Time for new media

No dry media tumbler will clean brass as good as a FART. Pins are optional.

Bill

I use half and half corn cob and crushed walnut shells. That works very well for me.

Same as ArchAngelCD, I also use half and half corn cob and crushed walnut shells.

But I also wet tumble with pins and some detergent with most rifle rounds and pistol nickel cases after they've been de-primed. The rifle brass gets a bath to clean the lube from the cases prior to loading. Nickel pistol cases get it to keep them as clean as possible before sizing the cases in carbide dies.

ericuda said:

I always seem to get a little red hue with walnut so I went to straight cob with nufinish. I agree wet may he the best but for me easier to use cob. I don't decap before tumbling and could care less if primer pockets are dirty. I usually run my thumler uv10 overnight and get pretty brass.

Just posted for price for folks to see what is out there.

Click to expand...

Check Amazon. I got a great deal on cob media a few years back there. Some pet stores have cob bedding that is exactly the same thing, only much cheaper. You’ll still need to mix a clean and polish compound with it. I’ve not tried it, but I’ve been told Mothers car cleaner and polish works quite well too.

Corn cob is a pretty good description of the media we have now.

Last time purchased media I dropped by a local sandblasting supplier and picked up 40# od crushed cob and 50# of walnut for around $60 total. Even got to choose the size.

Still have a 5gal water jug of the cob.

Pleas take note that the pet bedding media is scrap left over after the good stuff is taken. You will get a much better and faster cleaning using blast media.

I'm using harbor freight walnut, it was convieniet when I needed some but it's not the greatest. Waiting for it to run out but I think it'll be a couple years especially as my reloading volume has gone down with the lack of supplies available .
I usually soak/shake my decapped brass in hot water and tide for a few hours before I tumble- it gets it looking like new .
I may switch to wet tumbling but I don't think the brass would be any cleaner, just quicker with less steps.

I have tired all sorts of different stuff, lizard litter, rice, kitty litter (that was a disaster). In the end 10 lbs of corncob shipped with Dillon rapid polish is what I use dry. Will do many thousands of cases.

I use it even on cases that have been wet tumbled or ultrasonic cleaned too, if I post load tumble to knock off lube.

"I may switch to wet tumbling but I don't think the brass would be any cleaner, just quicker with less steps."

I don't see wet tumbling as quicker with less steps, especially if you use pins in the slurry; but, it has some advantages over vibrating in media. Overall, I use vibratory tumbling and wet slurry tumbling for different reasons.

In my opinion, if you just want relatively clean brass to reload, vibrating in corn cob or crushed walnut shells will work just fine and is the easiest/quickest way to clean the brass.

Like Jmorris, I have tried just about everything. The last time I ordered corncob I fumble fingered the keyboard and ended up having two 40# bags delivered instead of the one that I wanted. I don't remember the name of the company but it could have been Zoro, but the stuff was shipped from Grainger and it was marketed as blast media. I add a little liquid car polish and a cap full of mineral spirits to the corncob and run it long enough to get mixed before I add the brass. Mostly I only dry tumble nickel cases and cases with case lube on them.

Mostly I wet tumble nowadays. Stainless media gets the brass cleaner and faster than dry tumbling. But you do have the additional step of drying the brass.