I'm sure some of you use stainless steel pins and rotary tumblers to clean your brass. Can you use vibrating tumbler to do the samr thing with pins etc. I have a big dillon cleaner, wondering if it will work.
Thanks in advance
Jim

No, it has to rotate and tumble. Vibration doesn't do it. (I tried, but only for a couple of hours). I clean my brass in a cement mixer and run it for an hour, any more is a waste of time as it doesn't make it any cleaner.

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where did you get that mixer?

Harbor Freight (nothing but the best) Then shoved a 5 gallon plastic bucket into it. If (or when) this one breaks, I'm looking at a plastic drummed model at Lowes. But this one keeps going and I'm too cheap to replace something that still works.

OK for small batches, but what do you do for large bulk runs?

When I started first reloading, vibrating cleaners were not very available and Thumbler's Tumblers were and still are very expensive! I Built a rotating drum tumbler out of a 5 gallon can and a gas dryer motor, along with a few wash machine pulleys. I used walnut shell media. Then Thumbler's came out with their first "Cyclonic" cleaner. I was on to that real fast and bid farewell to rotating tumblers for about 33 years. A friend of mine got into the wet steel pin method with a 1/2 gallon rock polisher for about $45, plus 5 pounds of stainless steal pins. While recovering at home from a stroke, I ordered a kit from Stainless Steel Media.Com. It has a Thumbler's #2 and 5 pounds of pins and instructions and a hand crank media separator. My first test batch was about 30 45-70 cases the had been stained with Black Powder for almost 30 years. The outsides were 50% stained black and the insides 100%! 4 quarts of hot water, 1/4 tsp. of Lemoshine (citric acid), a big squirt of lemon dish soap, and the 5 pounds of pins. I bolted it all inside the tumbler, turned it on for 4 hours. Drained and separated the pins out then rinsed the brass with hot water and rinsed the pins with hot water 2 or 3 times to clean the oxides off. That brass was like new inside and out!!!

Since then, I deprime and sometimes size before cleaning. The primer pockets come out looking brand new. Vibrating cleaning never got the insides or primer pocket clean. Some times if the outside of the brass had been very bad the insides were dirtier than before cleaning! I never tried cleaning any 17 caliber cartridges but from 22 Hornet up to all brass 12 gauge hauls, The liquid and pins method does wonders! I believe it will run you around $300 for the full set up. The down side is the quantity of brass it is limited to a few pounds (think 200-223's or 300-38's) and it need to dry before loading! When I was getting ready to load a whole years worth of 45 Long Colt, It took almost 5 days to clean 6000 pieces of brass. So you need to think ahead (or not clean every loading!)

The brass will get so clean on the inside, that on a case mouth activated powder drop will stick a little bit, it didn't hurt anything but added a little tug to the press handle.

Ivan

There was a thread a while ago on this very same topic. Forum members figured out how much stuff you would need to make it happen in a cement mixer truck.

lemi- shine question

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