Right now I deprime my .223 brass, then wet tumble with steel pins. All works great.

However, if I decide to save some reloading time and wet tumble with steel pins the brass which was not deprimed before, will that procedure *completely* remove all lead components of a primer? Or not really?

You'll find that some (sometimes 'many') primers will corrode to the primer pocket if you don't deprime first.

Then - the depriming pin will just punch the end of the primer out - leaving the primer sleeve inside the primer pocket.

well its ok, ill just continue with the way I was doing before then. thanks.

Deprime before tumbling.

I have wet tumbled 10s of thousands of 9mm/.40S&W/.45ACP and several thousands of .223 and .308 with pins, lemishine and dawn and have had exactly 1 primer not punch out and leave a ring in the primer pocket.  I do take the wet cases after rinsing and tumble in walnut for about 15 minutes to dry them.

The rifle cases get deprimed shortly after cleaning (days) when I resize them, the pistol cases may sit around for months or years before I get to them.  I think the trick is good rinsing and drying before storage.

I've wet tumbled at least 15k (maybe up to 20k)  pieces of brass the last 3 years.  Ive never deprimed any of it before wet tumbling.  Ive dried probably 25% in the oven when I am in a hurry.  Usually i just leave the brass on a towel on the floor of my man cave for a few days/weeks.  The concrete floor is pretty cold in the winter though and if the brass doesn't sit there for at least a week when it is cold then I will throw it in the oven for a bit before doing any loading with it.

I've had exactly 2 primers be stuck and be punctured instead of removed.

It's just not been a problem such that I need to deprime first.

This squeaky clean primer pockets is one of the reasons I like wet tumbling.

My experience was very different. When I first started wet tumbling I did a batch of .45 ACP with the primers still in, dried it in a FA dryer for 45 minutes or so and put it away. Weeks later when I went to load it I lost about 10-15% of them to primers corrosion bonded to the primer pocket. It's obviously not a universal problem based on you guys' experience, but until someone figures out definitively why some have problems and some don't, I'll continue to recommend depriming before wet tumbling.

It could be the water where you are vs the water in East Tennessee or the way you're rinsing.

I dump mine out of my home made tumbler into a pasta strainer over a container to collect the pins with holes drilled in it so it doesn't let the water level get anywhere close to the bottom of the strainer.  Shake it a few times to get most of the pins to fall through.

Then the cases get dumped into a solid container and I add water until they are completely covered.  Shake a few times and dump back into the pasta strainer/pin collector and shake some more to get most of the water out of the cases.  Repeat 5 times.

After the 5th rinse, shake the strainer to remove all the water you can.  Dump into a towel and do the bowling ball polishing thing to remove even more water.

Put into walnut and dry tumble for 15 minutes to soak up any remaining water.  If walnut is sticking to the insides of the cases, they aren't dry enough.

Pistol cases then get dumped into large cheese ball containers for storage.  I leave the tops off until I get one filled up.  One of these containers holds about 4K 9mm for a description on how large they are.  I always have at least 2 containers of 9mm going, one I'm loading out of, one that's getting the freshly cleaned cases put into it.

The rifle cases usually get decapped/resized/trimmed/deburred and then get wet & dry tumbled again before they go into the cheese ball containers.  I also like clean pockets on my rifle cases, I don't see where it helps much on pistol though.

Not sure.  I have well water.  I rinse the ever loving shit out of the brass.  I made it easier buy putting in a utility sink and cut the handles down on my rcbs rotary media seperator to fit inside the sink.

I am on well water here. It's pretty hard and especially high in iron, that could be contributing factor. I do rinse really well, not going to bother typing out the whole process, but I'm kinda OCD about getting the water coming off the brass crystal clear before I'm done.

Your walnut stage might be helping you as well. I have to think that media makes a hell of a desiccant, probably pulls a lot of moisture out of those little crevices.

I'm totally stealing that idea, thank you.

My system includes a similar step but I have a section of hose connected to the faucet I set the separator on top of the washing machine next to the slop sink. Well, I used to ;)

First, if this is counting as a thread hijack, sorry Dryflash.

I'm suspicious of your rinsing.  Do you get the cases entirely covered in water and then remove as much of that water as you can between rinses?  if you're filling up past the bottom of the separator before starting to spin it, I think that would be ok.  If you're just running water or spray while you spin it, I don't think you're getting much water back down into the primers.

My theory behind my scheme is if I can remove 99% of the water between each rinse, then I've removed 99.9999% of whatever water soluble nasty stuff there is by the 5th rinse.  Probably a completely bogus statistics though, but it makes me feel better.

Here's about a half load of brass coming out of the tumbler.  Most of the cleaning solution went straight to the blue container with the holes in it.



Shake out the pins and the solution while the yellow container is filling and dump the brass into it making sure all the brass is covered in fresh water.  Put the strainer back on the blue and then dump back into strainer and shake some more.  I hardly ever see any pins in the yellow tray after the 2nd rinse.  I've never seen any after the 3rd.  Repeat for a total of 5 rinses.



I like the theory of iron in well water as a potential problem.  I know if get a steel case in the tumbler, it does nasty things to every case it touched if the tumbler wasn't spinning for a while.  Turns them pink and rough and I throw them out.

Me? Okay, you asked for it..

Step one- remove cap and dump as much of the tumbling water out as I can without spilling any pins or brass.
Step two- refill with clean water, again dump without spilling pins or brass, repeat until water shows zero signs of soap or suds when filling, then do one more.
Step three- stick section of hose connected to faucet down to the bottom of the barrel, turn it on and find something else to do for a few minutes, just let it overflow into the sink.
Step four- empty barrel one last time, still making sure not to spill any pins or brass, so ,yes, a bit of water remains.
Step five- Dump contents of barrel into RCBS media separator, fill it just short of the brim with clean water, close, spin for 30-60 seconds.
Step six- Remove top of separator, place basket in top, dump water without spilling any pins, replace basket and top, one last spin to remove as much water as I can.

At that point all the pins are either still in the barrel or at the bottom of the separator. Basket of brass get dumped on a towel for a quick "bowling ball" session, then into the dryer.

With the additional rinsing details provided, it certainly seems like it ought to be rinsed to me, maybe even better than mine.

That makes me think it's more likely a water chemistry problem.  If you're using a dryer or just letting it air dry, that would be leaving whatever's in the water on the brass, my walnut is sucking it off - maybe.  I just use the walnut to make the brass a little dusty for easier resizing and I hate water spots.

I don't know why some people have problems wet tumbling with primers in and some don't.  I'm one of the fortunate ones that don't have problems leaving the primers in to clean.

Yeah, water chemistry or possibly it needed more time in the dryer to be truly dry where it matters, at least in my case. In retrospect a little experimenting with making sure the cases were as dry as they could possibly be before being put up might have been a good idea. I’ve already adjusted my process, so I’ll just keep depriming before tumbling here.