Wet tumble drying, anyone kill 2 birds with 1 stone?

[dieselrealtor]

I am trying somethig to see if it works, curious if anyone else had done it.

After wet tumbling, dry the excess & put the damp brass in a tumbler with treated corncob media (with the lid off) to dry & polish at the same time.

Some of my .308 brass I wet tumbled a while back is showing some tarnish, I want to avoid this by dry tumbling with treated media to coat it.

 

[red_zr24x4]

Seems to me damp brass in dry media would cause an issue.
I've put damp brass in the tumbler before and ended up having to dig the dry caked media out of the cases. to much polish in the media does the same thing, packs inside the case and has to be dug out.

 

[JeepHammer]

I do fairly large amounts of brass (volume), but I use walnut shell media to both dry the brass after wet washing.

Now, I'm sure that will hurt someone's feelings, but in this case there is simply no way to avoid it...

Don't confuse 1. Cleaning, with 2. Polish or 3. Coatings.

The quickest way to clean crud/grime/oil off cases is wet washing with detergent.
Since burning propellent produces both carbon and sticky residue.
1. Wash with detergent. This is cleaning. Steel pins (or chips) provide agitation in the tight corners, they do not polish.

2. Polish is done with an abrasive, in this case, something softer than the brass.
Corn Cob & Walnut Shell are the most common, but sand & chemicals can be used.

3. Coatings, like wax.
Don't confuse a coating with a polish media, no matter what the label on the container might say.

I wet wash (with or without pins/chips),
I throw them in walnut shell media, the moisture keeps dust down, and the media helps polish up the clean brass.
Clean brass doesn't plug up the media nearly like dirty brass does.

I run them through polish media again once sized & trimmed to get case lube & fingerprints off.

 

[Cameramonkey]

I have thrown away all my corncob. Even running 100% dry, (media with Lyman turbo polish added) I had issues with corncob sticking to my shells and jamming up the works on my Pro 1000 feed tubes. I'd have a shell not drop, and after jigging it, eventually a shell would drop and media would fall out. Dont have that problem with my walnut media.

Just my .02

 

[BiscuitsandGravy]

1. Wet tumble- detergent, pins.
2. Dry in CL found food dehydrators
3. Media tumble to polish.

I didn't care for digging out clumps of damp media.

Not digging on anyone else's procedures, just the way we do it.

 

[dieselrealtor]

It worked!

This was a 9mm session, straight wall seems to work well. Not sure if bottleneck cartridges will work as well but I will give it a shot in a few weeks when I get to those buckets.


The humidity in my basement is about 35% so the media was very dry to begin with. I removed most of the moisture from the cases in a media separator, then dumped them into 4 vibratory tumblers & let them run. No clumping or sticking inside or outside the cases. I may try running them on the porch on a sunny day.

• Wet tumbled no pins, 2+or- hours. HOT water, 9mm case of lemishine & a squirt of dawn
• Spun dry in media separator to remove the majority of the water
• Vibratory tumbler (lid off if not vented lid) with treated corncob media 2-3 hours
• Media separator to remove corncob media
• Dump in 5 gallon bucket

I ran around 3800 cases yesterday

 

[JeepHammer]

Well, to point out the obvious,
While you are drying brass EVERY TIME,
You only have to dry the media once in a while, and ONLY if you don't tumble the excess water out before dumping the brass into the media.

The dust is what clumps, and it takes a LOT of moisture, and not much movement to allow media to clump.

The motion of a rotary tumbler keeps it broken up, but guys with vibratory cleaners report clumps.
I use a cement mixer, I've never had clumps, but I also screen dust out when I'm screening brass out of media.
Screening the dust out with the brass keeps mine from clumping.
Dust has no polishing capabilities, so no point in putting it back into the tumbling process.

Washed brass keeps the polishing media from plugging up and becoming ineffective.
The media I use to dry brass with stays clean until it turns to dust, while the polishing media I use to remove case cleaner has to be washed because the lube plugs it up.

Range crud will plug up media in a heartbeat!
I ruined a crap load of media for 30 years before I gave into wet cleaning and I'll never go back!
Those vibratory dry media cleaners are a waste of time & money if you do very many brass.
A big vibratory cleaner & media will run $300, while a plastic drum cement mixer from the big box store is $300 and will do 10+ GALLONS of brass without complaint in about 20 minutes...



20 minutes in wet wash, 5 minutes in dry media, off to processing!

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This depends entirely on the volume you do, and how much time you have to clean your brass...
A gallon jug, or plastic water cooler jug with screw on lid and 5 minutes of rolling/shaking it will clean brass MUCH faster than any dry media vibratory cleaner, and it took me 30 years to learn this...

 

[dieselrealtor]

20 minutes in wet wash, 5 minutes in dry media, off to processing!

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A concrete mixer will likely be my next wet tumbler

 

[JeepHammer]

That's a Lowe's brand mixer, about $300.
It's OK for washing, the plastic drum really quiets things down.
I do wish the drum had a little more range of up/down travel.

I have an older (generic) mixer I use with dry media, media making the noise from a metal drum reasonable, and it will turn from straight up to stright down, making it easier to dump/clean out.