at. I even tumbled the brass in my walnut media because I read that the pins clean so well that it will do this with out a little dirt or whatever on the case. Well that did not work. It looks like the mouth of the brass is rolled over a little bit.

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That sounds like a problem with that batch of brass. I wet tumble all my brass with SS pins and have not had to chamfer a single piece.

I have no personal experience with the problem but I've read others say that's a symptom of tumbling for too long.

I have the pins, etc, but I only use them once in a while - when the brass gets really nasty. Other than that, it's kind of a pain in the hiney for every time loading use. Edit - However, I don't remember having to chamfer after using the pins. I use a Thumblers mod B, I think..

I have been washing all my brass with SS pins for over a year now and have never had a problem like that. The only issue that I have seen washing brass with SS pins is nickel plated brass doesn't like it ;-) The coolest new thing is using ArmorAll Ultra Shine Wash & Wax as the soap with a touch of Lemishine. ArmorAll leaves a fine coat of wax on the brass case which keeps them from tarnishing.

I have been doing this for better than 20 years and have not had that problem with any brass no matter how it was cleaned or not cleaned. Are these straight pistol brass? Is it possible the brass was roll sized? I haven't had any brass sized that way but I can see a problem like yours being possible. A cure could be as simple as making the chamfer on the expander have a smaller diameter. I'm pretty sure the expander isn't hard and a file would work great.

Washed thousand of shells with ss media never had any problems

The SS pins w/wet tumbling gets the brass down to bare metal. Perhaps your expander is "grabbing" the bare metal of the case, too much friction, and not "sliding" across it, and crushes the case? As an experiment put some kind of lube on a few case mouths and/or the expander, and see if they are still crushed...

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Originally Posted by tomme boy

Anyone else have problems with pistol brass having to be inside and outside chamfered after being tumbled in the SS media? I bought some brass that was cleaned with the pins and it is smashing in the expander die and in the seater die unless I chamfer the brass. What a pain!

I know I will not be switching over to the pins if this is what I will be looking at. I even tumbled the brass in my walnut media because I read that the pins clean so well that it will do this with out a little dirt or whatever on the case. Well that did not work. It looks like the mouth of the brass is rolled over a little bit.

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I've been a SS wet tumbler for nearly 3 years. Tens of thousands of cases wet tumbled, and this is the first I've ever heard of such a problem. Tumbling in a rotary tumbler could cause minor "peens" on the very mouth of the case, but that is normal. This is not an issue to be concerned with. It is caused not by the SS pins, as they do not have sufficient mass to dent anything, but by the cases hitting each other while tumbling. If you've ever bought brand new brass, look at the edge of rim and you'll see the same peens since new brass gets tumbled before marketing.

For your cases to be actually smashed at the mouth when passing through the die indicates that there may be something else going on. For example, are you using dies that you purchased new or used? The reason I ask is that if you purchased used dies, there is a chance that your die contains the wrong size expanding button for your caliber. This has actually happened to me. Since my used dies were RCBS, I sent them into the factory to be checked out. Sure enough, a previous owner put a 32 calibler expanding button in a 30 caliber die causing the problem.

Just an idea. But I think your SS wet tumbling is not the culprit based on my experience.

Good Luck -

Bayou52

I'm fairly new to the SS pin game for cleaning but I have cleaned at least 10,000 cases and have not experienced the phenomenon you describe.

I do not use SS pins for cleaning I use ultrasonic and Walnut... But I did buy some .380 pistol brass from a local Brass Monger that had been SS tumbled, and the case mouths all had a slight serration effect.
Made them go crunch thru the dies. Didn't care for that but they all loaded up and went bang.

My brass is fine. It is all the brass from elsewhere that was a problem. Mainly Rem brass but all of it was doing it. And it has been reported on numerous forums that this has happened to others. The only way to stop it was to do a lite turn on the inside and outside of the brass. I sized the brass so I know who and how it was sized. They felt like the cases were just de primed and not sized.

that may be true that the cases were just deprimed and not resized
i do that all the time with ss cleaning i first deprime the brass then run it thru a cleaning cycle with ss media
i do this to clean the inside of the primer pockets
after cleaning i resize the brass
may be what you are running into here
i use the ss media and never had a problem like you describe on any type of brass
mule

Is your expander die belling the cases enough?Have the brass been annealed?If so you can work harding it some by woerking it up and down in the resizing die.Just some idle thoughts.

On mine I see some very small nicks on the case mouths...they are of no concern to me. However what I really don't like is that the cleaned cases are shiny & bright....but overnight they take on a dull finish. On cases cleaned w/ traditional corn cob or walnut shells...while not as shiny...they don't become dull. None of the advertising SS pin videos show how cleaned cases look after cleaned an after 24 hours. Apparently the cases are cleaned so well the brass has no protective coating...when exposed to the air, they tarnish (oxidize) remarkable fast. Perhaps there is a method to keep them shiny?

I use ArmorAll Ultra Shine Wash & Wax and a little Lemishine

In my Frankford Arsenal Rotary tumbler, I use 5 quarts of hot water, 2 tablespoons of ArmorAll Ultra Shine Wash & Wax and a 1/2 teaspoon of Lemishine for 8 pounds of brass

I bought a Thumbler's Tumbler Model A-12 About 1968 or 69.

On of my first big tumbling projects was cleaning 1000 grungy SL-54 30-06 cases that had been ran through a machine gun and left on the ground a while.

This batch of cases taught me how to use the tumbler. There were a few times I had too many cases and too little media - walnut shell treated with red rouge. When the overloaded drum did not polish the cases very fast I just left them in it longer. I wound up with a lot of cases that had a burr edge all around the case mouth inside and out.

Since I was using walnut shells (but too little) with too much brass, the only thing that could have dinged the case mouths were other cases. I just reduced the brass load and increased the walnut shells. That solved the problem.

In the case of wet tumbling too little water, too much brass and tumbling too long might cause the burred case mouths.

The stainless pins individually do not have enough mass to ding a case mouth.

I have also run into brass with the serration on the mouth that went crunch unless I chamfered it, some recent .38 and .357 cases. Almost like the manufacturing process to make those serrations makes the case mouth brass a bit fat.

EDG has the answer; too much brass and too little media. No matter how we tumble, only other cases have sufficient mass to peen the case mouths - and it's noisy too!

Thank you Sir!---I best try ArmorAll Ultra Shine Wash & Wax. The good folks that sell the SS pins mention using Dawn...which works superbly well. However IMHO it is goofy to get your brass nice an shiny only to have it get quite dull and ugly. The purpose of using the SS pins is to make the cases shiny and I think we all want them to remain that way. Does the Frankford Arsenal Rotary tumbler have the same capacity as the Thumlbers Tumbler?

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Originally Posted by Bonz

I use ArmorAll Ultra Shine Wash & Wax and a little Lemishine

In my Frankford Arsenal Rotary tumbler, I use 5 quarts of hot water, 2 tablespoons of ArmorAll Ultra Shine Wash & Wax and a 1/2 teaspoon of Lemishine for 8 pounds of brass

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