Long story short - don't do it!
Rest of the story... I've been handloading for a while, but never bothered to buy a tumbler. The brass I reload is new rifle brass purchased by yours truly and collected right from the rifle, quickly wiped off and put back into my ammo box. It does get dirty, but mostly it's soot and some remnants of case lube - this is not crap that's been sitting in mud and picked up at the range. I use a collet neck sizer, so cases don't get lubed too often.
I sprung for a Lyman tumbler, but the media and polish were a much better deal elsewhere. The tumbler arrived today, but I won't have media and polish until Monday, and I hate to wait to try out new things. So I've got this mostly full 25 pound bag of rice from Costco and remember hearing that it works as tumbling media, even preferred by some.
Two hours later 90% of the soot remains, but what little case lube was present has now attracted "rice dust". But the rice is now dirty and inedible (LOL). To add further trouble, a grain of long-grain rice seems to fit very snug in the flash hole of a LR primer pocket. About half the cartridges are now wearing a grain of rice that will require a stout tap or the tool I use to clean up flash holes, not to mention a .277 case mouth is not large enough to "pour" out rice, it's got to be "shooken" out. This is all from tumbling with just rice and no polish or additive.
By searching "rice" and "tumble" I did not find any recent threads to simply add my experience to. Thus, the dedicated thread to the questionable practice.
Rest of the story... I've been handloading for a while, but never bothered to buy a tumbler. The brass I reload is new rifle brass purchased by yours truly and collected right from the rifle, quickly wiped off and put back into my ammo box. It does get dirty, but mostly it's soot and some remnants of case lube - this is not crap that's been sitting in mud and picked up at the range. I use a collet neck sizer, so cases don't get lubed too often.
I sprung for a Lyman tumbler, but the media and polish were a much better deal elsewhere. The tumbler arrived today, but I won't have media and polish until Monday, and I hate to wait to try out new things. So I've got this mostly full 25 pound bag of rice from Costco and remember hearing that it works as tumbling media, even preferred by some.
Two hours later 90% of the soot remains, but what little case lube was present has now attracted "rice dust". But the rice is now dirty and inedible (LOL). To add further trouble, a grain of long-grain rice seems to fit very snug in the flash hole of a LR primer pocket. About half the cartridges are now wearing a grain of rice that will require a stout tap or the tool I use to clean up flash holes, not to mention a .277 case mouth is not large enough to "pour" out rice, it's got to be "shooken" out. This is all from tumbling with just rice and no polish or additive.
By searching "rice" and "tumble" I did not find any recent threads to simply add my experience to. Thus, the dedicated thread to the questionable practice.
