How to separate media from wet tumble

V

viper12161

New member
Hey guys,

So I recently just started wet tumbling my brass (like 25 minutes ago). I picked up the Frankford Arsenal Platinum tumbler. After tumbling, it recommends filling a bucket full of water then putting the ez case tumbler in the water, pour brass in tumbler and spinning to separate the media. My question is, do I really need to fill the bucket full of water? Can I just put the cases in the tumbler and spin it around like I do with the dry media? I don't have a sink in my garage so lugging a big bucket full of water back forth isn't really an easy option (and alerts the wife to my presence which leads her to asking me to do stuff)

Thanks!
 
Doesn't take long to load the dish washer. Around here (no running water except when it rains), that just means putting the dishes on the floor. Clean as a whistle in five minutes or less.
 
Haha, someones got hounds. Filled it with water and wasn't to bad to do, only took a few minutes to get it all separated (minus the dishwasher loading time) Will be better once spring hits and I can use the hose outside and stay out of sight. Brass is in the dryer now, man does it look pretty!!
 
Viper

Make sure you check the flash holes, and case necks,
as SS pins can and do get stuck there.

Now, that they are clean,
you should do a careful check of the brass,
to find any problem brass etc.

You can also take a large sized speaker magnet,
place inside a Zip-Lock bag, seal it tight,
lay the bag/magnet at the mouth of the bucket, on top of the pins,
pour off the water, magnet will collect the pins and keep them from being
poured out down the drain, toilet or outside when draining the water etc.

Tia,
Don
 
Thanks Don. I'll be going through them now and taking a look. I found that all the pins were clumped nicely in the bottom of the bucket allowing me to pour most of the water out. I ordered the Frankford pin magnet to get em out of the bucket from there. For checking the flash and necks, are the pins pretty noticeable, or do I need a magnifying glass to check em all out.
 
A clean water rinse helps reduce spotting. My system: I dump pins and brass into a Frankfort's strainer that fits on top and partial inside a 5 gal paint bucket. I run clean water of the brass and pins while swirling everything around. The pins end up in the bucket and the brass stays in the strainer. I pour most of the water out of the 5 gallon bucket then pour the pins back into the tumbler barrel for storage. I use the magnet to find any loose pins on the counter top.
 
*IF* you are using a dry media seperator, set your seperator on tarp or blanket to catch flying pins,
They don't go far, but they do go in quantity.

The 'Wet Bucket' is often for a final cleaning of acidic/detergent,
If you flushed the brass well, it's actually not entirely nessary to do it again.

When I was using a small scale wet seperator, I used an old furniture blanket to catch pins. Worked VERY well...

Just for the record, a HOT water rinse reduces spots, the hotter the better.
I dry mine with a common fan on fish net, fan below.
Fish net set up like a hammoc with fan below drys quickly and by using synthetic fish net the brass doesn't tarnish where it touches the net.

Net allows me to move/shake the brass around with little effort and stows out of the way when not in use.
 
By pure coincidence and sheer luck, I just happened to have had a fine mesh screen that is the exact diameter of the opening of my Frankford tumbler. So I put the screen over the opening and pour out the water - refill and rinse a few times. Then I pour everything (pins and brass) into my RCBS rotary media separator. Once the brass is separated, they get laid out on an old towel for drying. Here in California, they're dry and ready for loading in 24 hours.

Oh, and I also keep a strong little magnet with me during all these handling processes with the pins - comes in handy; trust me ;).

SS pins are kind of a nuisance to work with. You've got to really like having nice, clean, shiny brass (and ammo).

I do.

If that's not important to you, then I suggest just using a dry media vibra-tumble system after the brass comes back from the range, and load on. Vibra tumbling gets the outside of the brass clean enough to spare your dies from grit and other various range crud. That's all you really need.

I do both, btw: Vibra tumble; recondition brass; ss pin tumble; load.

My ammo looks awesome. Just sayin' ;)
 
Huh, didn't think of the hot water. I just used warmish tap water. Will try that next time. Brass still came out great. I bought the Franford dryer and that worked very well. Had about 100 cases....dry in about 45 minutes
 
I love my Frankford Arsenal cleaner. Bought magnet and dryer at same time. It is a pain but I dump mine brass and all in a 5 gallon feed bucket. Run lots of cold water through and pour water out as much as I can. Dump brass and what pins are left in tumbler in my media separator filled with water to rinse. Drain both and pour ss pins on an indoor dog pee pad to dry. I hated it when I first got it. Took lots of different ways to increase time to clean up. Down to 10 minutes tops after tumbling is over. Note don't tumble straight wall pistol or 45-70 brass with bottleneck. Pins get inside and hold the two together. Hard as heck to get apart and the stuck ones don't get clean. 45 colt and 357 do same thing. If you shoot a lot and deprime before cleaning you will love it. Takes me a lot longer than 10 minutes to clean primer pockets on 5-600 pieces of brass.
 
I'm up to a scale of 2,500 to 5,000 at a time, poly drum cement mixer.
Pull out a little more than half a 5 gallon bucket at a time, holes drilled in bucket for water/pins to come out,

Throw that bucket back in the mixer and let it knock around loosely,
Knocks out loose water & pins out of the cases, good time to flush with clean water (usually flushed twice in the mixer).
Puts pins back into mixer where they belong without slinging them everywhere.

Stainless chips & pins together work great, particularly when final cleaning, chips get into grooves of primer pockets and scrub things clean much faster.
 
For grins try tumbling without the pins. Granted the inside of the case and primer pockets won't come out as nice, but you'll get back some precious time to reload more:eek:
 
I'll start by saying I've never filled my bucket with water . The only thing I can say to that is thank god I never read the direction :D

What I do is pour the water out of the drum in a way that does not let the pins fall out . I then fill with water and dump it out again . I repeat this three times . After the third time I then pour the rest of the water into the bucket allowing the pins inside the tumbler to also fall in the bucket , shake a few times . Note: you'll be using the straining lid on the drum to only allow the water and pins to transfer to the bucket .

I then pour the case into the separator and slowly spin . The fact most of the pin were dumped out after the third rinse there's not many left to go flying but they still do a little .

OR

You can get one of these . I did and like it very much
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01B6S8JUC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
 
I have been communicating with a guy that uses spent primers in the tumbler along with steel pins, says it works as good as chips... I can't vouch for that...

Every opponent of steel pin cleaning cites pin seperation as time consuming,
I can seperate pins from 1,000 or more brass in under 2 minutes.
Takes me longer than 2 minutes to towel off dust from dry media...
And I can't do nearly as many in those consumer grade vibratory cleaners.

The tell of the tale is,
I don't know of anyone that tried steel pin/water cleaning, and actually gave it a chance, that went back to dry media cleaning.
I didn't give up dry media POLISH, but for basic cleaning, it's steel pins all the way!
 
The main thing that turned me off wet tumbling was the small batches. The extra steps involved are not as big a deal when you can do batches of 3000 +.

I use the Dillon separator and fill the tub with water. Gives a good rinse/gets all the pins out, then lay them in the sun to dry.

IMG_20130727_144639_090_zpsd9095290.jpg


I still use dry tumblers too though, mostly for post load tumbling to knock the lube off.
 
Yes, the water is used in the rotary media separator to break the surface tension between the pins and the brass. Once separated, the pins sink to the bottom of the water for easy recapture.

As a practice tip, once the pins are separated from the brass in the media separator, and the water is dumped out and pins recaptured, while the wet brass is till in the squirrel cage, throw in a dry towel and agitate vigorously for 20-30 seconds. This removes most of the moisture from the cases. Repeat with a second dry towel, and almost all moisture will be removed.

The primer pockets will still be damp, and they will dry out in 15 minutes of exposure in a tray.

Just FYI...
 
I've only been wet tumbling a little over a year . At first I thought it took more time then dry tumbling but did not consider the other things you save on . Like I no longer need to manually clean primer pockets or brush the insides of necks . When you take those factors into account . I believe I save a measurable amount of time and not just a few minutes but more like 30+ minutes per 500 cases . That right there is worth the 5+ minutes extra it takes to wet tumble IMO .

Now guys that use a progressive and deprime when sizing hand gun . That benefit does not seem to translate so I'm not sure if it's worth wet tumbling hand gun brass when using a progressive .

For those that don't clean primer pockets . Does the fouling build up after each firing to where you do need to clean them at some point . Or does each firing blow out the old fouling only leaving behind about the same amount ?
 
For those that don't clean primer pockets . Does the fouling build up after each firing to where you do need to clean them at some point . Or does each firing blow out the old fouling only leaving behind about the same amount ?
Click to expand...

I treat it like the carbon build up in my exhaust system and never think about it until someone brings it up.

It's not something that just keeps growing rather just residue.
 
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