Case cleaning questions.

How dirty is dirty?

AND

How clean is clean?

AND

Easy ways to clean a couple hundred .38 Spl. cases?

Thanks,

I guess your first two questions are kind of a matter of opinion, but I clean the chunks out of the primer pockets and wipe the heaviest crud off the outside of the cases after every firing.

The easiest way I know to clean a couple hundred 38 Special cases is to size and decap them, then dump them all in my Midway Case Tumbler and go eat dinner or watch the idiot box for about an hour. I DO have to check each primer pocket afterwards because bits of tumbler media sometimes get stuck in the flash holes. I keep a little piece of bailing wire handy to clean them out.

for me, dirty means that there is crud on the outside of the case..............the insides will always have some residue in them.
Personally I do like my case brightly polished in my tumbler, but that clean isn't absolutely necessary.

If you don't have a tumbler, you can deprime you cases and then soak them in apple cider vinegar for about 20 min, rinse them well in clean water, then dry and they are ready to go. Taking a q-tip to them while soaking really gets them clean - especially the primer pockets.

The first couple of years I loaded, I never cleaned my cases.
They got so dirty after a while that they just wouldn't chamber anymore.
With rifle brass, you gotta lube the shoulder/neck area, so I just wiped the shoulder/neck area with cheap generic chrome polish on a rag for a second or two, shines them right up, so I tried cleaning just the outside neck area on my magnum cases, and sure enough, most of them worked just fine.
They do look goofy, and after a while, the rim area gets dirty and you wind up cleaning the whole thing anyway.
I just looked online, and harbor freight has little rock tumblers for cheap, cheap, cheap. These are the quiet drum models that run really slow, and you just leave them on overnight.
I have a harbor freight close to my house, and if they have them in stock locally, I'll buy one and test it out, my loud, high capacity tumbler is driving me crazy with it's noise. It does work just fine, though.

I use a Lyman Turbo tumbler & with h/gun brass I will have 200 or 400 shiny clean in 1.5 or 2 hrs.

I highly recommend a tumbler, any brand should do as long as it is a decent one. For the longest time I followed an elaborate ritual to clean my cases. First I would decap, then I would rinse them in a colander, after that I would soak them in hot water and dishwasher detergent for a couple of hours, then I would rinse again, and finally I would allow them to dry. All that changed one day when I got a “$ 30.00 discount on orders over $ 100.00” flyer from Cabelas in the mail. I bought a Lyman 2200 Turbo Tumbler and some other stuff to qualify for the discount. After using it, I kicked myself for not getting one sooner.

I'm new at this, so how I do things changes weekly. But here's how I like it right now:

Tumbler, because I'm lazy.

Crushed walnut, because it fits inside primer pockets. From PetSmart, because I'm cheap.

NU Finish Car Polish in the walnut, because I like shiny. Not because shiny is necessary, but because I like shiny.

Decap before tumbling, so that the walnut can get inside the primer pockets. Clean primer pockets seem to make priming go smoother, but I hate cleaning primer pockets, and the tumbler does a pretty good job of it. I use a universal decap die because I'm too lazy to want to readjust my sizing die to do decapping only. A universal decap die is only $10 or $13, anyhow.

I use one of those bingo-cage media separators to get the media out of the brass.

When resizing, the decapping pin still has a job to do, even though the primer is already missing. It will push out any media caught in the flash hole or primer pocket.

It takes me an hour or two to load up fifty 9mm cartridges on my single-stage press, so I'm obviously not doing this for efficiency. I'm doing it for the love of it. So I might as well make 'em pretty while I'm at it, because I just like 'em that way.

I don't clean my handgun brass anymore, period. Been doing this for about the last 5,000 reloads now. I shoot, pick up the brass, bring it home, and reload it. I use zero time and money to prep cases anymore, and it has not affected a single thing.

resize , decap. dump in vibrater, straighten out loading bench stuff. fish out of vibrater, box up loose in plastic boxes bought at walmart, use up next time i am bored. i like clean and shiny too. i had a tumbler, but was never happy, it worked fine, was just not for me. bought biggest vibrater Dillon offered, havent looked back. to each his own. i got mine and am happy with it. thats all that counts. yep, clean and shiny does it and the way i do it does it.

You have to first ask:

Why do we clean them at all?

The main reason is to protect your gun AND your dies, mainly the sizing die. Thus is you clean after you size you are hurting your dies! That is the wrong procedure. Basically you dont want anything left on the brass that will hurt the dies or gun. This can happen with dust and other small particles. It isnt that hard to scratch carbide. Once the dies is scratched then it scratches all the brass that goes through it. There are various ways mentioned to clean without a tumbler. Just remember what the goal of cleaning is. It isnt to make the stuff look pretty. That is just a side effect.

I was wondering if someone would notice that,Jeeper. 1. TUMBLE BRASS (for about 30 minutes) BEFORE RESIZING... 2. Resize and decap. 3. Inspect, measure and trim if necessary. 4. CLEAN PRIMER POCKETS. 5. Tumble for about another hour. 6. Inspect, catalog and package or reload them. And I like shinny brass. It shows pride in workmanship.

Just came back from harbor freight, picked up that $22 rock tumbler.
Will have more info soon.

if it goes round and round it will work and, you got a buy

Well, first impressions, wow, this thing is small, the drum is only slightly bigger than a foam can cooler.
It's quiet, too. About the same noise as a loud aquarium air pump. One that's a few years old.
It's also a little clumsier than a brass tumbler, but I suspect it will do the same job, but take a lot longer.
1/4 the size of the $40 tumbler at midway, and prolly takes at least twice as long to to do one batch.
That makes rock tumbler take 8x-10x longer than the $40 brass tumbler at midway. (I think I'm being nice to the rock tumbler, it's prolly slower than that.)
Spend the $40 and save yourself time and trouble.

On the other hand, if you absolutely can't take the noise of the vibratory models, don't want to spend the money, and only do 100 rounds a month or so, it would be perfect.

ty for the followup, if it is that small, i think i will get one. should be ideal for small projects of several kinds.

Why do we clean them at all?
The main reason is to protect your gun AND your dies, mainly the sizing die. Thus is you clean after you size you are hurting your dies! That is the wrong procedure. Basically you dont want anything left on the brass that will hurt the dies or gun. This can happen with dust and other small particles. It isnt that hard to scratch carbide. Once the dies is scratched then it scratches all the brass that goes through it. There are various ways mentioned to clean without a tumbler. Just remember what the goal of cleaning is. It isnt to make the stuff look pretty. That is just a side effect.
My sentiments exactly! :)

Ditto on whats been said.

If I've some really cruddy brass, being cheap and not wanting to chunk it, I'll ****** it through the Iosso liquid, rinse good then a 20 minute pass through a low temp (170) oven. Usually do this when wife is out.

I have a Lyman Pro 1600 vib cleaner. I believe it was around 50 bucks. it cleans i dunno....many hundred handgun cases. Gets them very clean with corn cob media in 90 minutes or so. I have been using it pretty much since I started reloading. My first couple months I would hand polish each case before sizing it. Took forever, but I didn't want to damage my dies.

Also, the tumbler is still going strong after...what now almost 10 years, and I am still using my original 10 pound bag of media too!

http://www.midwayusa.com/eproductpage.exe/showproduct?saleitemid=317981

Even cheaper here

Tumbler for $34.28 (http://www.bosesguns.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1580)

HTH

BigSlick

I would like to be the ONLY one to suggest that really clean is without carbon inside your cases :what:
I know, you want to say it doesent matter but tumbling does not get it out. Liquid like Iosso does. :D

If everyone thinks that loading your bullets over a layer of carbon is the way to go, thats fine :rolleyes:

Ok its more work. I tumble for an hour, resize & deprime, soak for 5 mins, dry, q-tip or turn pockets, and then do a final polish for an hour, poke out media, and my cases are cleaner! :neener:

Careful Automac...They'll start callin' you a perfectionist. I love my shinny brass. But I have not seen that much of a build up of carbon inside of my cases that would make me want to clean down to shinny brass inside the case, but there might come a day. Then I'll join your ranks as a perfectionist and be proud of it.

Some of you talk about washing cases and then DRYING them. What procedure do you use to dry? I would think moisture would always be lurking inside some of the cases, short of putting them in a drying machine, which would make a heck of a racket.

I throw them in the tumbler for an hour and then reload.

There have been times when I didn't clean them, and reloaded them. I was wondering, given how clean some of the pistol powders are, whether it was necessary to clean every time.

But, for maximum feed reliablity in autos, and for the dies, it's probably a good idea.

Yes ulflyer it is easier said than done. I have been using a 175 degree oven for over 20 minutes. :fire: You could let them cool/dry more, and pop them back in for more time if you needed to, also. Any small amount of moisture left will evaporate after they cool. You dont want to handle them warm either, but get them off any still-moist liner.

I put them on a small terry cloth (paper towels should work too) on a cookie sheet. I have seen them come out with the primer pockets still moist, which allows a really small cotton swab (not the good kind) to clean the small pistol primer pockets pretty well.

How clean? Like new. Monk is my kinda guy. I get more positive comments on my pretty brass and copper plated bullets than I do on my $1000 Performance Center revolver.

The PetSmart corn cob is a great idea--get their 1/8" stuff and you won't be picking it out of primer pockets. Doesn't tend to build up in the case like larger grains stuff, either. I use Maguires gold class metal restorer--none of the amonia that I've been told to avoid in polishing products.

Thumler tumbler. They make rock tumblers, some designated as brass tumblers. I bought one that holds 500 or so pieces of .38 spl brass when I got tired of the noise of my Hornady vibratory tumbler. I also don't trust something that operates by being off balance on the theory that it is over stressing components.

I let the brass run overnight or until the Winchester primers have cleaned to the same color as the brass and all the ugly black stuff is off the neck end of the brass.

Uh, error note.

I had not noticed cob in the primer pocket as I do not remove primers before cleaning. Thursday I did a load of brass and noticed that a particle of cob was in a great number of the primer holes (primers still in). Don't know whether they would stick or be a problem if the primer had been removed. In my case, the primer punch on the progressive just pops everything out.

Years ago when I reloaded commercially for fun and profit I did some testing.
(There's a thread on here somewhere with more exact details. I am just not up to searching for it this morning.)

I was using Thumler Model B tumblers and I was cleaning my brass in the Thumler treated walnut mefia after decapping. I was getting tired of inspecting cases looking for those errant walnut chips trying to escape.
I took all of the cases that had walnut in the flash hole and loaded them normally.

When fired over a chronograph there was no noticable deviation from ammo assembled with unblocked flash holes. Based on this I just stopped worrying about it. As I had suspected for a long time, the primer just blows the piece into the powder charge where it is thrown out of the barrel along with the bullet and other residue.

I never use corn cob for cleaniny empty brass, only for polishing loaded ammo, but my theory is that since it's softer than walnut that similar results would be observed.

How often do you add polish to the media? Every couple of loads or so??