Cleaning media

in my opinion sand would be a bad idea, the reason we clean cases is to remove that sort of thing. Sand will have hard granules that will most likely scratch your brass and dies. The walnut and corn cob will not.

I've used the lizard litter with mixed results. first bag I used worked well, second had so much dust in it that I had stuck 9mm cases even after blowing them off with compressed air. I had to re-tumble 1500 cases. it cleaned the cases to a bright finish, but you could see a film of super fine dust. after sizing 50 or so I had a major die replacing type of issue.

The sand blast type of walnut you can get from harbor freight or others has better quality control of particulate size. if you deprime before tumbling your range brass you will get cornels stuck in flash holes. If you tumble off lube after sizing you will get same. Corn cob to tumble off the case lube works better for me. walnut to clean fired cases because it is harder material and works well with the carbon residue. cob to finish polish before loading is working well for me. cob is easier to push out of flash holes than walnut.

to keep your media cleaner try using something to absorb the dirt and dust. lots of folks use dryer sheets, cut up rags, paper towel, and sponges. clean media works best. also adding some wax to the mix seems to be a good idea, your basic car polish or something, not sure I don't use it. the lanolin in my case lube seems to do ok.

my 2 cents
 
I clean so much brass that I've really put my redneck brain to work over the years looking for shortcuts/better ways. I use walnut media when I vibrate but still check flash holes. However, invested in the Thumler some years back and lucked on to an oblong strainer at Bed, Bath and Beyond. It is large and fits over a 5 gal bucket perfect. After the Thumler I pour the brass and pins into the strainer and use the magnet. Works really good. 6 drops of Dawn, 6 drops of laundry detergent, and cream of tarter makes brass look like new. When I go to this effort there is no need to vibrate in walnut. However, you still have to check flash holes for pins.

Nah, don't frequent BBB, don't go there...
 
I use a cut up dryer sheet and car polish with the lizard bedding and it takes care of the dust. The first batch was a little dusty but I've cleaned several batches since with no dust problem. As I said, when I get to a real sporting goods store I'll get some real cleaning media. I just have to use what I can afford at the moment though.
 
I use pet bedding, never had any issues. make sure the shells are dry first, other wise the media will stick inside the shell.
 
given enough time and grime, any organic tumbling media will powder and clog..... First corn cob media I used was imbedded with red jeweler's rouge and I used it to death at which point that red crap filled every nook & cranny - never again.......

I have a few gallons of corn cob , but I only use it to pre-clean really dirty outdoor range brass any more. Corn cob never cleaned all the GSR out of the insides of the case for my liking. Crushed pecan and crushed walnut was only marginally better. If you're still using these - put a square piece of an old cotton dish towel into the tumbler before adding media and lastly brass - the cloth you'll throw away each time - it'll catch and hold your fine particulates and prevent most of your clogging.

I had planned to try using pulped bamboo had I not gotten my wet tumbler, but didn't get around to it beyond having a piece of it in the garage waiting to be cut up to try to make my own media.

Otherwise - I'm wet tumbling with stainless steel pin media in a weak acid solution to remove tarnish and GSR - it does the best for me.

Issue with wet tumbling is chemistry which you'll learn over time. detergents and a piece of cloth with the SS media will remove oils and grime build up. Polishing fluids and/or lemishine with your SS media will remove your tarnish. Every 5th or 6th load needs to be a detergent run to remove oils and sludge from your drum followed by a shorter regular polishing load.

I remove primers before tumbling, some others here don't. I've not found a primer pocket problem tumbling out yet and prefer pristinely clean primer pockets when reloading to prevent any GSR flake blocking the primer blast.
 
Agreed the wet method is the cleanest (inside as well which is nice annealing as not smoke puffs from the carbon still in there) .

Unfortunate its also a pain for my setup so I go with Corn media which worked better than the walnut.

Whatever works.
 
I bought a 50 lb. sack of medium grit walnut shell blasting media from a sand blasting supply for $18.00. That's enough for about four life times.
 
I use this:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000OQRGF2/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
and some NuFinish polish.
Be sure to run it long enough before adding cases to get the wet balls of media loosened up and not stick back together.

This combo, while it won't clean primer pockets as well as pins in a wet tumbler, will clean PPs better than some media will and will not get hung up in the flash holes.

I probably use too much NuFinish but my brass is good and shiny with a touch of slick left on them. Really easy to size in my LNL AP.
 
I use the Harbor freight walnut media... I use this as a first clean before I deprime and size/trim and remove military crimps.
Final clean is with steel pin and soapy water.
I use a paint strainer bag you can buy at a paint store and a oil change pan you can buy at an auto parts store.
First dump the cleaned brass in a separator to get pins out of the cases.
Place paint filter bag over the oil pan and dump the water with pins into the bag... all the water will go into the oil pan and pins stay in the bag.
Dump water and put the pins back in rotary tumbler..
Next dump cleaned cases in the paint bag and rinse in hot water to remove any soap and loose debris.
I put cases in a towel and wrap and shake to get most of the water out then use an old hair dryer to dry cases. Just keep moving the brass around to get them hot... water will evaporate and let them cool off. Check random cases for any moister .. if you find any moister just dry again with hair dryer... cases will be bright and shiny ready to load
 
gregnsara said:
I've been using pet bedding as cleaning media. I recently cleaned my first batch of .223. Cleaned up fine, but now I have 150 casings that are full of cleaning media that I have to dig out.
Click to expand...

I've had that happen with corncob media, in particular, but any of the organic cleaning media can do it. What causes it is the media becomes swollen by ongoing absorbing of moisture while it is inside the case, locking it in place. The polish or whatever you added simply needed more time to finish swelling the media before you put the brass in and started tumbling.

One thing folks used to do was leave the lid off a vibratory tumbler and run it like that to circulate the media while the polish addition dried out, but anymore, concern about water-soluble lead compounds in primer residue dust has become a health concern so that this is now considered a bad practice. You can, however, put the lid on and run the tumbler until the polish is well-distributed, as suggested in a previous post, and then just let it sit there for a couple of hours to be sure all the swelling is completed, and if you then also tap all the media from the cases immediately after you turn off the tumbler, you won't have the problem.
 
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