Am I wasting time with case cleaning after tumbling .40 cal and .38 spl cases? I use a Lyman attachment with a nylon bore brush and drill press (rotated sideways) to clean inside of my pistol cases after sizing. (You can do 100 in a few minutes.) A little powder debris and media debris comes out. Then I clean the primer hole before expanding and seating primers. Am I being too finicky????

If your technique suits you for the level of reloading that you do, clean as much as you like - it won't hurt anything. Once (if) you get into progressive reloading, you will find that it really isn't necessary. Nor is it possible if you want to take advantage of the large throughput increase that a progressive press offers.

Clean is better than shiny when it comes to tumbling. I use walnut media with a couple of used dryer sheets to capture the fine dust. Buy your walnut media at the pet store. They sell it for small animal bedding, and it cost less than half what your local gun pusher will charge you. The cases will be plenty shiny when they pass though the sizing die.

Buck

Ive read the main purpose of tumbling a casing is to remove dirt and allow ezier examination of the brass for discrepancy. Being to finicky about a tiny ballistic no more then a few inches from your face? naw.
Good info

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sw9ve, 24/7 pro Ds, Hs M4

You can of course do as much cleaning as you want. However in this case, I think you are wasting your time. Cleaning the insides of simple pistol caliber cases is something I would be hard pressed to find a justification for. You may also be exposing yourself to a higher level of lead contaminated dust and debris depending on how and where you are doing this.

Remember, "cleanliness is next to godliness". Actually. I loaded for a lot of years, and never cleaned the cases. Then I read about how everyone was tumbling and polishing their brass, so I joined the club. I will admit that it is easier to find my bright shiney brass than it is to find dirty dull brass once it hits the ground. With the price of even used brass getting crazier and crazier, I want to pick up as much of my brass as possible. I also want to keep as much of that dirt out of my dies and guns. Lastly, to me anyway, its a source of pride to have my reloads looking as good as factory freah ammo.

ncbengal,
There is a way to clean your cases once and get inside of the case and primer pocket clean. That is by tumbling your cases in a rotary tumbler with stainless steel media,water, 4 tbs of Dawn, and 1 tsp of Lemi-shine. The results are fantastic. No more exposure to dust, etc. Check out this website for the details: STM Stainless Steel Media reloading supplies

I usualy decap all my brass before I load em into the tumbler which I also use walnut media...I add a polish that Dillon sells called rapid polish 290 and let it go overnight..

then I dump the contents from the tumbler into a seperator that is also a Dillon product and works great...when its all done, the brass looks like new and no residue or dirt left in the cases...

I use Dillon progressive presses with great accuracy...

I use an ultrasonic cleaner. If the cases are pretty clean to start with, a mild soap solution is usually enough. If I need something stronger, I use a one in four dilution of Zep citrus degreaser. Rinse thoroughly and blow dry with a surplus hairdryer. Clean primer pockets, I think, give more consistent performance.

YMMV.

Cleaning the outside pays dividends by making case inspection easier, making your dies last virtually forever (since they're not getting scratched and buggered up by grit embedded in the fouling) and best of all, they look cool.

Cleaning the inside offers no benefits that I can think of. I wouldn't bother, you might as well use the time for something more important.

Yes it's a waste of time.

I use the coarse media first after i decap the brass for the rough cleaning. Then after the brass is resized, the primer pocket is cleaned and the brass is trimmed to size it goes into the fine media next with the brass polish. After that its loaded and shiney. I have to clean/polish my brass right now i'm up to 1978 in my dated 45acp ammo that i reloaded back then. Its all good and shiney too, plus it all goes bang. Bill

To each their own, but I wash my brass before I tumble it.
Not because I want them clean inside and out so much as I want to capture the lead residue before it becomes airborne while tumbling.
I also add a little Nu Finish to the tumbling media (walnut) so the cases slide into the sizing die easier.

I prefer to have good looking reloads, but I don't think they shoot any better than grungy ones.

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Age + Treachery = JohnnieB

Even if ya do a modest amount of reloading , buy a $50 Frankford vibe cleaner from MidwayUSA. The first time ya use it will convince you that you wasted many precious life moments doing it any other way.

thankfully there's more than one "right" way to clean brass....

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Dum vivimus Vivamas

I had a bad experience one time. I used some walnut shells that had red jeweler's rouge added to it. I tumbled my brass in it. When I went to load it everytime I punched out a primer a little puff of red stuff came out. I rubbed the inside of the case with a cotton q tip. The tip came out red, so I knew the inside of the case had a small film on it. I decided that it would not hurt anything. I loaded 8,000 38spec. and then I tumbled them again to get the lube off that I used to lube the cases to make them easier to reload. I sold them to a Sheriff's Dept.. Shortly after that I got a call the were having MISFIRES. I picked up the 8000 rds. and replaced them. I started to pull bullets and found nothing wrong. AND THEN I PULLED A BULLET, DUMPED THE POWDER AND IT WAS RED. PROBLEM SOLVED. WHEN I TUMBLED THEM AFTER THEY WERE LOADED THE POWDER MIXED IN WITH THE ROUGE THAT WAS LEFT IN SOME OF THE CASES AND IT KILLED THE POWDER. I NEVER USED WALNUT SHELLS WITH ROUGE AGAIN. I WENT STRICTLY TO CORNCOBS. IF YOU ARE WONDERING HOW LONG IT TAKES TO PULL THE BULLETS OFF OF 8000 RDS., THE ANSWER IS APPROXIMATELY ONE (1) YEAR, A FEW RDS. EVERYTIME I WENT OUT TO THE SHOP. USING A RCBS PRESS WITHOUT THE DIE IN IT, RUN THE CYLINDER TO THE TOP AND GRAB THE BULLET WITH A PAIR OF PLIERS AND PULL DOWN ON THE HANDLE. ONE HARD LESSON LEARNED, BUT LEARNED WELL..........................CookE