Exposure
Member
I thought some people might like to see this.
I have recently started tumbling with stainless pins in a Thumlers Tumbler. Wow does it work! For this post I took 50 of the grungiest .223 cases I could find. I was given tens of thousands of empties that were picked up on a military firing range. So I went to those cases and dug out some really ugly ones to show how great this method of brass polishing works.
Here are the 50 cases I pulled out. Pretty ugly!
In this pic I am setting up my Dillon 550 press and Dillon RT-1200 power case trimmer/re-sizer. I have a universal decapper in station one and the RT-1200 in station 3.
These cases are processed through the 550. You can see the case mouths are shiny from being trimmed. Per the case gage these are ready to be loaded and fired. The primer pockets look miserable though, and the cases are still incredibly dirty and ugly!
As anyone who reloads military 223 will tell you, primer crimps are a pain in the butt! Here is my Dillon Super Swage 600 about to take the crimp out of one of the processed cases.
Finally all the prep work is done and we can get to the really good part! Here are the cases in the drum of the Thumlers tumbler. The stainless media is in the bottom. After this pic was taken I added water, dish soap, and some Lemi Shine.
Then it was onto the tumbling.
For ULTRA shiny brass you can tumble four hours. I have found 2.5 hours gets the brass more than clean enough for my standards. The following pic shows 2.5 hours worth of tumbling. And I swear that is the same brass from the first pic. I did pull out two of the ones from the original pic as the case mouths were just too darn torn up from SAW usage. But I replaced them with ones just as ugly! Once the media, brass, and water are all separated I put the brass onto a cookie shoot and put them in the oven for 20 minutes at 200 degrees. Don't tell Mrs. Exposure though!
Primer pockets come out just as nice. I tried like heck to get a pic of the case interiors which are just as clean as the outside, but I just couldn't get one I was happy with.
And a side by side pic.
For those of you with sharp eyes you may note there is a Dillon 1050 lurking in a couple of the pics. Yes I could do this on my 1050 and save the hassle of swaging on the SS600 but it is a lot of work to set that press up. So for these shorter runs it is a much bigger time saver to just do it on the 550!
I have recently started tumbling with stainless pins in a Thumlers Tumbler. Wow does it work! For this post I took 50 of the grungiest .223 cases I could find. I was given tens of thousands of empties that were picked up on a military firing range. So I went to those cases and dug out some really ugly ones to show how great this method of brass polishing works.
Here are the 50 cases I pulled out. Pretty ugly!
In this pic I am setting up my Dillon 550 press and Dillon RT-1200 power case trimmer/re-sizer. I have a universal decapper in station one and the RT-1200 in station 3.
These cases are processed through the 550. You can see the case mouths are shiny from being trimmed. Per the case gage these are ready to be loaded and fired. The primer pockets look miserable though, and the cases are still incredibly dirty and ugly!
As anyone who reloads military 223 will tell you, primer crimps are a pain in the butt! Here is my Dillon Super Swage 600 about to take the crimp out of one of the processed cases.
Finally all the prep work is done and we can get to the really good part! Here are the cases in the drum of the Thumlers tumbler. The stainless media is in the bottom. After this pic was taken I added water, dish soap, and some Lemi Shine.
Then it was onto the tumbling.
For ULTRA shiny brass you can tumble four hours. I have found 2.5 hours gets the brass more than clean enough for my standards. The following pic shows 2.5 hours worth of tumbling. And I swear that is the same brass from the first pic. I did pull out two of the ones from the original pic as the case mouths were just too darn torn up from SAW usage. But I replaced them with ones just as ugly! Once the media, brass, and water are all separated I put the brass onto a cookie shoot and put them in the oven for 20 minutes at 200 degrees. Don't tell Mrs. Exposure though!
Primer pockets come out just as nice. I tried like heck to get a pic of the case interiors which are just as clean as the outside, but I just couldn't get one I was happy with.
And a side by side pic.
For those of you with sharp eyes you may note there is a Dillon 1050 lurking in a couple of the pics. Yes I could do this on my 1050 and save the hassle of swaging on the SS600 but it is a lot of work to set that press up. So for these shorter runs it is a much bigger time saver to just do it on the 550!
