Finished my first load last night.....

May never dry tumble again !!

Dry tumbling is still necessary to remove lube after sizing, unless you use a lube like one-shot or imperial...

Wet tumbling looks interesting, however, I can't tumble the quantities I want in one of these small tumblers.

Has anyone thought about or tried this method with a cement mixer or something similar?

Harbor Freight has some small mixers that may be just the ticket.

Using the small one from HF now.
The paddles that come with it is too tall, got some plastic strips and put 4 speed bumps, works good, but is noisey, had to caulk the seam in the barrel.
Did 1k of 308 Sat, and it's a pain to seperate the media, will make a 1/4 screem to help that out.
Thought about coating the inside with something like Rhino Liner to quiten it down, but haven't found any that wasn't just paint.
'Borg

Good to know.  Thanks for testing it out.

Sorry, - too little water. When I use less water, I still never let it drop down below the one inch mark. What I meant is if you put more brass in, it will take up some of the volume inside the tumbler therefore if you fill it to the one inch mark, even though it is the same mark, there will be less water in there. Obviously you can push this too far.....  



If that is how it looks when you first open the tumbler, you did not put in enough soap - more dirty brass - more Lemishine, more soap.

FedEx dropped mine off this morning, I went home on my lunch to put a load in. I took a couple before pictures to compare with the finished product.

Dryflash I might have missed it but your belt looks black, mine came clear, did you replace it or does it just look black in your photo?

Ah okay. I knew I forgot something, I need to order some spares.

Did my first batch of SS media polishing today.

All I can say is two things...

1) I love this stuff!

2) I need a media separator - badly!

Did .357 mag brass and some junky looking .223 range pickup brass.  BLING BLING!

ETA:  Buffalo Arms is where I got the media and the Thumbler's Tumbler.

After completing my first batch of rifle brass that was on for 4 hours all I can say was wow it sure makes the brass look pretty. I ran a batch of .40 for two hours and it looked pretty good too. Time to experiment this weekend.

Well, I'll contribute a tip I discovered.

My media from Buffalo Arms is magnetic.  As such, I had a little bit of media in the bottom of my bucket, so I grabbed a magnet.

It just happened to be the little plastic encapsulated, rare-earth magnet used to unlock our child proof locks on the kitchen cabinets.

It worked so well, I just left it in the bucket, a few shakes and all the loose media was clinging to the magnet.  The outer surface is smooth and seamless, very easy to pull the media pieces off.  Plus it wont corrode.
It was one of these...

Is anyone else having issues with water spots on thier brass after drying? I cant tell if its hard water or soap or what. It comes out looking great, bright and sparkly. I rinse in water and then double rinse, which i figure should get the soap off. The first few batches turned out great, but the last two i did today had a slight spotting to them once they dryed.

Any thoughts?

Pat

after i've rinsed the tumbler a few times (with the brass and ss media still in it), i'll then separate the media and toss the the brass into a bucket of warm clean water.

 












 

I couldn't pass on the opportunity!

Okay, so I got my new thumbler tumbler a couple of days ago. I made the suggested modifications that Dryflash did and recommended to his (spray painted inside of drum, gluded rubber gasket and washers to lid, and I too got some better washers and wing nuts). I also did a similar modification that jlow did with a brace on the other side. Everything is done and dry so I just finished putting the whole thing together. I gotta work today, but I was going to try it out tomorrow. I got the 5lbs of SS media from buffaloarms, the dawn and lemishine from Target (Walmart was out ), an empty 1 gallon jug to measure the water, and was going to measure out 2 lbs of 223 de-primed brass using a small scale that I use to ship packages.  Is there any order of how you guys recommend adding everything to the tumbler? I was going to add the brass and media, then water, and lastly the teaspoon of dawn and 45cal of lemishine and then seal it up, put it on the tumbler and turn it on.

Thanks guys. Yeah maybe-they had a ton of the lemishine rinse agent next to the empty spot where the lemishine was supposed to be . I asked an associate and they said that they were going to get some in later this week.
I took a chance and proceeded to my local target and there it was. I am going to try to do a couple of batches today and hopefully I can take some before and after pics to display.

Okay, like I promised, I got some pics.

This first pic is of some brass that was previously dry tumbled in CC media only (not wet tumbling) for approximately four hours before I tried out my new tumbler.



Here is a closeup of one of the primer pockets of the same brass. As you can see dry tumbling really didn't clean it out that well.



Here is a pic of some brass after I tried using my new wet tumbler the first time. Clean, but not super shiny.



Here again is a closeup of the primer pocket of that same brass. Pocket much cleaner, but still some debris in some of them.



Now here is a pic of some brass after my second attempt of using my new wet tumbler. Brass is much shinier.



Again a closeup of the primer pocket of it. Pockets are all nice and clean and case heads look really nice.



Here is a pic of one of each brass. Starting from left to right-the first is a drytumbled round only, the second from my first wet tumbled batch and the third from my second wet tumbled batch.



And here is a closeup of the primer pockets of the same three in the same order.



Here are my thoughts on this. When I wet tumbled the very first time I checked after about two hours and when I took the lid off there was hardly any suds. I added more dawn and then tumbled another two hours totaling four hours. When I opened them up they were very clean, but two things I found where that the brass wasn't very shiny (had almost a nickel kind of color) and though the primer pockets were indeed better, some were still not completely clean. So I made the following correction. I kept all the main components the same (two lbs brass, five lbs of the ss media, one gallon of hot water from the sink), but instead of adding a 45cal round of lemishine I added twice as much and I added alot more dawn(did the two second squirt like Dryflash ). The second batch came out much shinier and the primer pockets were all clean. I still tumbled the same amount of time (four hours). Here is one last picture taken of my two wet tumbled loads side by side. I will let you guess which one is which.





I am about to stop my third and final batch from today (currently tumbling) and see how it turns out. I didn't deviate much from the second batch, but I did add even more lemishine to it though
Let me your thoughts guys.
Cheers,
Mav

looking good!!!   just finished my 4th batch tonight i think i have my recipe down now.

Thanks! Good job BTW on your home made tumbler. I wish I had the parts and the technical ability to make one myself...

While tumbling, I spent a couple of hours today cleaning out most of my reloading dies. Man there was some gunked up stuff in some of them. Now they are all nice and clean and waiting for some clean brass to be reloaded with. I thought of some questions too while working:

1) Would it be a problem if I let the contents sit in the tumbler awhile after tumbling before I tended to them? I ask because I am afraid of staining from the dirty water.


2) Can I trim the brass prior to tumbling or should trimming always be done after re-sizing? My plan now is to tumble brass clean, then re-size afterward so my dies stay cleaner. The reason I am asking is because it would be nice to clean out the shaving from the brass trimming while tumbling.

I have a queston too.
do you prep normal before you wet tumble?
1) dry media
2) size/deprime
3) trim
4) wet tumble
is that your process?

I discovered I was using WAY too much lemishine, which was half a teaspoon.  I had really clean but ORANGE brass!

Dialed the Lemishine down to 1/4 teaspoon, followed with the two second squirt of Dawn, and tumbled for 4 hours.  Nice, clean, bright "white" brass

I think water hardness might play into the amount of Lemishine needed to get the desired results.

my process:
rifle cases
1) decap with universal de-primer
2) lube and resize,trim and remove crimp if needed
3)wet tumble again for a half hour to clean off lube then store for loading

for pistol brass

1) deprime with universal de-primer
2) tumble for 2.5 hours
3) dry and store for loading.

just placed my order so it'll be here mid week I guess
then I can go from to

Yeah you will never go back to dry tumbling after you see your first load come out!

sweet its already in the mail!

I have been using SS media for a few months now, and here are a few more pics for your enjoyment.

Thumler's Tumbler Model B High Speed - 5# media
My mixture is.  3 tbsp Dawn, 1/4 tsp Lemi-Shine, fill water 2" from the top.

308 brass.  4 hour tumble.



223 brass.  4 hour tumble



9mm brass.  1 hour tumble

You guys are killing me!!!!

Flash

Now this is a sweet wright up. Thanks for your time guys.