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Posted: 6/28/2011 11:52:43 AM EDT
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I am literally just starting the reloading process. Starting from the ground up. What are my options for media and what is the difference?
I have heard about corn cob, walnut, and now stainless steele. What about glass beads has anyone tried them? |
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I am literally just starting the reloading process. Starting from the ground up. What are my options for media and what is the difference? I have heard about corn cob, walnut, and now stainless steele. What about glass beads has anyone tried them? I can't see glass beads doing much if they are smooth. So that's a new one on me. Corn cob is soft, when compared to walnut. I use corn cob as a polishing material. I use walnut to clean the tough stuff off of cases. You can virtually sandblast with walnut. After reloading, I tumble my rounds for about 10-15 minutes in corn cob media to remove the lubricant. It's more absorbent than walnut so it's great for that. So I guess you need them both. Imagine that. 
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I always run my brass through the tumbler with walnut for a couple of hours before I decap and full length size. this makes sure that the cases are clean and free from contaminants that might scatch my dies or the cases themselves. Following this, I decap and full length size, and trim, debur and chamfer. After the brass is prepped, I tumble for 3-4 hours in corncob to give the cases a nice shine. Then reload.... GTO688 |
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Have you used the stainless steele pellets? Yes, here is a Link to my SS tumbling thread. |
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I tumble brass to clean in walnut media without additives bought from Graf's. I include a dryer sheet every third load or thereabouts to collect the dust out.
30 minutes to an hour is sufficient to get the brass in a condition ready to reload. Other methods are required to remove the carbon buildup from the primer pockets; I decap first as tumbling this way helps slow the build up of carbon. Carbon inside the case has no effect on the performance of the reload. If you want brass that looks like new, there are two methods. The most recent method uses the stainless pins in detergent and Lemishine (citric acid), and the other slightly less recent method uses an ultrasonic cleaner with detergent and Lemishine. Ultrasonic machines of any really useful size are expensive and I expect that has retarded the popularity of that method. I used clean untreated corn cob to delube brass before finishing the loading process. If you start thinking the steps through, you'll probably notice that most people load bottleneck cartridges in two phases, the first to prepare the brass through the trimming step, and then a second phase to prime, charge, and seat the bullet. Cartridges can be completed without removing the lube, but it's too messy for my tastes. What to do with the tumbled cases after they are clean is something else to think about. I recommend a Dillon separator, it's one of the best investments I've made. For several years I pulled cases out of media by hand, dumped the contents and then blew the cases off with compressed air - that is a slow way to proceed. |
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