Cleaner after having been lubed?

[Grandpa Shooter]

Typically I always use my vibratory cleaner to clean up pistol brass after sorting it before bagging it for storage. Since I don't (haven't in the past) load a lot of rifle, I just dump it in with the others I have collected and figured I would get around to cleaning it someday.

Well someday has arrived. I have been depriming and sizing all of my rifle brass this past week and have noticed something unusual. On the rare occasions when I did tumble rifle brass it still stayed pretty dull looking. Now that I am lubing it, depriming it, and tumbling it, it seems to be coming out super clean and shiny.

I am using medium ground walnut, and using Dillon case lube. How could that account for the difference? I am tumbling just long enough to take off the lube residue, not hours.

Anybody?

 

[evan price]

Maybe you have media dust stuck to the case in the microscopic scratches and pores in the brass, and the case lube attracts this dust back onto the large media particles?

 

[rg1]

I agree that they do come out shinier after lubing with Dillon case lube and sizing, then vibrating to remove the lube. As I understand the lube is lanolin based with alcohol. Perhaps the alcohol and lanolin softens stains? Or could it just be that the extra 1/2 hour or so just results in more cleaning-polishing?

 

[Grandpa Shooter]

Maybe I will try lubing some pistol brass and setting the tumbler for a set period of time, and then clean another batch without the lube and see if there is a difference. Wouldn't be empirically sound, but if you two don't rat me out to the shiny brass police, I will let you know how it turns out.

 

[jeepmor]

grandpashooter, your experiment is purely empirical. Let us know. I suspect the lube is loosening up the stains as mentioned or the extra polishing is doing the trick.

 

[Grandpa Shooter]

I consider empirically sound to be more than my perception of the difference in the shine of the brass. Unless I change the media, which is already soaked with lube, it will be very unsound in every other way. How shiny is shiny and how clean is clean? The brass coming out looks to be brand new, other than some minor dents here and there. Unfortunately my need to know far outstrips my ability to satisfy to satisfy my curiosity.