Used primers added to tumbling media?

[beex215]

i added 22lr brass to my tumbler and i think it did a better job.

THINK

[high standard 40]

I read in a gun rag article years ago to add some brass wood screws along with the media and you get better faster results polishing your cases. I bought a box of 100 #8 X 3/4" brass screws with counter sink head and have been using them for years. They seem to help some, but don't work miracles.

[leadman]

I have been cleaning my brass first with Lemi-shine and a dab of soap in a large pretzel plastic container. About 2 tablespoons of lemi-shine, add enough hot water to cover, screw on the lid and shake back and forth for a few minutes. You can let it set for awhile if you want.
dump it out and rinse the brass and air dry. It usually looks pretty good with just this but if you want it real shiny tumble it for a bit.
I use the Lee depriming rods and bases to deprime first and about half of the crud is cleaned out, sometimes more.

[southpaw]

To add to what others have said and expand on what Longwood said, the large primers will give you trouble when tumbling 22 cal cases. I have had some fall into my tumbler. When I tumbled some 22-250's the little buggers would be stuck in some of the cases. You had to sit there and shake the case for a little bit before it would find its way out. I finally changed the media so I didn't have to deal with them any more.

Just my two pennies.

Jerry Jr.

[Longwood]

The last walnut shells I bought were lizard bedding and quite fine.
A rimfire case can lock itself into a 9mm or 380 case so well that it may as well be soldered.

A bunch of brass screws would surely help clean primer pockets.

[MikeS]

I went ahead and bought an ultrasonic cleaner. For cleaning cases I use Hornady's ultrasonic cleaner solution and it works really well. On cases that are freshly shot it will even get the primer pocket 100% clean! On brass that's been sitting around for a long time it doesn't always get the pockets totally clean, but it gets most of the dirt out. Unfortunately the cases never look as good once they've dried, as they do fresh out of the cleaner. For some reason once dry they seem to have spots on them that just don't look right. So I've been putting the cases into my vibratory tumbler once dry, and tumble them a little, then the cases look like new! I bought a 5lb bottle of plastic blasting media from HF, and in my tumbler it gives the brass a nice finish, They're not super shiny like with some media, but rather a nice matte finish that looks like new brass looks. I like using that media because being plastic it's fairly dust free, unlike walnut shells or corn cob.

[Crosbyman]

I use distilled water and a dishwasher rinse aid in my sonic, which is a 6 liter machine.

I use corn cob media from the Anderson Co, product 2040, with liquid car wax.

I bought a pallet of 48 bags and have a lifetime supply.

[Love Life]

I figured a little additional weight would cause the polishing media to rub against the brass with a little bit more force.
After reading about the stainless steel pins, and how well they work, I decided to try BB's and I honestly believe it helped with how long it takes.
I got about five pounds for $10 at walmart and added about half of them to the media in my small vibrator cleaner.

I am not exactly sure what works best, but after reading through everything here, I know that it sure goes fast compared to all night that it used to take.
About 20 to 30 minutes in a sonic cleaner then another 45 minutes to an hour in the vibrator cleaner and they shine better than new.
I only have big mouth brass now and don't advise using BB's if you are doing 223 or other very small mouth brass.

That is just plain smart. Did you use the copperhead BBs or the steel daisy ones?

[Longwood]

That is just plain smart. Did you use the copperhead BBs or the steel daisy ones?

Cheapest.

[Love Life]

Thank you Sir!

[smokeywolf]

My Hornady vibratory tumbler came with solid and slotted lids. I've come up with an additive to my walnut shell that speeds up the cleaning by about 900%. It definitely produces more dust, but I always use the solid lid anyway; no dust problem. I think if I only had a slotted lid I would wrap it in about a half dozen layers of saran wrap.
I had about a thousand pieces of milsurp 30-06 brass that had been sitting in GI ammo cans since the mid 1950s. In just plain walnut shell it takes about 60 hours to clean up. With the additive I cooked up, it takes 7 hours.

I would absolutely not use primers in tumbling media. I figure I get enough exposure to lead just with casting, handling, shooting, and decapping.

I do little machining jobs out of my garage. I have a Bridgeport knee mill and a 17" x 40" gap-bed engine lathe. A customer needed me to drill several dozen .039" holes in some stainless cylindrical manifolds. The manifolds were about 3" dia. by about 16" long, with end caps and 3/4" pipe couplings welded on each end. All of those .039" holes had to be deburred on the inside. I covered all those holes with duct tape and loaded the manifolds up with abrasive ceramic media and enough water to keep particulate in suspension and chucked them up on the lathe.

smokeywolf

[JTknives]

Primers work great as tumbling media, but dont use them with other media. put all the primers in a tumbler with soapy water and let run to clean them out. do this a few times to get clean then add brass. works very very well.

[Stephen Cohen]

Laugh if you must, but I knew an old guy who loaded his shot shells with old primers for shooting flying foxes (fruit bats)

[Sasquatch-1]

It definitely produces more dust, but I always use the solid lid anyway; no dust problem. I think if I only had a slotted lid I would wrap it in about a half dozen layers of saran wrap.

smokeywolf

I had read somewhere to use old dryer softener sheets in your tumbler cut into 1" to 1.5" squares to reduce dust. Tried it a couple of times and the sheets seem to collect a lot of the dirt from the media.

[Bad Water Bill]

I have used the drier sheets also but found out that BOUNTY will do the same thing and will not dry out like the dries stuff.

Cheaper as well.

[Wally]

I use used drysheets and dampen with paint thinner...

[Longwood]

Primers work great as tumbling media, but dont use them with other media. put all the primers in a tumbler with soapy water and let run to clean them out. do this a few times to get clean then add brass. works very very well.

Maybe I will start cleaning mine in a sonic cleaner.
Maybe tumbling them with some balls to see if the anvils will come out, prior to cleaning them.

[smokeywolf]

Dryer sheets are pretty much just lintless "tacky" wipes. They have been coated and impregnated with wax. They will undoubtedly catch and hold dust. I prefer to keep a moderate amount of dust in the tumbler as it seems to enhances the overall cleaning effect. After the walnut, my brass goes into the corncob, and after that it gets a quick rinse with a little acetic and water.
I modify this procedure depending on how dirty the brass is.

By the way, a Sears repair man advised me years ago not to use dryer sheets as they gum up the machine and shorten the duration between repairs and replacement of the machine.

smokeywolf

[yobohadi]

I had the bright idea one time to see if I could tumble the Alox off of 200 loaded 40 cal bullets, the Alox did not come off, it actually attracted a lot of the dust from the media and seemed to clean up the media really well. Of course it sucked wiping off the caked on dust from each of those bullets so that I could shoot them.

That got me to thinking that maybe I could either lube a bunch of reject boolits let the Alox dry, tumble them to clean up the media, and just melt down the caked boolits and skim off the dust, or maybe coat some pea gravel or spent steel cases with Alox to attract the dust and just throw it away or recycle it. Not sure if it is worth the Alox but it could keep your media clean much longer and if you have a bunch of Alox you don't use from all the bullet sizing dies bought over the years it may be worth trying.