Brass Cleaning Tools
The first topic in this series will discuss my brass cleaning tools and cleaning process. There are a lot of opinions on the internet about what the best method is. Dry vs. wet and sonic vs. tumbling are to name a few methods for brass cleaning. I spent a lot of time researching this topic and decided that tumbling my brass with stainless steel media would be the most cost effective way for me to approach this. The end result is clean brass so any method that works for you is the best way in my opinion.
Stainless Steel Media
First off, I do my handloading in small batches similar to an assembly line. I don’t shoot every day, maybe every few weekends 100-200 rounds at most. The speed I can get through the process isn’t a huge deal.
I break this stage into three separate tasks. First, I clean the brass with the primer left in to reduce the wear on my dies when I resize/deprime. Next, I resize/deprime the brass. Last, I run the brass through the tumbler again to help clean the primer pocket. It doesn’t take a lot effort to do these steps, I normally do them on weeknights so the brass is ready to go for the last steps of prepping when I have more time on the weekend. This also helps with keeping the “batch” isolated and labeled in a separate container from the rest.
The tumbler I picked is not even made for brass, it’s made for rocks. It’s the same concept as some of the major brands that have tumblers specific to reloading but it’s much cheaper. Instead of using walnut media or something similar I use stainless steel media with a detergent called Lemi Shine and dish soap which does a good job. There are other videos people made on YouTube that talk about this and it’s where I got the idea. After the initial investment your media and cleaning agents are relatively cheap. I also purchased a plastic strainer and magnet to help with separating the media from the brass.
In the next section I’ll show the the detailed process of cleaning your brass for the first time.
Plastic Strainer containing Stainless Steel Media
Plastic Strainer
Telescoping Magnet
Equipment discussed in this post:
Hello, this is a very good series. I’m going to start reloading my own ammo shortly. What is the make and model of the rock tumbler. I can’t seem to find the details anywhere on the site.
Thanks and keep up the great work.