Tumbling live ammo (powder pics)

[ccjcc81]

The purpose of this post is not to convince anyone to tumble live ammo, or to do anything that they feel would be unsafe. I do not, nor should anyone else, consider this to be empirical data. This was not performed in a lab, simply at my reloading bench. I did this to satisfy my own curiosity, and thought that some of the members here might enjoy it, so I took pics. I actually hope that people more experienced with powders than me, which is probably everyone, will provide feedback and opinions.

I wanted to know if it was safe to tumble live rounds to clean them after reloading, so I googled it and found many forum posts, and as usual there were some who say "yay" and some "nay". I heard that tumbling would “powderize” the powder and create dangerous pressures, so I tumbled 2 rounds and got my handy microscope out and used my cheap camera to take pics of the results. I pulled a bullet from 3 rounds, one new, one tumbled for 1 hour, and one tumbled for 24 hours.

The ammo is WWB 100rd value pack 115gr 9mm purchased about a month ago. I would seriously like to know what kind of powder you think Winchester loads these with.

The first pics are of the powder in a clean yellow bin. The powder pics are at 10x and 20x under a microscope. One pic with flash and one without. The last pics are of my gloved finger. I ran my finger across the bottom of the bin to see how much dust I could collect with each round.

Incidentally, both the new and 1hr tumbled bullets were a pain to pull using pliers, but the 24 hour bullet was easier to pull. (I’m not saying it fell out. It was still crimped well, and I may have simply gotten better at it along the way.)

I do not presume that all powders will react the same as this one. And as I mentioned before, I am not trying to convince anyone of anything, just having fun and sharing.(got bored waiting for midway to ship my dies and gear) Please provide me with your opinions.

BTW, press your HOME key to go straight to top of page, and END key to go straight to bottom. Just figured that out and it's handy.

New Round

 

[ccjcc81]

Round Tumbled 1 Hour

 

[ccjcc81]

Round Tumbled 24 Hours

 

[armoredman]

incredible pictures. Looks like river rock at that magnification.

 

[Walkalong]

Very cool pics.

Imagine that, the powder isn't dust after tumbling.

 

[Publius1688]

This is one of the reasons I love the handloading hobby. Cool guys who decide to take a microscope to gunpowder after tumbling it 24 hours. How neat is that?
I'd always thought that the 'powder into dust' canard was a little silly. Now, we see.
Fantastic post.

 

[Robert Wilson]

Very interesting. Thank you for going to the effort.

I have no particular opinion on the matter, and sometimes give loaded rounds a brief tumble to get rid of case lube or just pretty them up a bit, but it does seem to me that before anyone hangs their hat on the subject they would have to tumble their particular powder and then compare the burn rate with untumbled powder from the same lot. Something as simple as tumbling off a bit of deterrent could conceivably turn a hot load into a dangerous load.

 

[25 Pdr]

Remember reading of an incident where the Tumbler motor overheated and went on fire, cooking the rounds and doing a bit of damage to surrounding area.

Very unlikely, but possible I suppose. I always tumble loaded rifle rounds, but in an outside hut, and use a timer to start and finish when I'm not actually there, just in case.

I've also pulled some tumbled rounds and checked the powder under a microscope, without noticing any deterioration of powder.

 

[bullseye308]

what the heck kinda zoom you got on that camera?????

 

[Ron James]

Great experiment, wonderful pictures. I have always cleaned my loaded rounds with a tumbler will no ill effects. Your pictures more or less prove what I have always argued. Does no harms. ( at least to the powder ) . Thank you for the work you did.

 

[dc.fireman]

Sooo... I've often read in reloading manuals, that various powders are treated with graphite as an anti-clumping agent which aids in even dispensing through the powder charge. You don't possibly happen to have access to a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer by any chance - would be kinda cool to know for certain just what that residue left over on the glove contains? Pretty cool experiment!

 

[medalguy]

I have also seen on a forum somewhere where somebody did velocity tests on ammo that had been tumbled for several different time lengths, may have been several days for the longest time, I really can't remember now. The end results were that there were no measurable differences in velocity in any of the ammo samples. This clearly demonstrated that there is no degredation of powder after tumbling, even for extended periods of time.

If anyone else remembers this posting, please let us know so we can all go back there and read the information. I remember that it was a very well conducted test and pretty definitive in my opinion.

 

[ccjcc81]

Does anyone think this could be W231 powder?

 

[dredd]

First... Thank you for the great post!

medalguy...
The forum you are thinking about is here.
It shouldn't take much to dig it up.
It was very informative as well.

I love this forum!
Lurking here has helped me beyond measure!!!

bb

 

[ArchAngelCD]

Great pictures and a good topic too. I didn't think tumbling would effect the powder and for at least that powder, it seems to be true.

Thanks for taking the time to take the pictures and post them.

 

[rondog]

Looks like somebody got a cool new microscope for Christmas! I'm jealous.

Have you done this with stick-type rifle powders, like IMR4895? It would be nice to see what they do.

 

[LiveLife]

I have also seen on a forum somewhere where somebody did velocity tests on ammo that had been tumbled for several different time lengths ... If anyone else remembers this posting, please let us know so we can all go back there and read the information.

medalguy, snuffy and Walkalong did the 24-48 hour tumble and chrono tests in this thread - http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=498890

 

[ccjcc81]

Thanks for all the kudos guys. I had fun doing that little project. I'm glad you guys find it interesting.

Have you done this with stick-type rifle powders, like IMR4895? It would be nice to see what they do.

Not yet, as I don't have any. But I will when I get some, and I'll let you know. I found some old loads my father and I loaded up about 2 years ago with some Unique and tumbled them for 45 minutes. I pulled one and there was no noticeable difference in the powder to me. All clean and whole.

 

[Dewey 68]

Nice pictures and cool experiment.

Wonder how much "tumbling" powder gets in shipping? I'm sure it's not the same, but it would stand to reason that powder would be able to withstand some tumbling.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[RandKL]

I've been shooting old milsurp ammo for decades that's been tumbled to get rid of tarnish and baggy packed for cents a round at gunshows. I mentioned that once on one of these groups and some "expert" told me how it would blow up my gun every time. I didn't bother arguing. They always know better.

Great post!

rich

 

[Peter M. Eick]

Your pictures remind me a lot of Sedimentary Petrography and microscope work. I was also thinking about back in the day when I did contract microscope point counts for construction companies with their aggregates. Days sitting behind the scope identifing all of the different sediments.

Boy am I glad I am not doing that work anymore!

 

[RhinoDefense]

It's long been held in the industry that this is a safe practice. I don't know why the mythical danger of tumbling live ammunition is perpetuated on the Internet forums. Every single one of the big "factory" manufacturers tumble live ammunition to clean residue and polish it so it looks nice and pretty and aides with the final inspection.

 

[Grumpy Old Man]

Tumbling live rounds

Very cool pics. I've been tumbling live rounds for many years and tens of thousands of rounds. IMHO the only reason to do this is to remove the case lube and for that you only need to tumble for about 5 minutes. I go one better and use a separate batch of media and pour in about an ounce of rubbing alchohol. This does the cleaning and when you take the rounds out and separate the media the alchohol dries almost immediately and leaves no residue

Been shooting IPSC Production and load very close to power factor and see no difference in chrono results.

 

[GaryL]

Very cool, thanks for posting that.