Wet tumbling with pins leads to a slippery slope. . .
If you tumble straight from the range, your brass will be clean, but the primer pockets won't. Clean primer pockets is one of the biggest advantages of wet tumbling with pins (I realize clean primer pockets aren't essential; but it's important to me). And worse, those primer pockets are now wet - trapping water, the potential for corrosion, etc. Decapping wet primers are more of a mess too. IMO, I just believe wet tumbling in pins should be done after decapping.
I have noticed that powder residue acts as a lubricant when flairing the case. When the case is squeaky clean, there is a very noticable "galling" feel when flairing. To me, that just doesn't feel right, so I prefer to flair before wet tumbling.
So now, I prep the brass before tumbling - resize/decap, and flair. Then tumble. And since I know I'm going to wet tumble, I figure I might as well give the brass a quick spray with lube before processing (because the tumble will clean off the lube). Makes sense?
At this point, I have turned the reloading process into two discrete steps at the press. The "case reconditioning" step; followed by the actual reloading step; with wet tumbling in between.
Like I said, slippery slope.
All of this makes perfect sense to me - it's a perfectly logical thought process. Whenever anybody questions a step in the process, I instantly have a logical answer as to why I do it the way I do (and not the way they are suggesting).
We all have our way of doing things; and I'm sure every method imaginable is somebody's "normal" process. This is mine.
To me, the only other method that makes sense to me is to just vibra-tumble in corn cob from the range (which I do, btw); and then go straight to a full progressive reload process - complete with priming and powder charging on-press (which I do off-press, btw) - one trip to the press from start to finish. This seems logical to me for those whose main interest is to bang out lots of range fodder.
