Today I tried a mixture of walnut and comet cleanser in my five pound tumbler. I added 20 oz. of comet cleanser to the walnut mix. WOW, my casings came out looking better than new. I let the tumbler run for two hours with the new mixture. I have tried running it with just the walnut but my brass is still stained from being fired. This gave me the idea of adding some abrasive cleanser to the mix. My brass wall thickness is still maintained same as it was when I ran them thru the sizing die. I think I'm on to a good idea. See the pics below.....
This is why I like nickle plated brass. It always comes out looking like factory new ammo. All I do is run it in walnut shells for a couple of hours with a cap full of newfinish car wax.
"...............but I don't like the idea of cleaning brass with corn cob or walnut shells. Both of those contain a lot of fine dirt and abrasives."
What happens is the vibration acts as a separator. All the dirt and fine particles end up in the bottom of the vibratory cleaner bowl. If you are careful when transferring the cases out of the cleaner machine, the dust and fine particles stay in the bowl. I then use the Dillion rotary basket which tumble the brass to remove the remaining media out of the cases. In 25+ years of using this system my dies show no sign of scratches. And I really stretch the usage of the walnut shell media running it literally for years without changing it. I can not do that with the corn cob media as it doesn't clean but polishes and looses even that ability rather quickly.
But hey, we all get to choose. As long as the cleaning method does not harm the brass (as some unknown chemical in cleanser, or soap may) all is OK , I guess.
My wife has a small tumbler from Harbor Freight for her jewlery work. She uses the steel pins. I gave her a handfull of 9mms to clean and polish after reading this thread as a test. The results were great after only an hour of tumbling. Her little three pound unit would limit capacity. I asked her how many she thought it would do at a time and she guessed about 75. They do have a double drum unit. But hey I can give up capacity if I can save $.
I've got one of those rotary rock tumblers and was thinking about buying the refill kit for the pins and trying that. I don't know, I'll probably just keep going with the vibratory and have brass that's clean enough and ready right out of the cleaner.
The SS pins sure do make brass look like new, inside and out. I bought 10 pounds of pins a couple of years ago and I've used them many times. The drawback is the time required to separate pins, brass, and water. So, I decided to only use the pins when I get some really stained brass or tarnished brass. Otherwise I just use cob and NuFinish polish.
The SS pins are expensive, but they never wear out, and never need replacing. Buy once, cry once, as they say.
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