Play With Your Food: Clean Brass With Rice

[Orkan]

There are many ways to clean brass.
Cleaning your brass is a necessity. Foreign material in or on our cases can cause all kinds of problems. Damage to expensive reloading dies, damage to rifles, and various other issues can arise if proper care is not taken. Historically, shooters tumbled their brass in walnut or corn cob media using vibrator tumblers. This method works fairly well and has long since been the "standard" method. In recent years, a couple new technologies were explored. Ultrasonic cleaning was first, and used the power of ultrasonic transducers to "explode" the surface of the brass clean. Next came using a rotary tumbler, water, dish soap, and stainless steel pins to clean the brass. I have used each of the aforementioned methods, and in each instance I was left with the feeling that there is much room for improvement. A couple weeks ago while researching a completely unrelated topic, I was sent down a rabbit hole on the internet. You know how that is. Well I landed on an old forum post in some obscure corner of the internet, which outlined the use of rice and a vibratory tumbler to clean brass. That particular user hailed it as the best possible solution to the problem. The thought had never occurred to me before. I scooped up a handful of rice we had laying around and just by playing with it for a bit, was convinced that it may have merit. I had to try it. This article is the culmination of that testing.

 

[entropy]

Yeah, but it tastes kinda metallic after doing that......

 

[hdwhit]

Neat.

The less processed the rice is, the rougher and more fibrous it will be and the better it will clean.

 

[Rmeju]

Thanks Orkan!

 

[200Apples]

.
Which make/style/capacity of vibratory tumbler do folks prefer?

Great piece, Orkan. Thank you.

 

[higgite]

.
Which make/style/capacity of vibratory tumbler do folks prefer?

When using rice as the tumbling media, there's only one tumbler to use... Cuisinart.

 

[clearcut]

when I used rice I found that some comet type cleaner helped speed up the time to clean the brass.
CC

 

[hdwhit]

Take this seriously.

This is an alternative type of tumbling media. And as shown in the video, it does work.

 

[ArchAngelCD]

IMO rice is a bad choice because it is too smooth. Walnut shells cleaned brass well because of the sharp edges where it breaks when crushed. The edges clean the brass.

 

[hdwhit]

MO rice is a bad choice because it is too smooth.

That's only true if you are using commercial rice that has been polished so that is has lost its husk and bran. If you had read my earlier post you would have seen that rice with its husk and endosperm intact would have made a good tumbling median.

 

[hdwhit]

For those of you who want to superficially comment about the use of rice as a tumbling media, please note that my first academic degree was in Agricultural Engineering so I will vigorously defend against those who post irreverent and irrelevant remarks regarding Okran's posting without citing to appropriate legal or judiciary authority.

 

[kcofohio]

I tried the bagged rice from the store, before I could get walnut shell type. Can't remember how the brass turned out. But it did attract the mice. Just something to watch if rice is used.

 

[badkarmamib]

I use range pickups in my plinking loads. I am using walnut hulls, because I understand it to do a better job of scrubbing the hard crud. I also understand that corn cob gives a better shine, when you don't need the major scrubbing. For those who have tried it, how does rice fall in relation to these two?

 

[Reloadron]

The first brass I ever cleaned was in 1972, the brass was .44 Remington Magnum and my tumbler was a used cheap rock tumbler and my media was a big bag of white rice. While it never got the brass all shiny it did a good job of cleaning it. The rice worked out just fine as a media. Eventually I got a vibratory tumbler and moved on to other media but those early days were the old rock tumbler and rice.

Ron

 

[Rule3]

For those of you who want to superficially comment about the use of rice as a tumbling media, please note that my first academic degree was in Agricultural Engineering so I will vigorously defend against those who post irreverent and irrelevant remarks regarding Okran's posting without citing to appropriate legal or judiciary authority.

Wow that's a mouth full

Did you engineer food like GMO? or by the definition of Ag Engineering?

Definition of agricultural engineering. : the branch of engineering that deals with the design of farm machinery, the location and planning of farm structures, farm drainage, soil management and erosion control, water supply and irrigation, rural electrification, and the processing of farm products.

Use of rice for cleaning brass is not a new idea which has been around for a long time along with other things.

 

[jmorris]

I have tried lots of stuff over the years including rice and the biggest disaster, kitty litter.

Still have one tumbler with walnut and the other with corn cob and one with the only "new" method I tried that worked well enough for me, stainless steel pins.

 

[Coldfinger]

Wet in stainless steel pins for my large rifle brass. Sonic then corn cob for everything else. I always have 10's of thousands of empty cases on hand ready to load if needed. I take my time, do it right, and don't try to cut corners. The use of water in my cleaning methods extends the life of my media but there is a trade off in time consumed. You know, I do what I do because I enjoy doing it. That is all.

 

[JohnnyFlake]

I have never used Rice and do I not ever plan to do so, but I must say, that Rice seems to me to be the perfect size media to stick in those little Primer Holes. That would be highly aggravating!

 

[Mauser69]

For those of you who want to superficially comment about the use of rice as a tumbling media, please note that my first academic degree was in Agricultural Engineering so I will vigorously defend against those who post irreverent and irrelevant remarks regarding Okran's posting without citing to appropriate legal or judiciary authority.

Huh? WGaF...

 

[Rule3]

Perhaps this should go in the "advanced.cleaning brass"section of the forum?

Sure tumble some brass OVERNIGHT in about anything it may come out clean.

I prefer Grits to regular corn cob

Rather than use rice for tumbling perhaps send it to so poor starving people in the Country, they may prefer it over ground corn cob or walnut.

Do a Google search for cleaning brass with rice.

About 396,000 results (0.31 seconds)

 

[ArchAngelCD]

That's only true if you are using commercial rice that has been polished so that is has lost its husk and bran. If you had read my earlier post you would have seen that rice with its husk and endosperm intact would have made a good tumbling median.

I guess my eyes are not seeing what you see. In the OP that rice sure does look smooth and polished, not what you are talking about.

For those of you who want to superficially comment about the use of rice as a tumbling media, please note that my first academic degree was in Agricultural Engineering so I will vigorously defend against those who post irreverent and irrelevant remarks regarding Okran's posting without citing to appropriate legal or judiciary authority.

I guess it's my uneducated non-engineer eyes that are not seeing what you see. I guess I should me have stayed in school longer so I could tell the difference in rice types from a picture even though it looks smooth. Silly me!

 

[GBExpat]

For those of you who want to superficially comment about the use of rice as a tumbling media, please note that my first academic degree was in Agricultural Engineering so I will vigorously defend against those who post irreverent and irrelevant remarks regarding Okran's posting without citing to appropriate legal or judiciary authority.

You feelin' OK?

 

[hdwhit]

Did you engineer food like GMO? or by the definition of Ag Engineering?

No GMO food. That really falls into the realm of biology.

The definition you cited is what I was originally trained to do. I went on from there to acquire additional training before eventually taking up practice as a forensic engineer evaluating how and why things don't work as expected.

 

[hdwhit]

I guess I should me have stayed in school longer so I could tell the difference in rice types from a picture even though it looks smooth. Silly me!

The rice in the picture is commercial, polished white rice and is comparatively smooth. In posts #3 and #10, I pointed out that less processed rice with the bran would do an even better job.

 

[Orkan]

Here's a crazy thought: Instead of all this speculation... why not try something yourselves, and post the results for the rest of us to benefit from?