Had wet tumbled a batch of brass with SS media and loaded up my drum with the 9mm brass and gave it a couple squirts of Dawn and a couple squirts of Lemi-shine and I end up with platinum brass. Something obviously went wrong. Any ideas?

Too much Lemishine.

What is this "squirt" amount of Lemishine?

How long did you tumble it for? I have had problem with my brass coming out with a greenish tint after about  a couple hours. I don't tumble it any longer than an hour anymore.

Liquid lemi-shine?

I use the granular kind, thought they had different end results.

Looks like nickel plated at first glance.

Learned something new with this thread..,thanks

I get brass like that if I use too much lemishine. I only use a 9mm round full of the granules and that's for the first tumbling. When I tumble the lube off I use 1/2 or none.

You wet tumble with primers in?  I thought one of the reasons to wet tumble was to clean primer pockets...

Possibly some nickel plated brass in the mix. DO Not tumble with primers in.

It is, but with plinking pistol ammo some, myself included, don't stress that as much. At least not every cleaning

I wet tumble my brass because it is usually very dirty.

I am not nearly as concerned about cleaning the primer pockets as I am getting all of the dirt from the inside and outside of the cases.

A lot of my brass comes from range pick ups and it may have laid there for a week or two and contains sticks and mud.

Wet tumbling make sure that all of the debris has been removed before it goes through my dies.

I agree with the others, the most likely issue is the adjustment of how much Lemishine you use.

Ideally, your water’s pH and the mineral content don’t vary by too much during the year and you can just stick with a recipe and run. However...

If you live where water varies by much, or if you are just not being careful with the amount of Lemishine, then you need to focus on testing specifically for finding how much is too much anc how much isn’t enough, in the hope that the middle of that range stays the same all year.

I live near the end of the water that comes from the CO River through the LA water systems. It changes like 4 ways every year, some years worse than others. It is so bad in drought years they wipe out people’s pipes when they don’t get it right.

If you are not an amateur chemist and don’t like this sort of thing, I would suggest you follow some of the advice given and back off on the Lemishine as a starting point to see if you are happier. Otherwise, a little litmus paper or a pH meter can help guide you.

Good Luck

Did you happen to get a steel case in there?

That is what mine look like if I don't cull the steel cases.

I could see the Lemi-shine causing the problem, but I’m gonna sort through looking for a steel case. I’ve tumbled my stuff for years with the primers still in and because we shoot close to 20k per year we don’t get to excited. My tumbler has a 3 hour timer and I usually try to get 1500 + in the drum and run it for 3 hours. I normally only used Dawn and only started using Lemi-Shine this year and appears to have given me a chemistry lesson.

Left to right:

Dry tumble, Nickel, Wet tumble with steel case in the mix, wet tumble no steel case(300blk, .308) wet tumble with steel case in the mix