Wet Tumbling - Magnet vs Media Separator??

Jerzsubbie

Jerzsubbie

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So I just started wet tumbling after having dry tumbled since I started reloading a couple years ago, but before I go buy a magnet I wanted to get your input. What do you find is the easiest/best way to separate brass, pins, water?

Currently, I dump the majority of the water, give it a couple rinses, then dump everything out into a colander over a 2gal bucket, shake each case by hand to ensure there are no more pins, lay them out to dry, scoop up pins by hand and drop back into my drum. I use a small parts pickup magnet to get the last few pins in the bucket or any that fall on the floor.

Options so far:
2.36" Neodymium Magnet $17 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079GWH5PM/ (super strong)
Frankford Arsenal Magnet $15 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HTN659G (easier to release pins)
Use my FA rotary media separater (haven't tried it yet)
Something I haven't though of yet?
 
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I haven't tried a magnet yet, but I do know that the pins get stuck in the cases and I doubt that a magnet will do much to get them out. I use a Barry's Media Separator, and I cannot get some of them out until the cases dry and I give them a few tumbles.
 
Media seperator does a great job. Magnet does a great job of getting the media from the bottom of the seperator to where you want it. It you ever spill some pins.....the magnet is awesome. I have the frankford arsenal media seperator that sits atop a bucket. I cant pour the pins from the bucket back into the drum without spilling some. The frankford arsenal magnet fits into the opening of the rotary drum....therefore not spilling any.
 
Rotary separator is 100x better than a magnet for separating pins from brass.

Magnet is 100x better than a rotary separator for picking up pins.

I use a submerged rotary separator and then pour the pins back into the tumbler from there, rarely lose any. I hold a magnet in my hand while spreading the brass on a towel, sometimes get a few.
 
BowWow said:
Magnet does a great job of getting the media from the bottom of the seperator to where you want it.
Click to expand...

Have never considered using a magnet to get the pins out of the separator. That is a pain in the butt and i always carry a ton of water over. I may have to try this solution. And I haven't spilled or dumped them - yet, but that just means it will and at the worst possible time. An ounce of prevention and all that.

Muchas gracias. I can go to bed now having learned something today.
 
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JimB said:
Rotary separator is 100x better than a magnet for separating pins from brass.

Magnet is 100x better than a rotary separator for picking up pins.

I use a submerged rotary separator and then pour the pins back into the tumbler from there, rarely lose any. I hold a magnet in my hand while spreading the brass on a towel, sometimes get a few.
Click to expand...
I had read about some guys doing the submerged rotary separator, guess I’ll have to give it a try.

So media separator to SEPARATE media. Magnet to pick up media.
 
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Have you considered the option of skipping the pins altogether? I’ve never used the pins that came with mine and my brass comes out looking brand new.

If you are loading pistol brass only you don’t gain anything with the pins other than getting the insides of cases clean and primer pockets too if you take the time to deprime first. I don’t believe pistol brass cares too much about that.

If you are loading precision rifle I guess that could be a different story but my .223 rounds shot from my AR are pretty darn accurate without going through the extra steps.
 
dave33 said:
Have you considered the option of skipping the pins altogether? I’ve never used the pins that came with mine and my brass comes out looking brand new.
Click to expand...
That actually works fairly well. I do that for bottleneck rifle brass, just to get it clean enough for lubing/sizing. But then I use the pins to tumble again to finish cleaning and to remove the lube. It sometimes surprises me how clean the brass is without using the pins. Either way, I decap before tumbling, as having the primer removed helps drain the water from the brass quicker, and also aids in drying quicker - air can flow through the brass.
 
I tried a batch of 223 without depriming and without pins, just ran it to get clean enough to size.

Of course got busy so after drying they went into a marked bucket for a couple months. Got back to them this past week and they looked okay except for white residue inside the cases and some corrosion that caused a couple (literally 2 out of 5 gal) primers to tear apart. Decided to deprime and then tumble with pins before sizing, then will size, tumble briefly w/o pins, trim and anneal.
 
I did tumble about 50 pieces of.308 Brass without pins, just dawn and lemishine, and it did come out better than my dry tumbler w walnut.
I do like that the pins clean the primer pockets and inside really well (not that it really matters from a functional standpoint) but it’s definitely an option, especially when I have a ton of brass to clean.
You guys have given me some ideas and different things to try. I have about 2500 300BLK and 2500 45acp to clean so I’ve got plenty of brass to play around with.
 
My Frankford media magnet was delivered from Amazon last night so I cleaned 100 pcs of .308 and about 400 300BLK.

The magnet was $15 well spent but I was a little surprised that it took 10 magnet pulls to pick up 5lb of media from my 2.5gal bucket. Also the magnet holds a lot of water when submerged in the bucket so I think I’ll drain off the excess water before using the magnet from here on out.

I’m loving wet tumbling so I’m running 1-2 batches every night lately haha

Thanks for tips guys and thanks again @JimB for the awesome deal on this tumbler a while back!
 
I have a high tech system of separating pins. First off, I have a shower drain that fits into my chamber that allows me to dump out the water and the majority of pins.
Then I start out with two butter tubs or tupperware bowls, something plastic and non magnetic. I dump the contents of the chamber into the largest one, and if there are any brass on top of the pile I manually pick them.
Then I place a large magnet from the bottom of 6.5" speaker on the flat bottom of the bowl; shaking vigorously, I dump the rest of the pins into the 2nd bowl. That leaves me with lots of pins and a couple pieces of brass stuck to the magnet. I go back and forth a few times until I have all the pins separate from the brass. It sounds tedious but it's a hell of alot easier than cleaning one of those media separators, and it removes 100% of the pins from the brass.
 
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