For the love of dry tumbling!

GymB

Picking it up slowly.
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This week I received 4 LFRB of 5.56 brass that I wanted to process.

Normally I deprime, wet tumble and size, but I thought it’d be good to save a step so for the first box I wet tumbled, and the plan was to then deprime and size in one operation, but it took two days to dry the brass. I put it on towels with a fan as usual, but still ended up running it through a dehydrator.

So while I’m dealing with that mess I go to the pet store and buy 20lbs of crushed walnut. Fill the tumbler drum 3/4 full of brass, add about 15 lbs of media, add a few squirts of car wax and let it run for a few hours. The brass comes out looking like crap, really embarrassing vs wet tumbling, but it’s plenty smooth and clean for use. Was able to process all 3 remaining boxes this way today. Got one box deprimed, swaged and sized, tomorrow I’ll do the rest them, or at least as many as I can before my arm falls off.

The only part that kinda sucked was separating the media. I poured the media and brass into my shell sorter and the media fell through, but I still had to pick up the cases by the handful and dump them out. Took maybe 10 min per batch.
 
Several times I have wet tumbled (without pins) for 20 minutes, just to get the dirt off. I dry just enough to get the outside dry, then lube and size/decap, then wet tumble with pins to get the lube off and to really clean them.
 
Brass does not need to be squeaky clean. I think it works better a little dirty. Just my opinion. I stopped wet tumbling brass.
 
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This week I received 4 LFRB of 5.56 brass that I wanted to process.

Normally I deprime, wet tumble and size, but I thought it’d be good to save a step so for the first box I wet tumbled, and the plan was to then deprime and size in one operation, but it took two days to dry the brass. I put it on towels with a fan as usual, but still ended up running it through a dehydrator.

So while I’m dealing with that mess I go to the pet store and buy 20lbs of crushed walnut. Fill the tumbler drum 3/4 full of brass, add about 15 lbs of media, add a few squirts of car wax and let it run for a few hours. The brass comes out looking like crap, really embarrassing vs wet tumbling, but it’s plenty smooth and clean for use. Was able to process all 3 remaining boxes this way today. Got one box deprimed, swaged and sized, tomorrow I’ll do the rest them, or at least as many as I can before my arm falls off.

The only part that kinda sucked was separating the media. I poured the media and brass into my shell sorter and the media fell through, but I still had to pick up the cases by the handful and dump them out. Took maybe 10 min per batch.
Should have used the mixer. Turn it up while tumbling and all is good :D
 
Should have used the mixer. Turn it up while tumbling and all is good :D
You were my next stop, but for $20 I could try it at home and skip the travel. Would have liked that it would have separated the media though!
 
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