Tumbling cases?

I'm new to reloading and was wondering, do you leave the primers in or out while tumbling your cases?

This has been covered before in several posts, but to answer your question, I leave them in. I like clean brass when I resize it, to keep the dies from getting gunked up or scratched.

I leave the spent primers in when I tumble. This ensures your not sending dirty cases in your resizing die and damaging it.

Your decapping pin also knocks out any media that may be stuck in the flash hole, although some may say media in the flash hole doesn't matter.

You could buy a Universal Decap Die to pop out the primers before tumbling so to allow the pockets to be cleaned by the media. Of course the main drawback with this is having to poke out the media which gets stuck in the flash hole.

Each to his own of course, but as long as your cases are clean before re-sizing either method will do.

I tumble my brass with the primers in. I never clean pistol primer pockets.

I do somewhat clean rifle primer pockets. I tumble them with the primerin Then I lube & size them. Then, if needed, I trim, deburr, & chamfer the necks. Then I tumble them again to clean off the lube and the it cleans up the primer pockets some as well.

Tumbling doesn't do much primer pocket cleaning anyway, even with the primers out.

The media gets packed inside the case, and inside the primer pockets, and doesn't move or vibrate enough to do any polishing.

I generally tumble with treated walnut with the primers still in, for a short while before sizing & depriming.

Then primer pockets are cleaned with a primer pocket tool, and then tumbled again with treated corncob for a high polish finish after sizing & depriming.

The corncob media doesn't get stuck in the flash holes nearly as bad as Walnut.

rcmodel

Tumbling doesn't do much primer pocket cleaning anyway, even with the primers out.

Vibratory tumbling doesn't do much for the inside of the case either.
You'll need a rotary tumbler with ceramic to get them really clean.

For vibratory tumbling I leave the primers in.
For rotary tumbling I take the primers out.

I tumble twice.
4 hours in walnut and mineral spirits, with primers in to clean the brass.
Spray lube, Deprime and re-size.
Tumble another 2 hours in corn cob and polish for the shine.
Check the pockets for crusted deposits, clean if needed.

Re-load, shoot(:)) and start all over.

I leave the primers in. I have never needed to clean out my primer pockets even after loading the same 45colt case 5 or 6 times. Shoot-tumble-then decap-and load on my progressive.

I tumble in two phases. First, I tumble dirty brass in corn cob with a little NuFinish, then once the cases are nice and clean, I deprime and resize them, then tumble them again in ground up walnut (which doesn't get caught in the primer hole)

Everybody does it differently, it seems. I'm just the opposite from Matt....I deprime first (not resize), then tumble with DRY walnut media (really seems to scrub them good), then I polish with corncob and NuFinish. They're actually useable after the walnut, but I like 'em shiny.

I leave them in when I wash my cases (vinegar/water wash instead of tumble).
I've noticed my cases get scratched less when I go to decap/size them this way.

Same as griz44 here. I like my tooling clean also. Tumble with primers in, deprime/size, trim and deburr case, tumble again to clean out the brass shavings from the cases, charge and press bullet. I only tumble from about 20 minutes to about 2 hours most at a time. A tip; use a flash light to make sure the media is not left in the case its self before going into your tooling.

Well I am now depriming-- washing.
Drying
Loading
Tumbling.

For the wash am using soap and water only.

Dont know if it makes too much of a difference... but I am paranoid about media in the case etc...
I dont want to roast corncob or walnut in my barrel. :p

I usually tumble pistol brass before I deprime to keep from scratching my dies up. Works fine because my pistol dies use carbide sizers so they don't need lube.

I tumble rifle brass before and after I deprime.
I do this because tumbling is the best way I've found to remove lube from sized rifle casings. It's also good to run the brass through for 10 minutes or so before resizing just to remove any dirt on the cases.
But it is a PITA to go through and punch out all the tumbling media in the flash holes before I reprime.

Also, a couple tips:
- an old cookie sheet works great for lubing with spray on lube.
- an cheap wire basket from a deep fryer or from the dollar store works good for separating brass and tumbling media. I hold mine over a large mixing bowl (that I requisitioned for this purpose) and flip the brass until all the media is in the bowl. Works great.
- Tumbling hasn't done much for cleaning out the primer pockets for me. Depending on what powder they were loaded with, they are still often pretty filthy. Especially with Winchester rifle powders.