Pin tumbling & tarnish prevention after the fact

[themailman]

This is just Dawn and no lemishine, tumble for 3 hours put in a stainless bucket in front of my garage heater and perfect.

 

[hdwhit]

pert near asked:
Even as a last, separate step, is there away to stop these cases from tarnishing?

First, as several others have already mentioned, don't put your solvent (i.e. Dawn or something else) in the same batch as your coating (turtle wax).

Second, depending on how long you are planning on storing the brass, you need to recognize that oxidation of the brass is a physical process that is effectively inevitable. No matter what you do, the longer you store processed brass, the more it will oxidize (tarnish).

Third, what I have striven for over the years is to be able to process my brass to an acceptable shine, load it and then store it for 20+ years without experiencing unacceptable losses due to corrosion. In fact, I have cartridges that were reloaded in 1982 that now, 37 years later, not only have an acceptable shine, but also return comparable velocity and accuracy results to what they did when they were first loaded.

 

[pert near]

I'd like to add, using Turtle Wax instead of the dish soap is a big advantage to me. Not only does it seem to retard tarnishing, it is a much easier clean-up. All the soap suds from dish soap take a lot rinsing of the container, brass & pins. With the Zip wax, one simple rinsing & all seems GTG. Time will tell if I will need more frequent SS pin cleaning cycles.

FWIW....

 

[Reeferman]

I use Armour All wash wax, lemishine with 140 degree water and cold rinse. Never had a tarnish issue and some of the cases are at least a year old since and no tarnish.

 

[Skgreen]

Same tumbler as OP.

10 # pins
1 ounce of the Franklin brass cleaner + 1 ounce AA wash and wax.

60 minutes to 90 minutes of tumbling.

Towel dry. Load flat onto some inexpensive cookie sheets.
230 degrees for at least ~20~ minutes. No more than 30-40ish, or the shine starts to go. ("Cooks the wax off" is my uneducated guess).

Remove and lay flat on a towel to cool/dry.

As always, YMMV.