Cleaning media

[RC20]

Agreed the wet method is the cleanest (inside as well which is nice annealing as not smoke puffs from the carbon still in there) .

Unfortunate its also a pain for my setup so I go with Corn media which worked better than the walnut.

Whatever works.

[gw44]

I really like the crush walnuts, I ad nu-car polish to mine it works great !!!

[jjavedas]

I bought a 50 lb. sack of medium grit walnut shell blasting media from a sand blasting supply for $18.00. That's enough for about four life times.

[k4swb]

I use this:https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
and some NuFinish polish.
Be sure to run it long enough before adding cases to get the wet balls of media loosened up and not stick back together.

This combo, while it won't clean primer pockets as well as pins in a wet tumbler, will clean PPs better than some media will and will not get hung up in the flash holes.

I probably use too much NuFinish but my brass is good and shiny with a touch of slick left on them. Really easy to size in my LNL AP.

[Old 454]

I use the Harbor freight walnut media... I use this as a first clean before I deprime and size/trim and remove military crimps.
Final clean is with steel pin and soapy water.
I use a paint strainer bag you can buy at a paint store and a oil change pan you can buy at an auto parts store.
First dump the cleaned brass in a separator to get pins out of the cases.
Place paint filter bag over the oil pan and dump the water with pins into the bag... all the water will go into the oil pan and pins stay in the bag.
Dump water and put the pins back in rotary tumbler..
Next dump cleaned cases in the paint bag and rinse in hot water to remove any soap and loose debris.
I put cases in a towel and wrap and shake to get most of the water out then use an old hair dryer to dry cases. Just keep moving the brass around to get them hot... water will evaporate and let them cool off. Check random cases for any moister .. if you find any moister just dry again with hair dryer... cases will be bright and shiny ready to load

[Unclenick]

Originally Posted by gregnsara

I've been using pet bedding as cleaning media. I recently cleaned my first batch of .223. Cleaned up fine, but now I have 150 casings that are full of cleaning media that I have to dig out.

I've had that happen with corncob media, in particular, but any of the organic cleaning media can do it. What causes it is the media becomes swollen by ongoing absorbing of moisture while it is inside the case, locking it in place. The polish or whatever you added simply needed more time to finish swelling the media before you put the brass in and started tumbling.

One thing folks used to do was leave the lid off a vibratory tumbler and run it like that to circulate the media while the polish addition dried out, but anymore, concern about water-soluble lead compounds in primer residue dust has become a health concern so that this is now considered a bad practice. You can, however, put the lid on and run the tumbler until the polish is well-distributed, as suggested in a previous post, and then just let it sit there for a couple of hours to be sure all the swelling is completed, and if you then also tap all the media from the cases immediately after you turn off the tumbler, you won't have the problem.