Wet tumbling... major differences in tumblers ???

[Hook686]

I reckon cleaning and polishing brass can become a hobby in its own right. I have been using a Harbor Freight tumbler for a long time now. I cut up an old well used green Scotch scub pad, use water and a couple of drops of Dawn liquid dish soap, toss it all in the tumbler with the brass and a couple of hours later it is clean. Not pretty clean like Gdawgs, but clean. Cleaning and polishing brass is not one of my hobbies. I might clean it once every three range trips, if I have to, but it is not at the top of my list of things I need to do. I prefer to spend the time reloading and shooting.

[rmantoo]

4 hours? WOW. Why bother wet tumbling at all, then?

Part of the appeal to wet tumbling for me is that I can do it a LOT faster than dry tumbling. If I had to wet tumble for 4+ hours, I wouldn't bother, becuase it's already more of a pain than dry tumbling.


I use a thumbler's tumbler w/ss pins, 9mm cap of lemishine, a squirt of dawn, and HOT water filled about 2/3 to the top.

I squeeze the tumbler while tightening the clamp so that as the dawn soaps up and expands, the tumbler doesn't balloon.

I tumble my own reloads for 45 minutes when ambient temp is 75-90degrees.

I tumble picked up range brass that's heavily tarnished for no more than 1 1/2 hours- max, when ambient temps are 75-90.
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I tumble 15-30 minutes longer when ambient temps drop below 60degrees.



One time I picked up brass that was believed to have been on the ground for 10 to 20 years. All black. Heavy oxidation. For those, I wet tumbled for 2 hours, drained, refilled,and tumbled for another 1.5 hours.... but that was the ONLY time i've ever wet tumbled longer than 1.5 hours.

[schmellba99]

4 hours for the dirty brass - 2 hours for normal brass that basically has just been fired a few minutes ago.

And really, what's the big deal? It's not like I sit idly by the tumbler while it runs for 4 hours watching the clock waiting for the timer to go off so I can instantly open it up and start a new batch.

I usually start the tumbler at night before I go to bed. Whether it runs for 2 hours, 4 hours, 6 hours or 8 hours - it makes exactly zero difference in my daily activities. Even when I start a batch on the weekends at 7 am on Saturday, I generally don't mess with it again until 2 or 3 in the afternoon after I've done some other projects. So again, it makes exactly zero difference in my daily activities.

Maybe I could do it less, I really don't know. Nor do I really care all that much either. As I said, I have better things to do with my time than burn it experimenting with whether 1 hour and 46 minutes works just as well as 2 hours and 37 minutes or 3 hours, 17 minutes and 38 seconds. 2 hours works, it works extremely well. 4 hours works when the brass is heavily tarnished, and it works extremely well.

Here is a really good thread on stainless tumbling, and you can see some of the brass I sent scottriqui to play with. I have serious doubts your 1.5 hour formula would have worked on some of this stuff:

http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=520125

[Worc]

cheifr Wrote:
After 40 years of tumbling with ground walnuts, I bought an ultrasound at Harbor Freight. It is exactly the same as the Lyman only I paid around $70 for mine.
Now the challenge will be to figure out what to use as a cleaning compound.

I just started reloading for the 9mm and picked up a Lyman 2500 ultra sonic cleaner. I used this solution and it worked as good as it did in the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99kGy8-bGXs

[rmantoo]

I normally process 40 to 100lbs of brass every other month. I've been doing this since early 2012. For the last 1/2 of 2011, I used a vibratory tumbler, but when a buddy showed me his wet tumbling setup, I jumped on it.

My goal is to get it all cleaned as quickly and efficiently as possible.

I run 2 tumblers almost continuously from about 5 am until 8 pm on those days. I spend the day working, and whenever my phone's timer goes off (I set it for 90 minutes) I dump, rinse, rinse, separate media, then lay the brass out on large bath towels to dry... then reload the tumbler and go back to work.

I also almost overload my tumblers. When I first started it wasn't uncommon to start the tumbler and then have it stall from too much weight. I want them to clean as much as possible every load so that I don't have to do as many loads... I don't know if this contributes to the efficiency of cleaning each batch, per se, but I firmly believe in using my tools to the limit of their ability.

For most brass 4 hours is simply a waste of time. I live a very busy life and need to be as efficient as possible with my time. Figuring out when I'm wasting it makes the rest of my life easier

[condor bravo]

I have used Thumler's Ultra Vlbe 18 for well over 20 years, having had to replace the motor after 20 some years, and would recommend it as a vibratory tumbler. The 18 is their flagship model recommended for brass tumbling.

[jmorris]

4 hours? WOW. Why bother wet tumbling at all, then?

The time it takes depends a lot on how much agitation the tumbler has, speed/diameter. Much like drying the brass, if you use a light bulb it can take a while. If you use the Sun on TX this time of year, a few thousand are not only dry but too hot to hold a hand full in 2.5 beers.

[cryogenic419]

Recently took the plunge on the FA tumbler after years of using ultrasonic to clean brass. At first it was ok, but wasn't really that much better than what I was getting with ultrasonic. Sorting the pins from the brass was a bit of a pain too.

I stumbled across a video where I saw the guy who runs STM demonstrating how he does it, from how much water and detergent to use to how to separate the pins from brass with the FA media separator. I was using too little Dawn. Went with how much he said to use for a Thumbler tumbler and wow major difference. Separating the pins is worlds easier if you use the FA separator like he does in the video, takes maybe a minute to get them sorted out.

For what its worth I think the FA tumber is pretty solid and overbuilt, seems like it is built to last and as long as they sell replacement parts like the gaskets I think it will be around for a long time. Its supposed to hold and tumble 30 pounds, I've had the drum as heavy as 28 (yes I really weighed it) turned the tumbler on with no load, then put the drum on and turned it on. Does not sound like there is any load being placed on the motor at all, does not seem to bog down at all. Now if only the price of those pins would come down just a little.

Check the video out if you're bored.

http://youtu.be/i-6SOiWE8Hc

[Unclenick]

Thanks for posting the capacity of the FA tumbler. It's the one piece of information missing from Midway's description. That's twice the capacity of the Thumbler B I have, and together with the strainers, makes it a more reasonable choice for a new buyer if it holds up.

Would you mind posting the physical dimensions of the drum? Are you using 10 lbs of pins (scaling up from the Thumbler) or just 5 lbs like the Thumbler? It occurs to me this may not be linear, depending how spread out the surface area is.

I'm not surprised by the lack of motor loading. When you look at the reduction ratios of the belt pulleys and of the drive shaft diameter to drum diameter ratio, you realize the motor has a lot of mechanical advantage.

If anyone else has a Thumbler B and is unhappy with the polyurethane belt system, if you cut the excess off the top inside mounting screw stud of the motor, there is room for a miniature timing belt pulley set to replace the originals. I have not done this, but parts are available from Stock Drive Products.

For sharp case mouths shaving brass, you find that even after trimming a case. The clean edges even of a chamfer can shave brass. Bart B. mentioned a good solution. You put an appropriate size EZ-out in a drill press at low speed and burnish the case mouths with it. The left-hand threads don't grab the case. I got a cheap Chinese knock-off type and polished it with a Dremel tool so the high edges were smooth.

For cleaning, experimenting with solutions is a good hobby, too. This outfit will sell you 10 lbs of food grade citric acid for just under $25, shipping included. I've purchased from them and it was prompt and no issues.

[cryogenic419]

I don't have a tape measure handy, if I had to guess the drum is a foot tall, at its widest point 10-12", at the narrowest 6-8". It is supposed to be a 7 liter drum. As of right now I am just using the 5 lbs of pins that came with the tumbler. I don't know if there would be an advantage to using more as its already getting the cases clean and shining them up pretty quick as is.

As far as solutions go I actually want to try car wash soap instead of Dawn on a small batch and see how that goes.

[serf 'rett]

was just curious what the guys are using that are getting such short tumbling times

Thumler Model A-R1 3# (left over from kid's rock tumbling days)
Capacity: 150 pcs 9mm or 100 pcs 40S&W or 80 pcs 45Auto
24 ounces of sst pins
small amount of Great Value dishwashing soap
small amount of Lemishine ( 3-4 pinches)
enough water to cover pins and brass

2.5 minutes to rinse dirt, grass, bugs off range brass and load barrel
90 minutes tumble
4 minutes to rinse, separate brass from pins using nested colander and bowl, shake out excess water in towel, dump brass into simple homemade box which is shaken to get brass into plastic ammo trays for inspection and drying

[Magnum Wheel Man]

thanks for all the replies everyone...