Wet Tumbling Brass

[AManWearingAHat]

Do I have any fellow converts to wet tumbling in stainless steel pins here?

I made the switch about 3 years ago now. All the dust from dry tumbling really irritated my throat despite the dust reduction tricks. I hated throwing all that stuff up in the air.

Wet tumbling gets everything nice and shiny inside and out, primer pockets included, and traps all the nastiness in the water. An hour in the oven and I’ve got shiny, clean, dry brass ready to load once it cools off.

Only thing I’m considering is maybe switching to Ultrasonic over wet tumbling. I’ve read very good things about ultrasonic cleaners and have heard reports of similar performance to the pins. Separating the pins out after the fact is a bit easier than the dry media (no more walnut stuck in flash holes) but still a pain. A quick bath, rinse, and trip in the oven sounds good.

Any other wet polishers here? Anyone with ultrasonic experience?

 

[dannyabear]

I went to wet with ss pins a couple of years ago, never go back to the 'old' ways

 

[kbm6893]

I just made the switch. I used to dry tumble after Depriming and then sonic clean to get the inside of the brass and the primer pocket. But sonic cleaners don’t have a whole lot of capacity. At least mine didn’t. I have the Hornady Lock and Load one. If you put too many pieces in there the pockets don’t get cleaned well at all. I’m talking no more than like 100 9MM cases at once. Wet tumbling does it all in one shot. I use the Frankfort Arsenal wet dry media separator and that gets most of the pins. But then I dump the clean brass into clean water and swish around. Not only is this a good final rinse but whatever few pins are left will come out. I just lay them out on a towel for a few days to dry.

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

I went wet 8 years ago! Thumbler's with SS pins. It cleaned up brass that had 30 year old black powder stains on it in one pass on most, and the few that weren't clean in one pass, were clean easily on the second!

I have never used ultrasonic, but a close friend bought a Hornady kit that includes the cleaner. I'm not impressed with the brass cleaning, but brass cleaning is not really necessary! I am impressed with the cleaning of very cruddy gun parts though!

Ivan

 

[AManWearingAHat]

Ive personally been using the big ole magnet FA sells to pick up the pins. Works fairly well, but I wish it was a stronger magnet. After the oven dry, swinging the magnet over the dry brass will give you a nice jingle if any pins are left. I haven't missed one yet, its just more time consuming.

If anyone is looking into these. Get the magnet you won't regret it.

 

[Friday]

I wet tumble every other loading. I does require a little more case lube when sizing though.

 

[Just another 22 shooter]

I wet tumble and also have an ultra sonic cleaner. The ultra sonic doesn't come close to getting the brass shined up like the tumbler does. The cases are "clean" just not polished. I have a media separator that sits inside a 5 gal. bucket. It makes pretty quick work of it.

 

[gwpercle]

I must be doing something right... I don't have any dust with Midsouth treated walnut shell media .
I have wet tumbled them as I have a Thumblers Tumbler model B set up for polishing gem stones... which is a wet process.
I used the pin and water and it does work ...
I just didn't care for the wet water mess around my reloading room and then having to get every case perfectly dry.
They both do a good job so go with the method you like..skin them cats !
Gary

 

[Bobby B.]

I wet tumble with pins. I use Dove And lemishine. I use my gold pans to separate the pins from the brass. I have a screen classification pan I put over a regular green plastic pan. Takes 2 min to separate the pins. I’d never dry tumble again...,,,

 

[dannyabear]

A food colander from the $ store works great to separate pins from brass

 

[iouri]

I do wet SS pin tumble but lately I've started doing polishing in vibratory tumbler once it dries, otherwise my Dillon powder funnel gets ridiculously sticky, especially on 40+ caliber. I find it small price to pay for smoother loading session - I don't have to jerk case off the powder funnel (and potentially spilling some powder).

 

[series guy]

I've been wet tumbling for about 5 years now. I would never go back. It's like using new brass every time you load.

 

[dannyabear]

Most who don't use it claim that dirty brass shoots just as good There is also this thing called - having pride in your workmanship

 

[ameridaddy]

I've been wet tumbling with a Thumler's Tumbler, pins, hot water, Dawn and Lemishine for 7-8 years. I rinse with hot water, spread brass on a towel, blow out cases with an air nozzle while checking for stray pins.
The whole process takes about two hours.
I'll never go back to the red stuff.

 

[roundgun]

Seems like wet-pin tumbling dulls nickle brass finish IMO. I still use my dry walnut shell shaker for small batches of brass that I want to load quick.

 

[AManWearingAHat]

I'm not partial to nickel cases myself, so I've never run into that issue.

 

[MyDads38]

Started wet tumbling with the FA Rotary Tumbler about 5 years ago, it does an amazing job! Just for fun, I recently tumbled a load of 9mm brass without the ss pins to see what kind of difference it made. The outside of the cases were just as clean, the inside and primer pockets were not.


Not having to separate brass/pins was a time saver. I'm not worried about the inside of the case being "spotless" like the outside; but I do like clean primer pockets! There's not much residue left in the pockets, and I loaded 100 rounds with no issues at all. Guess it's a personal preference how clean you want your brass to be.


I do have the FA magnet and it is a time saver when separating brass/pins. To dry my brass, I picked up a NESCO food dehydrator from Menards for $33 (looks just like the new Hornady model, but 1/2 the price). 45 mins-1 hour and brass is dry and ready to load. I can dry up to 1,200-1,500 9mm at one time; and if I wanted to expand the unit, you can buy 2 more trays-comes with 5, can be expanded to 7.


My Lyman 3200 has been idle since I started wet tumbling, though for all the years prior it did a "good" job. Just my experience, and I see FA is now offering a smaller version of their Rotary Tumbler...

 

[tndrfttom]

The vast majority of my brass still goes in the vibratory cleaner with ground walnut shell media. I reserve wet pin tumbling for cartridge cases fired with BP or BP substitutes like Pyrodex and Triple 7. Wet tumbling with stainless pins excels at cleaning the powder residue from the brass inside and out and the primer pockets too.

 

[Krogen]

I've been unimpressed with ultrasonic case cleaning. It wasn't all that effective, capacity was too small and took several cycles to get results. Could be I bought the wrong cleaner. When I went to stainless steel pins and a Thumler's tumbler, I never again used the ultrasonic for case cleaning. But.... the ultrasonic cleaner works great on the grungy toothbrushes I use for gun cleaning! That's it's life now. Toothbrushes look like new.

 

[elpac3]

I joined the wet tumble club three years ago - will never go back. Love having surgically clean cases to work with. Do have to check primer flash holes for stuck pins which are not terribly common but is does happen.

Started using a colander for initial separating pins and cases and have a magnet to pick up spilled pins. Found the trick with the magnet is to put the magnet inside a small ziplock bag then pick up the pins. To release the pins just pull the baggie off. Found this to be much easier than picking pins off the magnet.