Anyone wet tumbling think dry is better?

I do both, the big advantage to dry tumbling is the ability to remove the brass and proceed to load. Wet, there’s the whole drying thing plus the extra step of decapping before cleaning, if one is doing that, and if not the drying time is extended to days unless you apply a heat source. Air fryers are excellent for that. Clean is clean, wet tumbling is shiny clean.

I'm with whughett, undecided and do both.

I wet wash is more appropriate I guess as I don't use a tumbler and I don't use pins. Just very hot water, dish soap and Lemi-shine. Dry in an old toaster oven for 30min and then run in the dry vibrator for 1hr. Stuff looks clean, doesn't stick to dies and loads and shoots just fine.

I load and shoot from time to time blackpowder cartridges. If I don’t wash the brass at the end of range day it will develop verdigris around the mouths in and out. So a quick rinse until I’ve accumulated enough to pin/wet tumble which is the only way I’ve found to remove most of the tarnish.

I never have cleaned any brass using the dry-vibe method. Always wet.

Dudedog said:

110 outside an hour in the sun and the brass is to hot to touch!

Click to expand...

Dry & annealed all in one hour in the sun, nice.

SlowFuse said:

he closest I've come to wet tumbling is a five gallon bucket with lemishine water and a good shake every few minute

Click to expand...

I do that too. I bungee cord my bucket to my lawn tractor when I mow. Does it help? I don't know , but I feel like I'm multitasking.

jmorris said:

I think the wet tumbling/time consuming argument comes from the tiny volumes some can do.

The first one I built was using a 100lb (12.7gallon) chlorine bucket, it could clean around 3000, really grungy (wouldn’t have put them in my corncob tumbler) 45 acp cases at once and after laid out in the sun would be dry in 2.5 beers. Efficient, even if more labor by me to do it.

View attachment 934137

Some years later, I built some really big wet tumblers for a remanufacturer.



The cleaned 15 gallons of brass, per barrel at one time! I built 6 of them a gantry crane so they could load and unload them.

After they loaded the rounds, they post load tumbled them with a bank of dry tumblers.

View attachment 934138

I built this media separator to roll down the isle.

This was before a tray was added to the bottom.

Click to expand...

I need to see your shop some day. You would need a two car garage just to hold your contraptions for reloading. Not counting your other hobbies/chores.

Dry good. Wet better.

I thought about wet tumbling. A guy showed me his wet set up and I decided dry was good enough for me.
I don’t have much room in my garage with my reloading bench, work bench, convertible, 2 motorcycles and lots of shelves for all my tools and stuff plus a washer and dryer. No room for wet cleaning and I don’t want the hassle of drying out the brass and all that Jazz.

kmw1954 said:

I'm with whughett, undecided and do both.

I wet wash is more appropriate I guess as I don't use a tumbler and I don't use pins. Just very hot water, dish soap and Lemi-shine. Dry in an old toaster oven for 30min and then run in the dry vibrator for 1hr. Stuff looks clean, doesn't stick to dies and loads and shoots just fine.

Click to expand...

That's exactly what I've been doing too, I decap first . sometimes in the warmer months I bungee cord my bucket of hot water & brass to my lawn tractor when I mow, don't know if it helps but it feels like multi-tasking and if it's hot I'll try in the sun, if it's cold on a cookie sheet in the oven and then walnut with a little polish in the vibratory tumbler for... Uh.... Hopefully a couple hours, but it's accidentally run for 48 hours+, I'm a busy guy. Brass turns out great.

I have some stuff laying around that would make a pretty wicked rotary tumbler (industrial legos)- I think it may simplify my life but I don't feel a pressing need to get it going in a hurry. I'll keep doing what I'm doing until I get through about a million other things first.

Dry has worked well enough for me for about 30 years that I don't see a need to look any further.

Wet’s better. I have all 3:

wet > ultrasonic > dry

I only dry tumble when I want to polish, which is almost never.

It seems to me that the real difference is that some folks want their brass to be as clean as it possibly can be and don't mind putting in the time and effort to make it happen, while other folks just want brass that is clean enough to not damage dies and aren't interested in putting in any more time and effort than necessary.

Neither side is wrong until they start denigrating the other.

(I dry tumble. The rest of you people are nuts.)

I have the stuff for both. I wet because of dust and health reasons. Shiny is not necessary and not the reason. Shiny is the result of a better process.

Dry & annealed all in one hour in the sun, nice.

Click to expand...

Yes, but the electric bill to run the AC in the summer hurts

You know, like jmorris said 2 1/2 beers watching them dry? I don't have a problem with that.

tightgroup tiger said:

You know, like jmorris said 2 1/2 beers watching them dry? I don't have a problem with that.

Click to expand...

I don’t think you need to sit there and watch them.
The trick is convincing the wife that you do!

I started out wet cleaning in a bucket, then went to dry tumbling, which I much prefer. Ain't tried wet tumbling yet. I wear a good mask when cleaning out the media. Now that masks are in vogue, I consider myself a trendsetter.

I shoot a lot of 9mm and .45. I put the cases in the wet tumbler with citric acid, a drop of dawn and NO PINS. I tumble for 3-4 hours, rinse, add clean water and tumble another hour. At this point they are more than clean enough to load. After drying, I load them. Loaded rounds and a tablespoon of mineral spirits go into the walnut shells for 30 minute of tumbling. Nice shiny rounds that look factory. Rifle rounds I decap before wet tumbling. Then load and tumble in walnut hulls to get the case lube off. More shiny looking cartridges.

I don't think dry is better but I don't think is worse either.

IMHO there are just too many time consuming steps when wet tumbling that I don't have the time or patients. I don't think you can wet tumble without dry tumbling also.

Bear in mind the kids and I reload 50-65k rounds a year from Oct-Mar and our time is paramount.

I also don't think wet tumbled cases shoot any better than dry tumbled case.

My reloaders, (2)xl650 and (2)SDB, do not run as smooth without using lube on wet tumbled pistol brass. I traced this to the powder funnel and no matter what I do short of using lubing the cases they don't run as smooth as dry tumbled brass.

My wet tumbling process:
1 - I first send my cases through a dry tumble for 15-60 mins. Dirty cases don't hit my press.
2 - I then remove the primers. Ever wet tumble without removing the primers first? 30-45 min.
3 - Wet tumble. 2 hrs.
4 - Separate pins. Removing the pins drives me absolutely insane. 30 min.
5 - Dry. Drying is just a waste of time but easy enough. 1-2 hrs.
6 - Visually inspect each round for pins. 30-45 min.
7 - Reload pistol or resize rifle.
8 - Dry tumble to remove lube. 20 mins.

My dry tumbling process:
1 - 99% of the time I dry tumble in 20/40 corncob for 1-2 hours. Really bad cases I tumble in walnut.
2 - Separate case from media. 5 min.
3 - Reload pistol or resize rifle.
4 - Dry tumble lube. 20 mins.

I've never understood the complaints about dust when dry tumbling. I tumble with the top on my tumblers and my media separator does not produce dust. Maybe its the media I'm using, the humid environment I live in or the wax I add.