When is it time to change out the walnut media in the tumbler.

When it seems to take forever to clean the brass.

What ARJAY said is usually the best guess. The fact that you are asking tells me it time for a change. You might consider corn cob, its easier to tell because it becomes much darker. If I'm not sure I get a sample of new and the difference is obvious.

Like arjay says, when it don't work no more (or seems like it). Media is cheap and easy to find so if you don't get the full "use" out of it, no big deal its easy to get more.

A couple of hints, a "brightener" which would be a cleaner/polish added from time to time will extend the life of your media, and a "used" dryer sheet every so often will take out the fine residue that isn't doing any good. I'm one of the group that think clean shiny ammo will feed better, and is worth the little extra time.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

I am speaking of walnut media that has been treated with a polishing agent, like red polishing rouge (i've never used untreated) First off is it takes longer to polish cases, it turns a dark red color (the media is loading up) and third it gets a greasy feeling to the media and leaves this slightly greasy film on the polished cases. Basically ...when it stops working, change it.
Gary

The "greasy feeling" on both the media and cases as gwpercle describe is my biggest indicator. At about this same time, you will notice that your fingers start to turn black when handling the "clean" cases. When this happens, it is time to change it.

Mike

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NRA Certified Pistol Inst.

I change the media when the brass comes out dirtier than when it went in.

I use a mix of walnut & cob, a tsp of nu-finish every other load. It takes about two hour to lean up 200-300 cases. When it takes 4-5hrs, the media gets tossed. Media has little sharp edges that polish/clean the brass. When those become smooth, the media takes a lot longer to clean.

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NRA Cert. Inst. IDPA CSO

It depends if you want your brass shiny or just clean. I go for just clean and haven't changed my walnut media in a couple years.
I kind of like a patina on my brass. Don't care for the new brass look.

When your corn cob media looks like walnut media.

But basically , when it noticably takes longer to beccome clean or shiney.

If you are really belt and suspenders you will have two tumblers , or at least two seperate containers of media stored seperately and returned to respective bucket. Well used batch to quickly remove the worst of the nastiness , and then the fresh(er) media to make shiney if desired. Once the "nice" media gets kinda nasty , it becomes the initial media, and a batch of virgin media is initiated for final polish.

I've been using the same corn cob media since about 1989. Used dryer sheet removes the dirt from the corn cob media and keeps it looking clean. The brass comes out clean but not polished, 'brown' cases turn a shiny brown.

When I sift out the brass, some is lost, so fresh gets added to keep the tumblers full.

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S&WHF 366