Brass tumbler additives?

While the pretty brass is nice, I won't deny it, I just want them clean before I run them through my dies, then chamber them.

Sand and grit on the outside of a case can scratch the dies, and over the years that does matter. Also, when the brass is super shiny it is easier to see on the ground and distinguish it from all the not-shiny brass that isn't mine.

When I obtain new brass from wherever, I run it through the wet tumble once to get it super shiny and take all the discoloration off. After that, I just dry tumble it with the Dillon polishing stuff in corn cob media.

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Originally Posted by mapper

OK, if you want to do a comparison between, dry media and brushing primer pockets out, and wet tumbling with pins, with primers removed, you can use a hf wet tumbler i have. I'd have to look to see if I have some lemishine, not certain. But I did use it when I was doing it.

I tried it before and it worked extremely well with the pins going through and cleaning the flash holes on small primer brass.

But, come up with a way to easily and effectively dry it. And normal runs what you would do in a dry tumbler.

That way the only difference would be when the brass is de capped and the handling time
It would be a interesting comparison. Timewise.

Looks to be decent modification to the hf tumbler, but I've not done it.
https://czfirearms.us/index.php?topic=98912.0

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I don’t want to deal with the pins. It is one thing to have walnut media in the flash hole, but I’ve read about bent and broken decapping rods with ss pins. With ultra sonic, just toss em in and pull em out.

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Originally Posted by Floridawally

I don’t want to deal with the pins. It is one thing to have walnut media in the flash hole, but I’ve read about bent and broken decapping rods with ss pins. With ultra sonic, just toss em in and pull em out.

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I decap before I clean to avoid that. But yes, I sit every case upright and look with a flashlight to make sure no pins inside. It doesn't take long, even on 223.

I wonder what would happen if a pin got loaded by accident and the round was fired.

I doubt much of anything.

I like my brass shiny but I’m not going to use the wet tumbler because, to me, it’s more messy than dry. Dry is good enough for me. Sometimes I’ll manually hand polish brass or live Ammo because I like clean and shiny Ammo.

I had (past tense) a purpose-built drying rack I used for mine. I have a 2'x2' frame built out of 1x4's with 1/4 inch wire mesh stretched across it. I would put the wet brass in that and slide it in the upper part of the rack and then slide a 2'x2' box fan in the lower rack so it would blow up through the wire mesh

Now I just put it on the wire mesh frame and wait a week. I have enough brass it doesn't slow me down to wait and I've never had any water left in it after a week in a hot garage.