Mohave-Tec
Member
I use 70% crushed walnut and 30% corn cob in my tumbler. I use half a cap of Nu-Finish in a fresh batch of media. I buy my media at pet stores. It is ground to a size that easily vacates a 223 case mouth in a media/case separator after tumbling. OK, with modest variations, almost everybody who dry tumbles does this.
But I've never used dryer sheets. I think that long ago I used a new dryer sheet and decided dryer sheets were a mistake. I don't recall but for some reason I chose to not use dryer sheets.
Well, I collect range brass by the thousands and tumble about 100 maximum capacity loads a year. When I'm done tumbling and subsequently separating media from the tumbled cases, I place all that load in a lightly damp towel, grasp the two ends of the towel and rocked the two ends, suspended. up and down to "dust" the cases off. Works great. But the older my media is the more dust I collect on my white towel. Yesterday I noticed my towel was getting really dirty. It was raining so I did an experiment.
My walnut is brown and my corn cob is light green but the media mix was grey in my tumbler. Obviously it was saturated with spent case muck and pulverized walnut. I thought "what-the-heck" since this load of media was spent and needed replacing that I'd give the dryer sheet thing a chance. I had a bunch of spent sheets in a small waste basket beside the dryer. I tore 2 of them in half and dumped it in the tumbler and turned it on with the lid off. In two minutes the dryer sheet halves were filthy. I pulled then out as the surfaced and put two more sheets in. They too became filthy quickly. I repeated this 5 or 6 times in a half hours space and stood over the tumbler watching this the entire time. Most interesting. But I did not expect to see what I saw. First, the spent dryer sheets were less dirty as I progressed to a 5th or 6th new batch of spent sheets. Makes sense. But my media was no longer grey, rather the corn cob started turning green again and I was starting to better see individual walnut fragments again. The dryer sheets were actually mopping up the individual media pieces. I had no idea this would be so effective.
So, the media still wears out. The corn cob was roughly the same size as when I put it in the original mix but the walnut was markably smaller and obviously being ground down over time. But still, there was walnut abrasive left in the mix.
I brought home about 5 full load batches of brass Saturday. I tumbled 4 loads and it took 4 hours a load to clean them up. I tumbled a fifth load from the same batch of brass and it clean up in 1.5 hours. The difference between the dirty media and the still old but mopped up media and its ability to do work is as night and day.
I'm probably going to toss this batch of media anyway because the walnut pieces are so small, I've done maybe 30 full loads with it and I have many pounds of this cheap media but I am absolutely going to start using the dryer sheets in my process.
Just thought I'd report on what you guys already know but thought you might be interested in hearing about my absolutely gaugible results from this experiment.
Since I still have this old but cleaned up media batch, I think I'll do one more load before I switch to new media and see how much dust I get on my damp white towels. I didn't pay attention yesterday but I did clean out my media separator before my last load yesterday and after separating the last load I had virtually no dust in my case/media separator.
And there you have it in a nutshell!!!
But I've never used dryer sheets. I think that long ago I used a new dryer sheet and decided dryer sheets were a mistake. I don't recall but for some reason I chose to not use dryer sheets.
Well, I collect range brass by the thousands and tumble about 100 maximum capacity loads a year. When I'm done tumbling and subsequently separating media from the tumbled cases, I place all that load in a lightly damp towel, grasp the two ends of the towel and rocked the two ends, suspended. up and down to "dust" the cases off. Works great. But the older my media is the more dust I collect on my white towel. Yesterday I noticed my towel was getting really dirty. It was raining so I did an experiment.
My walnut is brown and my corn cob is light green but the media mix was grey in my tumbler. Obviously it was saturated with spent case muck and pulverized walnut. I thought "what-the-heck" since this load of media was spent and needed replacing that I'd give the dryer sheet thing a chance. I had a bunch of spent sheets in a small waste basket beside the dryer. I tore 2 of them in half and dumped it in the tumbler and turned it on with the lid off. In two minutes the dryer sheet halves were filthy. I pulled then out as the surfaced and put two more sheets in. They too became filthy quickly. I repeated this 5 or 6 times in a half hours space and stood over the tumbler watching this the entire time. Most interesting. But I did not expect to see what I saw. First, the spent dryer sheets were less dirty as I progressed to a 5th or 6th new batch of spent sheets. Makes sense. But my media was no longer grey, rather the corn cob started turning green again and I was starting to better see individual walnut fragments again. The dryer sheets were actually mopping up the individual media pieces. I had no idea this would be so effective.
So, the media still wears out. The corn cob was roughly the same size as when I put it in the original mix but the walnut was markably smaller and obviously being ground down over time. But still, there was walnut abrasive left in the mix.
I brought home about 5 full load batches of brass Saturday. I tumbled 4 loads and it took 4 hours a load to clean them up. I tumbled a fifth load from the same batch of brass and it clean up in 1.5 hours. The difference between the dirty media and the still old but mopped up media and its ability to do work is as night and day.
I'm probably going to toss this batch of media anyway because the walnut pieces are so small, I've done maybe 30 full loads with it and I have many pounds of this cheap media but I am absolutely going to start using the dryer sheets in my process.
Just thought I'd report on what you guys already know but thought you might be interested in hearing about my absolutely gaugible results from this experiment.
Since I still have this old but cleaned up media batch, I think I'll do one more load before I switch to new media and see how much dust I get on my damp white towels. I didn't pay attention yesterday but I did clean out my media separator before my last load yesterday and after separating the last load I had virtually no dust in my case/media separator.
And there you have it in a nutshell!!!
