Pardon Me Sir, Do you dehydrate your brass?

[sserdlihc]

I decided to take a friend of mine to lunch today. It was his birthday and I hadn't seen him in a couple of weeks. Well, since deer season ended. Anywho, He asked me what I had been up to. I told him that I relocated my reloading bench and got everything reorganized. Of course we started talking about reloading. We got on the topic of processes that are wastes of time and so forth. He said that he reloads with this guy that he used to work with, that is very meticulous about cleaning his brass. I inquired "How meticulous?" He said that after the guy tumbles his brass, he washes the brass with Dawn dish detergent, then he puts the brass in a DEHYDRATER to dry them!!

I have never heard of this before. Air drying the brass overnight accomplishes the same thing. Personally I think this guy is a little OCD about his brass be so clean but to each his own!!

Does anyone else dehydrate their brass? If so, does it make your brass tough??

[spacecoast]

I think a 250 degree oven would be a pretty good dehydrator

[brickeyee]

Beats putting them in the oven and chancing them getting overheated.

As the wife preheats the oven to 450 F to cook something.

[azredhawk44]

I've left wet brass to dry overnight and come back to find them mostly dry, but some flash-holes were obscured still by a drop of water.

I'd hate to load that case inadvertently. A dehydrator would take care of that, or an oven too.

I no longer use water due to that, and I'm too impatient to wait on it to dry fully.

[PBKing]

#5 on What Pisses the Misses List is Dehydrating my brass with her Blow dryer.
Priorities Dontcha know.

[spacecoast]

I've never washed my brass, I guess I'm just not that anal about how it looks. I mean, it's not like you take your reloads to the state fair to compete for ribbons, or do you?

[snuffy]

He said that after the guy tumbles his brass, he washes the brass with Dawn dish detergent, then he puts the brass in a DEHYDRATOR to dry them!!

A person with OCD should not be a loader. He probably does other things that are totally unnecessary.

I've left wet brass to dry overnight and come back to find them mostly dry, but some flash-holes were obscured still by a drop of water.

Yeah, me too! But I DIDN'T see that residual moisture, ended up with several miss-fires! Then somebody will come along saying; put them out in the sun to dry! Here in Wisconsin, that would leave me about 20 days out of a year to load sun-dried cases! Mostly in July and August!

Also, don't dry cases in an oven you bake food in. Chances of primer residue getting on the oven surfaces is pretty high. The lead styphonate in the primers is one way to ingest high levels of lead. Even if the primers are decapped, the carbon residue inside the cases still contain lead.

[spacecoast]

Also, don't dry cases in an oven you bake food in.

That goes for dehydrators, too.

Anyone who can come up with a brass-only dehydrator can cough up $ for a brass-only oven, right?

[Unclenick]

Yup. Let the brass dry overnight, dump it into a retired beach towel, gather the towel around it and shake it for 30 seconds or so. You may be surprised by how damp it gets. Set the brass back out to dry another week. This is like finding drops of water caught in the corners of saucepan lids left in the dish rack overnight.

It also reminds me I still have some late harvest hot peppers sitting in my dehydrator. Time to bag 'em.

Even though the dehydrator seems like good insurance for wet cases, I would avoid using mine because I still use it to dehydrate food. I don't want lead primer residue getting mixed with the dried tomato slices.

[Crashbox]

Fascinating timing of this post- I was looking at dehydrators on-line this morning for the exact same purpose since I use an ultrasonic cleaner which was purchased a few years ago before I took up this extremely addicting hobby.

I could probably build one for a few bucks' worth of materials and with what I have in stock, though...

[SKULLANDCROSSBONES65]

G'day.
How much Carbon and other nasties would be left inside tumbled and washed cases?
How dirty does the wash water get if you tumble the cases first?
How dirty does the wash water get if you don't tumble the cases?

Note. I have only loaded a few rifle cases so far and did not clean them in the process. I will be adding the cleaning step next time.

[sserdlihc]

I don't use soap & water to clean my brass either. He is already tumbling the brass so it just seems like an unecessary step.

[PBKing]

I dont use water either. But sometimes when we get back from a wet day we blow dry the cases before we chuck em in the tumbler. As previously mention there is no air dry around here for months.
Dont see much need for water around my brass. And I really hate picking media concrete out of the case.

[F. Guffey]

I use corm media in a tumbler with nothing but brass, again if tumbling requires 3 days, I use vinegar, submerge for 15 minutes, rinse and dry with evaporation, on a dry day a fan can be used, on a windy day use the wind,

Advance drying, I have two vacuum pumps, where? I do not know. Refrigerator quit, I got a replacement compressor, torches, tools etc., anyhow I have a freon 22/10 etc recovery system, I rewired it and used the recovery system as a vacuum pump, the difference between replacing a refrigerator and replacing the compressor is $1,500 dollars + or - a few,

I know a few are wondering what this has to do with reloading, simple, water boils at 212 at sea level, when pressure is increased the boiling point goes up 3 (about) degree for every pound, the opposite happens when pressure is decreased to a point of boiling at Zero (32 Degree below freezing) Fahrenheit in a vacuum of 29 in Hg.

Locate a vacuum pump, get an air tight (tough) metal container, install a connection, load it up with cases and turn it on, things are seeded up on a hot warm day, Heat? only ambient.

F. Guffey

[Crankylove]

I don't use soap & water to clean my brass either. He is already tumbling the brass so it just seems like an unecessary step

I have never washed brass. I tumble it a couple hours, and thats good enough. As long as the cases are clean (clean, not shiny) that is what matters to me. If I pick some up that are filled with mud, or packed with dirt, they get a hard wack on the bench..........if it comes out, they get tumbled and loaded.....if not, they go to the recylce can.

[wncchester]

It's simple to dry wet brass over night. In cold times spead them on newspaper in front of a heat vent. In warm times do the same but use a simple fan on them.

[GeauxTide]

Never heard of washing brass. In my 40 years of loading with 3 misfires, I ain't going to introduce another "failure point" into the equation. As hard as the water is here, the cases would have chemical scars.

[woods]

When I anneal brass and drop into a pan of water, I take the compressor hose with a blower nozzle and blow the hell out of the case from both ends. It will displace 95% of the water and the rest dries quick.

[Cult .44]

I have a fan-driven electric space heater. Using a shell holder that just has a grid for a bottom, I put the cases in front of the fan and in a half an hour they're bone dry.

[Chaz88]

I must be a very unhygienic re-loader. I don't even have a tumbler.

If i had an ultra sonic cleaner, like one of the posters, I would use a volital solvent like MEK or denatured alcohol. It would evaporate very quickly. Years ago we used TRIKE (tri-chloral tri-floral ethane) for this on airplane parts. It was the best! but like most things that worked really well it is no longer available.

[HJ857]

I guess I'm one of the few that wet tumbles using a double drum rock tumbler. 30 minutes first wash, rinse, 30-60 minutes second wash. Then in to a toaster oven that's used only for drying brass. 150 degrees for 30-45 minutes. Works great for me.

[Magnum Wheel Man]

I don't typically wash "normal" cases... but I load some small cases ( like 17 K Hornet for example ) that I don't like to tumble because of all the media that gets trapped inside the tiny cases... so that "type" of case, I wash, as I also do with the 5.7 X 28, which gets generously lubed with STP oil treatment to prevent sticking cases on the laquered brass cases when sizing & decapping...

I wash with Dawn in a shallow covered "Glad type" plastic sandwich box dedicated for reloaded & marked "wash", & swirl them around for a while, hand rinse in hot water, touching up any remaining marks ( like sharpie charge level written on the cases, etc. ) then I can either pit them on dryng racks ( 2 X 4 with a bunch of rows of finish nails nailed in like pegs ) that the cases go on... I guess I don't worry drying in the oven, as the cases are already washed & rinsed, & they don't touch the actual oven, only the pan I put them in... I do use the oven, if I'm in a hurry, but I have enough cartridges that I reload, that there are always cases ready to reload, while the others are air drying...

[jganderson]

I wash my brass in warm/hot water with Dawn soap, followed by a denatured alcohol bath for moisture displacement. The alcohol reduces drying time to a day or less. I'm not usually concerned with how shiny it is, but I have used a car polish on occasion. Typically, a little bit of case lube is all they get, and that seems to prevent any feeding/extraction issues. I don't go through as many rounds as some on this thread, so I can't really attest to the longevity factor. Just my 2 cents.

[jaguarxk120]

First ALL range pickings are washed, too many small rocks and mud that gets into cases.

When sizing I use a nylon brush that has a few drops of oil on it, the case necks are brushed for cleaning and a slight lube, so those cases are washed to remove any remaining oil/lube.

[Kevin Rohrer]

When I get dirty brass from the range, I wash them in dish detergent and dry them in the oven at 225-250 degrees for an hour and let them set in the oven until they cool down and are dry. Then I tumble and bag them.

I'd also mention that each bag of brass has a form I made up showing its history. I do this as a bag might be partially prepped but set for years before I get around to using it. Rifle brass also has a # of times fired count and is segregated by rifle.