Cleaning brass

The dust contains water and acid soluble lead compounds (the forms that actually can be poisonous). One of the members had a friend with lead testing equipment who found the only part of his reloading room that had lead contamination was around the vibratory tumbler. Not even his casting area had a significant problem compared to the tumbler dust.

If you have no kids in the house, that's probably not a big issue, but if you wash it and get the toxic part into solution you want to be careful how you handle it. In particular keep it away from children and food preparation surfaces and equipment.

One of the good features of the wet tumbling is the citric acid used by most folks cleaning this way is a chelating agent, so it can bind the lead in reactive forms into non-toxic molecules. I don't know what degree of effectiveness it has at that function, but it can't hurt.
 
20 year old media needs a refresh or better replaced.

Corn cob seems to work better than walnut.

I have fresh media and it still take over night in a vibratory cleaner to get the necks clean.

Media it too cheap to clean it, pitch it. and putting in the oven? good grief.
 
I use a 2/3 corn cob and 1/3 walnut media mix as all my cases have only been through my gun and aren't that dirty. I'll tumble for half an hour, if I'm full length resizing and back in the tumbler for two hours or so. If I'm just neck sizing, I just tumble them. A friend uses liquid polishing compound for a shinny finish, but I'm not too concerned with shine.

Media it too cheap to clean it, pitch it. and putting in the oven? good grief.

For those that reload to save money, why not?
 
Spend a couple of bucks at Petco or Petsmart and buy a bag of "Lizard Litter" it's crushed walnut shells. Add a capful or two of "Nufinish" car polish, add some used dryer sheets cut into 1" strips into your vibrator tumbler and polish away. The dryer sheet strips pick-up all the dust & dirt. Toss them when done and add new next go-round. Works for me.
 
I change my walnut shells every few thousand rounds, its cheap enough (petco lizard bedding) shells never come out shinny, but clean and very reloadable. Heck, they are only going to get dirty again anyway.... so clean is good enough for me...
 
It's the clean part... Stainless cleans the inside of the case just as well as the outside.

I've got some stainless chips on order, I want to see how they do.
 
Stainless chips you say? I didn't know of such a thing. I have the pins. Hopefully the chips are all small enough to easily go in and out of smaller calibers
 
I went with the wet tumbler with Stainless Steel Pins using the pins designed for it. When I saw how it cleaned the primer pockets & the carbon out of the inside of the case I was hooked. Gave the outer away to a friend.
 
"Yup. I put them in the oven on a piece of foil on the lowest setting to dry them out afterwards. "

Couple of paper towels on a cookie sheet work great.
 
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I run my rifle and magnum pistol brass through an Ultra Sonic cleaner then lube, resize, and trim. I then tumble them in walnut with Dillon polish.

This gets the brass very clean inside and outside including the case necks. I do decap prior to the sonic cleaning and it does well with the primer pockets although not 100% probably 90%.

For 223 and 300 blk, where I am prepping about a thousand at a time, I'll skip the sonic and tumble them twice since I am not looking for these rounds to win beauty contests. :)
 
Just a note here to all of my friends that use walnut media to clean their brass, from experience; make sure that the dryer sheets that you use are USED! The unused/new ones will make your media ineffective.
 
Mississippi, odd shapes of stainless media has been around for polishing for probably as long as tumbling has been around.
Throw an eBay search for Stainless Chip Media and have a look...

The 'Jewlery' version isn't really suitable for anything but larger pistol cases, IF you mix in some pins for flash holes & primer pockets,
And when you say 'Jewlery' the price shoots up...
But it's something to look at so you get an idea.

I threw larger stainless chips from a saw into the deburring machine, screened out the really small and really big and threw it in with the pins.
Result wasn't cleaner brass since brass comes out pretty well spotless anyway,
But it cleaned even the dirtiest brass REALLY QUICKLY, about half the time it normally takes with pins.

I don't have any stainless jobs coming up that will produce chips of sufficient size, so I ordered some more.
 
If your only worry is the necks, try using an old green scrubbing pad with a little soap on it. It will get rid of the carbon with just a quick spin.

I do this with surplus brass when I run it through Iosso, a green pad with Iosso on it wil remove carbon from carbon! After a couple minutes in Iosso I rinse it and then throw it in the oven set on warm. 10 minutes later and you have clean shiny brass ready to load, if you want it super shiny you can throw it in some corncob for a half hour.
 
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