How to clean USGI pull down bullets?

I'd put them in my vibratory with corn chips as per boredom. You indeed raise a problem with SS pins in liquid, but I think a careful watch on the progress of wet tumbling with pins will work with minimum damage to exposed lead. Try it for an hour.

A little carb cleaner will remove the tar, then just tumble with cob or hull and some polish.

I put a bunch into a small paint can and let them soak with acetone. I let them soak for an hour and agitate the can every so often. Then I pour off the acetone into another identical can. Then dump the bullets into an old towel and roll them around till dry. Then a short trip in the rotary tumbler and SS pins.like you would brass. This shortens up the tumbler time by a large amount. You will probally ruin the towel so plan on this. When done let the dirty acetone in the can evaporate outside and throw the can with residue away after.

Slow but works. Odorless Mineral Spirits, a rag, gloves, and elbow grease. Then toss in tumbler with corn cob media. I've cleaned thousands .223, 308, and 50 bmg bullets by hand.

I tumbled several hundred 174 FMJ's in a thumler's tumbler and I consider it a mistake. The surfaces were all pebbled, and they never shot well. I don't know if was me or the bullets, I used them for sighting in rifles at 100 yards, when my zero was close, I would use "good" bullets to establish a final zero.

After that, I used a solvent. Kerosene dissolved the sealant but was smelly and had to wash the bullets in soap and water to remove the kerosene. However, at the end of all that, the bullets were great.

Slamfire I only needed to run mine for about 20 minutes to make them look purdy. I did not find mine all dented up in that time but they would have shot fine without being tumbled to begin with. Also note I had 2X the pins to the amount of bullets when I did this.

I have several unopened boxes of Sierra 75 gr HP, .243 bullets that have been in storage for at least 50 years. When I opened the boxes, the bullets showed signs of tarnish/oxidation (kind of like grandma's silver tea set) and felt a little rough to the feel. I didn't know whether I should be concerned about this or not, but as I opened each box, I dumped them on an old rag then proceeded to wipe down each bullet with a cleaning patch dampened with some Hoppe's No. 9 Powder Solvent. I then followed up with a dry patch to wipe off any excess Hoppe's. The cleaning patches got dark, so they obviously removed some tarnish, and the bullets feel better now to the touch. It was a pain in the patoot to do this. I had thought about vibrating with dry media, but being hollow point bullets I could see media getting stuck in the end of the bullet like it does in primer pockets. My thought was that this would be worse for performance than the tarnish. Has anyone ever established whether tarnished/oxidized bullets shoot all that different than identical, factory-fresh bullets? If anyone has run the test and it's macht nichts, I'd like to know.

I used a solution of kosher salt and vinegar to clean some Hornady SST's yesterday, using this method:



amazing results, in just a few minutes. they look brand new.

alohanole said:

I used a solution of kosher salt and vinegar to clean some Hornady SST's yesterday, using this method:



amazing results, in just a few minutes. they look brand new.

Click to expand...

Yes, and much easier and quicker than trying to manually wipe each bullet. I think I'll give it a try. Thanks for posting the video.

A couple of years ago I ordered 1000 pulled .224 55 gr FMJ. They where a little tarnished and had the black sealer residue on them. I put them in a container with some lacquer thinner, agitated it, and it took about 30 seconds for the tar to come off. I loaded them as is and they shot great.

I throw tarnished old bullets in my wet SS pin tumbler all the time. Even ones with exposed soft points. They come out great and good as new!

On second thought- you can also load em' the way they are an have no problem/