Posted: 7/4/2006 11:39:55 AM EDT
| Ok let me in on what you guys do to prep your brass before you tumble it. My source for free ammo has dried up after 28 years. I'm currenly in a state of depression that I have to reload like everyone else. |
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Bottleneck rifle cartridges (.223 and .308) 1. Soak/Rinse with hot water in a 3 gal bucket overnight. I only perform this step if the brass is really muddy/dirty. Allow to dry for a few days or longer before tumbling. That's all I do prior to tumbling. 2. Tumble in cob with a little polish added - between 2 and 8 hours depending on my schedule and how pretty I want it to look. 3. Spray with one-shot or dillon lube, and resize/decap. 4. Trim to length if required. 5. Chamfer/debur if trimmed. 6. Uniform primer pocket. 7. Debur flash hole if I am feeling crazy. 8. Final tumble to polish and remove brass shavings. 9. Final inspection and removal of any media in the flash holes. 10. Prime. 11. Charge and seat. Straight wall pistol with carbide dies: 1. Soak/Rinse with hot water in a 3 gal bucket overnight. I only perform this step if the brass is really muddy/dirty. Allow to dry for a few days or longer before tumbling. 2. Tumble in cob with a little polish added - between 2 and 8 hours depending on my schedule and how pretty I want it to look. 3. Resize/decap. 4. Prime. 5. Charge, seat, crimp. |
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I reload with a Dillon 550 and also have a single stage press that I use for decaping so my process is a little different. 1 Decap in the single stage and sort military from commercial into two buckets. 2 Tumble for 2 hours in corn media with a little mineral spirits 3 Lube and resize 4 Check each piece of brass with a case gauge and sort the ones that need trimming 5 Trim the ones that need it 6 Remove the crimp from the brass in the military brass bucket 7 Tumble in walnut media with a little auto polish for 2 hours 8 Then I run them through my 550. For straight wall pistol brass I tumble it for a few hours and then run it through my Dillon. Glock9 |
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I dump the brass into my tumbler with walnut media and a dryer sheet. After couple of hours I'll take it out, lube it with RCBS Case Slick(pump bottle) and deprime/size it. Then it goes back into the tumbler with corncob and a dryer sheet. At this point I'll inspect each case visually, check/clean primer pockets and holes then swage out the pockets with the Dillon Precision thingy mounted to the bench. I have the small Lee case trimmer mounted to a drill motor. Since I rarely do max loads or reload a case more than twice I usually do not have to trim them. I'll ream out the case mouths and clean the burrs. Then I'll prime them with a handheld primer tool. mm PS: I use the dryer sheets to eliminate static cling, it makes the cases softer and easier to size, it also leaves them with a fresh scent. |
I would think you'd want the cases to be a bit clingy, it would hold the bullets tighter. |
I steal them from my wife. She's caught on, so she now gets the cheapest ones she can find at Big Lots or the Dollar Stores. Forest Fresh scent seems to have the best characteristics for reducing group size but has caused some minor extraction problems. Unscented does nothing special. mm |
Just like you and me I expect. But then he makes GOLD records!  I always thought T.V. could use more cowbell... 
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