Score!
- Thread starter esheato
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RustyFN
Member
Holy crap, sounds like enough to last a life time.
Rusty
Rusty
:banghead:
:banghead:Hud
Member
Too bad I wasn't into reloading when I was in Okinawa with the USAF in '69.
We would go through an entire 55 gal. drum of ground walnut shells (Carbo-Blast) in about an hour to field clean one J57 engine at the test cell.
Talk about enough to last a life time!!
Regards, Hud
We would go through an entire 55 gal. drum of ground walnut shells (Carbo-Blast) in about an hour to field clean one J57 engine at the test cell.
Talk about enough to last a life time!!
Regards, Hud
scrat
Member
wow 55 gal would be a lifetime
FieroCDSP
Member
THus proving the hypothesis that it's not really possible to save money reloading.
John4me05
Member
Cabelas sells a nice tumbler under their name.. Its a Berrys... 30 bucks.... I got 1 and it does the job fine... Although i dont load alot i have ran a few hundred range pickups through it at once with no problems...
RustyFN
Member
I have one of the Cabela's tumblers and am very happy with it. It's High cap, I think it said it will hold 650 38 spcl cases. It's light weight and quiet.
Rusty
Rusty
Fly320s
Member
Pssst, don't put all 50+ pounds in the tumbler at once.
I paid $7 for 7 pounds today. You got a great deal.
Dumpster Baby
Member
I bought a gallon jug of walnut media about 30 years ago when I bought a Lyman 1200 tumbler. I still have about 2/3 of it. I now clean it rather than throw it away. After cleaning it looks and works as good as new.
Yes, I'm a cheapskate.
Yes, I'm a cheapskate.
Linear Thinker
Member
How do you clean the walnut media? I am a cheaps.. I mean frugal too, and use the walnut hulls until they turn to dust.
LT
LT
Dumpster Baby
Member
I invented the process on the fly with what I could find.
I dumped the dirty, encapsulated walnut grits into an old pillow case, submerged that in a sink full of hot soapy water, and kneaded the heck out of it for a while. The water turned black. I let that water out and refilled the sink with more hot soapy water and repeated the process. The water turned brown. I let that water out and filled the sink with hot rinse water and kneaded it all again. The rinse water turned kinda murky, but was getting much better.
I rinsed the bag full of media real well under the faucet for a while until the water running out was not very dirty at all. I then carefully dumped the soggy mess out of the pillow case into a bag temporarily made of some plastic mosquito netting. I rinsed that real well to wash away all the little stuff, leaving only the full sized media grits.
I dumped the cleaned media out on a large aluminum foil oven liner sheet to dry. After it was dry I looked at it under a magnifier, and it looked brand new - like a bowl of Grape Nuts cereal.
I put the dried media back in the tumbler and ran about 900 cases of different kinds through it, and that media polishes like brand new stuff. I'm sorry now I threw out the first 1/3 of that gallon jug years ago instead of trying to clean it.
I don't use any kind of polishing compound in my walnut media any more. That's what happened to the first batch - ruined it. This batch got encapsulated over many years with traces of sizing lube, etc. I now only use polishing compound in some coarse pet store corn cob media.
I don't use One Shot or any other kind of lube that can be tumbled off. To me, the idea of using tumbler media to remove anything other than powder residue and general dirt residue is crazy. Those folks are the ones that drive the tumbling media replacement market.
So, my original gallon jug of walnut media will last me my entire life, by simply not polluting it and by an occasional cleaning at 20 year intervals.
I dumped the dirty, encapsulated walnut grits into an old pillow case, submerged that in a sink full of hot soapy water, and kneaded the heck out of it for a while. The water turned black. I let that water out and refilled the sink with more hot soapy water and repeated the process. The water turned brown. I let that water out and filled the sink with hot rinse water and kneaded it all again. The rinse water turned kinda murky, but was getting much better.
I rinsed the bag full of media real well under the faucet for a while until the water running out was not very dirty at all. I then carefully dumped the soggy mess out of the pillow case into a bag temporarily made of some plastic mosquito netting. I rinsed that real well to wash away all the little stuff, leaving only the full sized media grits.
I dumped the cleaned media out on a large aluminum foil oven liner sheet to dry. After it was dry I looked at it under a magnifier, and it looked brand new - like a bowl of Grape Nuts cereal.
I put the dried media back in the tumbler and ran about 900 cases of different kinds through it, and that media polishes like brand new stuff. I'm sorry now I threw out the first 1/3 of that gallon jug years ago instead of trying to clean it.
I don't use any kind of polishing compound in my walnut media any more. That's what happened to the first batch - ruined it. This batch got encapsulated over many years with traces of sizing lube, etc. I now only use polishing compound in some coarse pet store corn cob media.
I don't use One Shot or any other kind of lube that can be tumbled off. To me, the idea of using tumbler media to remove anything other than powder residue and general dirt residue is crazy. Those folks are the ones that drive the tumbling media replacement market.
So, my original gallon jug of walnut media will last me my entire life, by simply not polluting it and by an occasional cleaning at 20 year intervals.
tkendrick
Member
Just a hint. A well stocked feed store will have 50# bags of walnut hulls, but the clerk may not know that he has it.
It's usually marketed as a poultry scratch or bedding for baby chicks or somesuch. I bought 50 lbs a couple of yeas ago for about 7 or 8 bucks IIRC
It's usually marketed as a poultry scratch or bedding for baby chicks or somesuch. I bought 50 lbs a couple of yeas ago for about 7 or 8 bucks IIRC
PetSmart has 10lb bags for about $8 near me. I'm not a high-volume loader so that should last me a long time. I don't bother with cleaning it. At $8-10 for a new batch every 5-10 years, it's by far the cheapest reloading supply I use.
Iron Sight
Member
Best I can do is 3lbs for $5.00.
par0thead151
Member
- Joined
- Feb 20, 2008
- Messages
- 78
i save my used media... now i know why. i will be outside cleaning it as soon as i turn the water on for the outdoor hoses. rinse it in the pillow case and kneed it while water is running over it should make short work of the cleaning.
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