The normal solution is 1 gallon of water, 1 tablespoon of Dawn liquid dish soap, 1/4 teaspoon of Lemon Shine or citric acid, and 5 lb of stainless steel pins. Tumblers are rated at a certain total weight. The total weight for mine is 15 lb. So if I use 5 lb of pins and 1 gallon of water (8.3 lb) the total weight of brass is 1.7 lb. which is about 125 .223 cases. I find that I can cut the weight of pins down to 4 lb and use 7 lb of water and about 250 .223 cases and they come out looking like new.
I only ran them for three hours in Dawn Liquid Dish Soap and Lemi Shine measured out according to the manufacturers specifications with 5 pounds of Stainless Steel Media. The primer pockets were clean but not spotless. I will load up another batch and run them for five hour for comparison.
Moonman, I love this unit, it is HEAVY duty, relatively quiet, and will last me probably the rest of my life. The knobs verses the wing nuts are a nice upgrade.
Yes, these may not be perfect, I think with a couple hours more they will be, but the vibratory tumbler worked for over six hours and didn't even make a dent in cleaning this same brass. I couldn't be happier with the purchase, thanks again Steve for the link to their web site.
I never even considered wet tumbling, until I got to reading some of the posts here. I have some brass that was wet tumbled and they are "beautiful" but that didn't make any difference to me, or so I thought. Well anyway, I was in a Harbor Freight store in Tallahassee last week and inspected the one I ultimately ordered. It is not the best quality but then the price is not 3-400 bucks either. It seems to seal tightly enough to hold water so it should work fine.
I had a Thumbler tumbler about 40 years ago which I actually used for making jewelry. I used it for brass tumbling when I first started reloading. I bought a Lyman turbo about 35 years ago and put the Thumbler's aside. I gave it to my neighbor about 5 years ago.
Those look like you did not add enough soap to the water. If you open the tumbler and there is no foam on top it means you ran out of soap before the brass was clean. When that happens the black crud will deposit all over the brass making it look dull and dirty. Been there and done that.
P.S. Lemon shine is not culprit - too little dawn soap is the problem.
May want to consider some baking soda rinse after removing them from the original cleaning solution to neutralize the citric acid of the Lei-shine. Then the final water rinse.
The EXTREME 17 POUND TUMBLER has some definite Pluses over the Thumber's Tumbler
15 pound model B Hi-Speed.
It has 1/2" Shafts (HOLDS MORE BRASS).
It has more capacity 17 VS 15 pounds of brass.
Looks like a better Drive Belt.
It's Powder Coated Not Painted (Including the inside of the drum).
Pillow Block Bearings.
The Anti-Vibration 1/4"-20 Fluted Female Knobs/Nuts that people
add to their Thumbler's replacing the wing nuts, are standard on the EXTREME.
Looks like both motors are 3000 rpm Hi-Speed.
Nice looking unit.
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