Tips to clean polishing media from flash hole

Put the cases back in the tumbler (without any media) and tumble for 10 minutes.

Get finer(smaller granules) media.

Or get bigger granules of media. I use the sandblasting medium grit shell media from Harbor Freight. It comes in 25lb boxes. I get very few casings with media stuck in the flashhole. For the stubborn ones that do get something, dental pick here too.

I use a piece of piano wire, a stiff wire similar to bare welding wire, that fits in the flash hole. I found it easier to use than a dental pick but it stills require looking at each piece of brass.

I have a rotary separator and have on occasion spun it more violently after the bulk of the media has been separated. This was an effort to dislodge those pesky pieces of media in the flash holes. Unfortunately, it was not very reliable.

I might have to try putting the brass back in an empty tumbler as mentioned by Otto.

By an unscientific experiment, brass that I have de-burred the inside of the flash hole seems to be more media free than brass that is not de-burred.

Tumble with the primers in. If needed, a toothpick brite lite and white background. Ya can quickly scan a number of brass at same time, although the tumbling without media afterwords sounds alot easier.

Very simple solution . . . .

To eliminate cleaning media from getting stuck in flash holes, just resize (and deprime) AFTER you tumble your cases . . . . and make sure your depriming pin sticks out 3/8" below your resizing die.

I deprimed only once before tumbling.Will never do that again.

Grit or dirt will not hurt carbide sizing dies, after all the "dirt" is softer than the carbide.

Regarding the size of the media, suggest you try 20/40 size corn cob available from drillspot in 40 lb. bags for approx $24.00. It listed on their web site as blasting media. Add a teaspoon or 2 of polishing material, many use Nu-Finish auto wax, which works excellant.

Maybe I don't understand the issue, but when I resize my brass, the decapping rod cleans out the flash hole.

I deprimed only once before tumbling.Will never do that again.

Click to expand...

Why?

noylj said:

Maybe I don't understand the issue, but when I resize my brass, the decapping rod cleans out the flash hole.

Click to expand...

Some of us get anal about cleaning. I tumble before resizing to get rid of range crud, then tumble after to clean and polish. I do this with both lubed rifle cases and carbide resized pistol cases.

I have two tumblers, one for dirty cases, one for resized cases.

I know all the gun rag writers say cleaning the primer pockets makes no difference in accuracy, tumbling cases after resizing also does some cleaning of the primer pockets. It floats my boat. It may not float yours and that is ok too.

I tumble before sizing and unfortunately spend a lot of time punching out the pieces of media with an old steel punch. Not that big of a deal with the precision calibers (small amounts of brass) but 223 sucks bad. I try to do small batches so I don't want to stab myself in the eye with the punch.

My bad ... I looked right past the walnut part...

I use a long sheet rock screw that has a very sharp point on it. I have also used an air compressor to blow out what will ... then I turn to the screw.

Jimmy K

I have my air compressor turned up to 100psi with a really fine spray nozzle. I grab a handful of cases and hit them from both directions. Take a couple seconds per 10-12 cases in my hand.

I use a really expensive tool.....jumbo paper clips. Less than a dollar for a box of 100 clips. One lasts me until I accidentally drop it in the trash can. Time for a new paper clip.

I use a decapping pin, filched from a set of used dies I should never have bought. Works great.

Toothpick.

My air compressor is always by the tumbler, and I just blow the cases out with it.

I use a sharp metal scribe.

I usually set all my cases base up in a loading block before inspecting & hand priming them, so spotting media in a flash hole, it is pretty easy to poke it out with the scribe while I am inspecting them.

rc

Like many others, I tumble first, then decap the brass. Media pops right out with the spent primer and is gone.

Do you load on a progressive?

If you load on a progressive you already have them sized. So replace the die in station #1 with a universal depriming die. It will knock out all the media. That is what I do.

Maybe I don't understand the issue, but when I resize my brass, the decapping rod cleans out the flash hole.

Click to expand...

The purpose of tumbling after resizing and removing the primer on rifle brass is to remove the sizing lube off the case.