I've been tossing this idea around for a while since I saw Jerry Miculek do it on a TV show. I bought a very small cement mixer at Harbor Freight, 5 pounds of stainless pins, some dish soap and Lemi shine. Put it together with a plastic 5 gallon pail. Brass cleaning on an industrial scale. (at least for me). I did 1100 (or so) cases in it today, probably could get twice that much in if I needed it (only had that many dirty ones on hand) 1.5 hours later they came out like the last couple of pics. Sure is a lot easier than "buzz box" vibrating tumblers. Normally I would spend the better part of a day processing this much brass.

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Minimize the variables

Heck of an idea. I have never seen a little mixer like that used for polishing brass. Man it sure cleaned the insides of the cases nice. Thanks for sharing.

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James
On the Llano Estacado

One of the commercial reloaders used a cement mixer to clean his brass with fine walnut shell for 20-24 hours. His batches were 5000-7000 9 mm cases. I use the SS pins and a Thumblers Tumbler. On my rifle brass I size and deprime before cleaning. At about 1 to 2 hours time most brass looks like new, including primer pockets. Had some old 30-06 brass that was range pick up and it was almost black it took much longer. Also had some black powder stained 45-70 it took 5 or 6 hours but looked factory new. The only problem I've run into was a bunch of brass that was laying out in the barn had some sort of beetle or insect larva inside them. As the bugs got pounded by the pins, it made a black dye that stained everything and that took another cleaning to get off the brass. Ivan

That "tumbler" validates your Man Card for another year. My Thumler's Tumbler does a great job cleaning with corn cob media. Immaculate brass and clean primer pockets never improved my shooting scores or improved shooting results in the prairie dog patch.

I have had great scores / results with tarnished, dull brass and lousy scores with gleaming brass. Dull tarnished brass is easier process.

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S&WHF 366

Dull brass may be easier to process.
But gleaming brass is easier to see in the grass.

Looks like a nice set up for those who crank out massive quantities of reloads, but it would be overkill for me. I use a small Thumbler Tumbler for my limited needs. Time is not an issue for me.

that is some serious cleaning power! Great job. I have been using my old thumbers tumbler for about 30 years using dri media for hours....and two weeks ago a guy at my LGS told me about dishsoap, lemi-shine, and a tablespoon of cream of tarter spice, and some brass pins....and behold 45 minutes later, I have hundreds of rounds of like new brass, inside and out. I am forever grateful for the new recipe, will never use dri media again.

How long to dry them out? Any special processing to do so? Seems like to me any time I got any wet inside a case it took forever to dry. I process about 300 pistol brass at a time in a vibrator cleaner in corn cob with a touch of Red Rooster. 2 hours and their bright & shiny, then I size and remove the primers so nothing gets stuck inside the primer pockets.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

No special processing except separating calibers and inspecting brass for cracks. (not a big problem with 9mm). On this load I used a little over 1/2 gallon of water, 5 pounds of SS pins, a squirt of dish soap, and a sprinkle of Lemishine. 1.5 hours later I pour off most of the water (black) into a bucket and use that to water my blackberrys . Then I dump the brass/pin slurry into a media separator (the plastic kind). I have the smaller separator so I can only dump half the load at a time (which may be 3 or 4 loads when and if I get the mixer to full capacity). Spin the separator around for a few minutes and dump the brass into a bucket. Rinse the brass in hot water until the water is clear and not soapy any more. I used a small tumbler with pins previously and it takes 2 - 3 days drying time lying on a towel (my shop is heated). I don't deprime before cleaning because that would make an extra round of processing because I use a Dillon 650 for reloading. Hopefully this answers all the questions.

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Minimize the variables

Ouuuu.......... Pretty !

I would almost hate to load such clean brass and get it dirty.

Very nice.

Always nice when a plan comes together.

Yep, just a brass/case tumbler on steroids! You can use the same components as you would use in a Thumb's, wet or dry...

Great job. Looks beautiful.