Brass Shining Made Easy!

J

Josh Smith

Moderator
Hello,

I was playing with different methods of shining brass.

Wet tumbling, I used 2 cups water and added one tablespoon lime juice.

This is the result:



I hope this helps someone!

Regards,

Josh
 
Yep, that will work to make the exterior look bitchin, but it won't clean the interior or the primer pockets. I have used a little lime juice when I ran out of citric acid and was too lazy to run to the store. Josh, pick up a bag of SS pins and you have got yourself the perfect recipe for clean brass.
 
Yep, it don't take much to wet tumble brass, other than water. I've experimented over the years (more like jes fiddlin') with a bunch of different reloading methods and tried plain water in my rotary tumblerand it worked. Also tried water and a bit of Dawn, and also tried a bunch of SS cotter pins and a few SS nuts and small screws (#6 and #4). It all worked. Can't see any reason to clean the inside of the cases nor the primer pockets 'cause no one will see that part of my ammo and it don' mean squat to performance...:p
 
I believe that clean primer pockets make for more uniform primer seating which does have an effect on performance. High luster brass, on the other hand, doesn't affect performance as long as the brass is clean. High luster brass is just for looks and to impress your friends.

I stay away from products that contain acid because the acid will leach out the zinc in your brass making it softer over time. I prefer to use very mild abrasives embedded in the tumbling compound. I use crushed walnut shells (from the feed and grain store) and a bit of silver polish in the mix, added just once when the media is new. It takes 1/2 hour to clean my brass when the media is new and I change it out when it takes an hour. The brass is then sized, deprimed, primer pockets cleaned and the cases are trimmed to maximum length and belled. I can run through a load of brass in the time it takes to tumble the next batch. The prepared brass goes into the prepped brass bucket and when I want to reload it is primed, powdered, and the bullets seated. The loaded ammo is placed in trays, labeled and placed in the cabinet to await my next range session.
 
I recently converted from corn cob vibratory to wet SS pins tumbling. I use extra strength Dawn dish soap and Lemi Shine, and WOW talk about better than new clean and shiny brass ! Wish i had made this switch years ago ! More work wet tumble vs. CC vibrate but no doubt worth the extra work involved !
 
I am really glad you think that the extra time and steps are worthwhile.
I guess I am set in my ways and new looking brass is not as important to me as being able to process two loads of brass from the range to reload ready in 1-1/2 to 2 hours. That includes processing the brass after tumbling and ready to prime, powder, seat the bullet and put into labeled boxes. It's not that I am in a hurry because I work at a relaxed pace but waiting for brass to dry before I can do the next step is painful for me.
I am glad you find it rewarding. We all need to have that in our lives.
 
I would like to see an honest test/comparison of some reloading techniques, like shiny, pristine primer pockets vs. as is primer pockets (not scrubbed). I know it's no big deal as "to each his own", but I would like to see some data on how much if any some of these practices are really beneficial (other than making the reloader happy). I don't mind some practices, as I like to "keep my fingers busy reloading" especially when I have a bunch of handloads waiting to be used, and have been known to sort brass by weight, and deburr flash holes by hand and I ain't no precision shooter!...:p

Mainly I'd like new reloaders see this kind of information 'cause I've seen some heavy loads placed on new reloaders regarding equipment and methods (I've seen posts telling new reloaders they have to get wet tumblers, "cartridge gauges" for their reloads, case trimmers for handgun brass, and auto-everything presses)...
 
"There is some debate about how deeply primers should be seated. I don’t pretend to have all the answers about this, but I have experimented with seating primers to different depths and seeing what happens on the chronograph and target paper, and so far I’ve obtained my best results seating them hard, pushing them in past the point where the anvil can be felt hitting the bottom of the pocket. Doing this, I can almost always get velocity standard deviations of less than 10 feet per second, even with magnum cartridges and long-bodied standards on the ’06 case, and I haven’t been able to accomplish that seating primers to lesser depths."

Dan Hackett
Precision Shooting Reloading Guide, Precision Shooting Inc., Pub. (R.I.P.), Manchester, CT, 1995, p. 271.​

So I think were can infer a potential test from that. It suggests that if the floor of the primer pocket isn't firm enough, SD may increase. If SD increases, it isn't just the speed difference in the bullet itself, but it usually indicates varying ignition delays which, if they are great enough, will allow small movements to shift the muzzle differing amounts before the bullet exits. So, have at it!

Incidentally, it is the citric acid in lime and lemon juice that does the polishing, and it is a lot cheaper than the juice. 10 lbs is under $25, postage paid. I've had good luck with that source in the past, but there are others.
 
So I think were can infer a potential test from that. It suggests that if the floor of the primer pocket isn't firm enough, SD may increase.
Click to expand...
Unclenick, thanks for that article. But perhaps I read a different paragraph than you did? I read Mr. Hackett's article to discuss primer seating depth, not clean vs. dirty pockets. I seat all my primers the same way he does, all the way to the bottom plus a bit more force and I don't scrub the pockets. BTW, I have never seen a build up, over several firings, of gunk in a primer pocket enough to provide a "bed" for the anvil...
 
For me, the benefit of a clean/shiny case interior is the ease of checking the powder charge on my progressive presses. When I load Trail Boss, it's fluffy enough that it fills up to the base of the bullet and is easy to see (the iight color helps, too), and almost any powder in the short 9mm cases I used to load in quantity is still pretty visible. But smaller charges of faster powders in tall revolver cases (38 Special, and now 32 Magnum and sometimes even 327 Federal Mag) get VERY hard to see in the bottom of a basically black cylinder - even with good light. It's much easier to check these cases when I'm loading virgin brass.

That said, I've known about wet tumbling with SS pins for years and have never taken the plunge. Now that I'm loading mostly 32 caliber cases, which are even narrower than the 38s I used to load a lot of, I may one day just drop into Harbor Freight to pick up one of their 2-drum rotary tumblers, and find out what it's like to ALWAYS be loading shiny brass.
 
Mikld,

As I said in the sentence you quoted, this is an inference I drew and not something Hackett said. My line of thinking is that if primer ignition consistency is improved by firm seating against a solid backing (the floor of the primer pocket). it is pre-loading the ignition squeeze of priming mix between the cup and anvil. Lacking that, some portion of the firing pin energy gets absorbed unnecessarily, as happens when the primer blow has to help finishing seating a primer. In Hackett's case, it is using primer energy to finish setting the bridge of priming compound between to primer and anvil to get an adequate squeeze at impact. So, knowing that, if we hypothesize that a dirty primer pocket will deteriorate accuracy, what would the mechanism be? Well, it might act as a cushion, undoing the good work of firmness of the seating of the primer that Hackett found important to obtain. Or perhaps it could crumble out from under an anvil foot. Or it might get loose and mechanically interfere with ignition by using up primer energy pushing the residue out and perhaps interfering with the spray of hot sparks most domestic primers now make. Either way, if the effect is significant, it will likely show up as increased velocity SD, the same way inadequate seating depth did for Hackett. If it doesn't do that, it becomes unlikely that it is doing anything to interfere with accuracy directly.

One other reason for careful cleaning was brought up by board member Hummer 70, who is also the original inventor of the stainless pin cleaning method and who spread its popularity among top match shooters (he is a twice former U.S. Palma champion) before it began to be commercialized. He is also a former Aberdeen Proving Grounds Test Director, so he's familiar with careful experimentation methodology. He believes he has been able to demonstrate that primer residue has enough time-hardened carbon in it to contribute significantly to throat erosion at rifle pressures and velocities and temperatures. Fresh residue isn't all that hard, but when it sits and ages, the carbon gets harder and abrasive. So he worked on finding a better case cleaning method to indirectly make barrels last longer.
 
I recently purchased a used Lortone QT12 Rock tumbler. It is large enough to do more than enough brass than I usually do at one time. I too was impressed at how clean the brass comes out after a 1 hour session.
That being said, I also purchased the Harbor Freight tumbler with two three pound drums just out of curiosity. I was concerned because the insides of the Harbor Freight drums are smooth, but I didn't notice any difference in the results between the cheap Harbor Freight and the Lortone.
Definitely more labor involved in wet tumbling.


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