i have some outdoor pickup pistol brass. I cleaned them as well as i can,but there seems to be dirt still in many cases.  i ran them through my dry tumbler,but all it did was polish the brass exterior.  i have a freind with a wet tumbler and want to bring them over to his house to tumble them.  I don't want to deprime them first a i am not concerned about the primer pockets





notice that most people deprime and size before wet tumbling.So will we tumbling brass that has not been deprimed work to clean the interior?
 

What is a pain is separating the pins from the brass. With the primers out, water and pins will drain out of the brass easily, With the primers still in, it will trap the water and pins more.

Since you already tumbled them, why not deprime and size before the wet tumble? That's what I ended up doing and it really removed a lot of additional dirt and stains inside and out.

I will be picking up a universal decapper now....

I just got my wet tumbler and only have done one batch of 223 so far. Separated the pins one by inverting each case under water.

What is the best way to separate the pins.... a basket separator with a crank?

Get a Lee decapping die. It is less than $10. It is just used to deprime. This will save your nice resizing die from getting dirty.

I deprime only first, wet tumble, then size.

If you are interested in saving steps, this doesn't help, sorry.

Yes,
It will clean inside and outside of the cases with the primers still in just as good but will take more time to dry out.
On a progressive pistol reloading is a one step progress. I refuse to make it a two stage progress and be a slave to the press pulling the handle twice for the same brass.
I figured this out on rifle cases which require two stages which is bad enough and stopped the third stage of wet tumbling I was doing. I incorporated the wet tumble minus the primers into after the prep stage and not a separate pre prep stage.
I refuse to be a victim.

The advantage to de-priming before wet tumbling it two fold. As mentioned it is far easier to separate the pins from the brass. Secondly it facilities cleaning of the primer pockets.

Vince

I use my dry media separator to shake out the pins. I don't have any issues with retained pins even with the primers still on. No broken cups. I do dry them for 2 days though...
For clean pockets deprime first.

My process

Pistol Brass:
1.  Dry tumble for 30 minutes or so.  Just to get most of the nasty off before going into case feeder.
2.  Deprime and size on the 650
3. Wet tumble
4.  To seperate the pins and clean the brass I fill my media separator with water and put the brass and pins in the media separator cage and rinse through the water. Pins fall to the bottom and the pour the water out and put the pins back in the tumbler.
5. Dry either over night or with a hair dryer if I want to load the same day.

Pistol Brass:
1.  Dry tumble for 30 minutes.
2. Lube for deprime and size
3.  Wet tumble
4.  Girrard trimmer
5. Load!

Pistol brass I don't deprime. 5 gal bucket of 9mm later, no issues.