West Kentucky wrote:
Seems as though there is a big change taking place in the reloading world.
Without seeing some sales figures from the equipment vendors, I would be hesistant to declare a trend based on posts made by people like you and I who have the time to regularly visit and post on these boards - we may not necessarily be representative of the entire reloading community.
Used to be that everybody used to tumble in walnut or cob with a little polishing agent such as turbo bright mixed in.
I built my own rotary tumbler 20+ years ago out of parts from a Texas Instruments dot matrix printer. It recently died. It was capable of using either dry or wet media. For the most part, I used dry.
And I
never mixed in any polishes.
I understand that in wet tumbling the crud from the cases gets trapped in solution and then washes out easily. Does this crud affect septic systems? Does it pose different health hazards than dry tumbling?
The "crud" may or may not get "trapped" in the cleaning solution depending on what you put in the cleaning solution to enable it to "trap" the crud. So long as you are not tumbling industrial quantities of brass, it should not adversely impact a septic system. You do more damage to the efficiency of your septic system by discharging phosphates and bleach into it from your washing machine. Putting the wet tumbling solution into municipal wastewater may or may not be a problem. Check with your local utility. If they're already having trouble meeting lead levels in their discharge, they may not welcome you adding even trace amounts.
Wet tumbling requires stainless pins rather than traditional media, are there different grades of pins that work differently, perhaps different sizes? What would be problematic with using other inert media?
Wet or dry tumbling can use just about anything for a tumbling media. Stainless Steel pins are commonly used because they work, they don't rust and because the chromium content is low, can still be separated with a magnet.
But you can dry tumble with walnut shells, pecan shells, corn cobs, peanut shells, rice, beans, sand, ceramic beads, mica, plastic beads, etc. The results will differ with the choice of media, the tumbling speed and the duration of the tumbling. You can wet tumble with steel pins, bronze wire pins, ceramic beads, pretty much anything that won't disintegrate in the water, or you can choose to use no media at all (the detergent and citric acid most people use will produce very good results on their own).
Is there a notable difference in time in tumbler?
Yes. In general, the longer you tumble, the better the results. But it is a game of diminishing marginal returns. 2 hours in the tumbler will give better results than 1 hour. 12 hours will give even better results, but will there be enough difference to justify the additional time? That's something you have to experiment with and decide for yourself.
Suffice it to say I need educated on why the switch seems to be taking place. What is so attractive to draw people to this method over the traditional method, and are there any drawbacks to wet tumbling that we don't see with dry tumbling.
As i said earlier, I don't know that we have evidence of a widespread trend.
The attraction is shinier brass than can generally be obtained with dry tumbling.
The biggest drawback(s) is/are the added cost of wet tumbling, the time and equipment needed to dry the brass, and disposition of the wastewater (where that is an issue).