Final Brass Cleaning
The next section is basically a repeat of Part 2b: First Brass Cleaning. I won’t repeat everything in that section but I would like to point out a couple things that you will benefit from the final brass cleaning.
Tumbler drums filled with stainless steel media, Lemi Shine, dish washing detergent, dirty brass and water
First off, remember that case lube that you applied to your brass when you resized and deprimed? Cleaning the brass a second time removes all of it. I learned that if you keep the lube on the brass while you’re priming the brass there is a chance that the chemicals in the lube can cause the primers to become less effective or even cause them not to fire. Additionally, in the next several steps, you will be handling the brass and performing different tasks to prepare the brass for the final stages. Having the lube applied while your trying to do these steps will prove to be difficult because well, they are lubricated!
Secondly, you may have noticed that once you deprimed your brass most of the carbon has been already been removed (from the first cleaning) except for in the primer pocket. Cleaning a second time will allow for the stainless steel media during the tumbling process to get inside and help clean out that carbon too. In an upcoming section I will discuss using a hand tool to remove any remaining carbon in the primer pocket. The more you can clean out during this process the less work you will need to do later. My experience has shown that bigger calibers (with larger primer pockets) get cleaner during this step than smaller primer pockets like 223/556.
Now that the final brass cleaning is complete your brass is ready for the preparation steps of the process but we should first inspect and sort your brass, which is the next step.
Clean Primer Pocket after Tumbling with Stainless Steel Media
Dirty Primer Pocket
