Brass prep?

[wayoutwest]

Fellas 2 questions:

1. Is it necessary to tumble brass? Is it only to clean it after firing it or is there more to it? If it is only to clean it is there locally available stuff at Lowes/Home Depot that can also clean it? Soap/water / Simple green / Windex/amonia

2. Resizing Lube, I found Hornady One Shot locally (can says work on all reloading tools), will this work for Full Lenght sizing? If not again anything at the hardware store that might work.

Just trying to avoid another online order and a week in transit

Thanks in advance

[grammaton76]

Your best bet for these questions is the forums over on www.brianenos.com. There's LOADS of info on alternative means of brass prep on there.

Also, One Shot is highly recommended, even over Dillon's lube, on Enos's site.

[ocabj]

One Shot is good stuff, but it gets expensive quick. I've been using the same tin of Imperial Die Wax for 3-years and about 10,000 cases later; still have half the tin left. $5 per tin vs $5 spray can of One Shot which doesn't last nearly as long.

I still dry tumble using crushed walnut media purchased from Magnolia Bird Farm in Riverside for $8 per 25lb bag. The way I clean fired rifle brass:

1. Take batch and deprime (no resizing; just deprime) and clean primer pockets with Dewey Crocogator hand tool.

2. Fill tumbler with walnut media. Pour about half a capful of Nu Finish car polish into tumbler along with about a tablespoon of mineral spirits. Let tumbler run for 5 minutes with no brass in it to mix polish and mineral spirits.

3. After 5 minutes, toss batch of brass to clean along with dryer sheet (fabric softener). This works wonders to cut dust and static in the plastic bowl.

4. After about 2 hours of tumbling, seperate brass from tumbler.

5. Resize brass.

6. Trim brass.

7. Debur/chamber necks.

8. Fill tumber with crushed walnut media. Add capful of Nu-Finish and tablespoon of mineral spirits as before and run for 5 minutes to mix. Note: I personally use keep media used to clean fired brass and media used to clean cleaned/resized/lubed brass seperate from each other. I will throw away the media used to clean fired/dirty brass more frequently than media used to clean the lube off brass.

9. After 5 minutes, add brass and dryer sheet. Tumble for X amount of hours. I personally let the tumbler run for a few hours. I tend to just let it go and do something else in the house.

10. After X amount of time, end tumbling. Seperate brass from media.

11. Load cases neck first into a tray. I use the trays that factory pistol/rifle ammo come in. Use a pick of some sort to push into the flashholes to ensure all are clear of media.

That's it.

As far as pistol brass, I deprime, tumble, and resize and the brass is ready to go. I don't lube straight wall pistol, so I don't have a second tumbling step.

My father has his own 'ritual' of dry tumbling and washing pistol brass. I don't know exactly what he does, but his stuff comes out very clean.

6mmbr.com has an article about ultrasonic cleaning, which looks interesting.

[ocabj]

Oh, and I use two different tumblers. I have a Lyman tumbler with the sifter style lid which I use outside to tumble fired brass. I prefer to keep the lead dust in the garage to a minimum. The second tumbler is an RCBS with a closed style lid that I use to tumble resize/lubed brass.

The reason why I deprime brass before tumbling is to minimize the lead dust being added to the tumbling media. Spent primers actually constitute most of the contaminate lead you will encounter during the reloading process.

[Santa Cruz Armory]

How do you deprime without resizing? I have Lee dies and it does it in one step...

[ocabj]

There is die that is called a depriming or decapping die. All it does is pop the primer out. The Lee one is the best. The way they designed the decapping stem is far superior to the RCBS (surprisingly). I had the RCBS for a long time then started reloading my once fired LC surplus brass. 20 cases in I broke a pin. 20 more cases later, another pin. About 20 more cases, I snapped the entire decapping stem all together. Had to email RCBS for a new one. Ended up getting the Lee because of the beefier design.

[joe4702]

Funny, I had the opposite experience. My Lee decapper kept breaking pins so I switched to RCBS - no problems so far. I do use Lee dies for everything else. They work fine and are inexpensive.

[xrMike]

The reason why I deprime brass before tumbling is to minimize the lead dust being added to the tumbling media. Spent primers actually constitute most of the contaminate lead you will encounter during the reloading process.

That's what I do too, and for the same reason. I don't have many brain cells left, and want to eliminate them as I see fit!

[tteng]

Lee pins shouldn't break, it should just slip out of its crimper if the going is too hard. As for resizing lube, I figure it's just preventing the brass from getting stuck and all you need is a film of oil bearing to prevent that, I just use cooking oil and it works fine. Afterwards I soak the brass in hot soapy water to clean the brass, rid the oil, and dissolved any salt from surplus ammo. Dry and wipe down the brass and it's good to go. I don't even use the tumbler. My brass isn't as shinning, but my rifle doesn't care.

[C.G.]

Fellas 2 questions:

1. Is it necessary to tumble brass? Is it only to clean it after firing it or is there more to it? If it is only to clean it is there locally available stuff at Lowes/Home Depot that can also clean it? Soap/water / Simple green / Windex/amonia

2. Resizing Lube, I found Hornady One Shot locally (can says work on all reloading tools), will this work for Full Lenght sizing? If not again anything at the hardware store that might work.

Just trying to avoid another online order and a week in transit

Thanks in advance

You don't need to tumble brass the first few firings, but eventually you will get build up and you should clean. When I'll get to that point I will go ultrasonic, as ocabj mentioned:

http://www.6mmbr.com/ultrasonic.html

[dw1784]

q1- u don't need to tumble. I've only got 40 pieces of 7.5swiss so I put them in old detergent bottles and slosh them in warm soapy water first(deprimed) then throw them in a zip block bag with warm water and bit of white vineger. Slosh them around, flip sides a few times. Next morning it'll be all shiny and clean

q2- I'm going to try Imperial Sizing Wax as suggest by ocabj. As for homebrew, I've read anything from transmission oil+mineral spirit to handlotions(lanolin based) watered down with mineral spirit or alcohol. Dillon's lube spray is lanolin and alcohol, so maybe u can try mixing up a batch. I've always wondered about furniture polish or car wax too, maybe I'll try it one of these days For now I'm using RCBS lube and it's better than Lee's watery paste for sure.