Help me get this loathsome lanolin film off 2,500 cases by using my wet tumbler.

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To recap:

2,500 pieces of 223 brass, a wet tumbler, and it's media, all covered in a home-brew of anhydrous lanolin and 'Heet',,,

Wish I had a quick/tested answer, but I don't.

(I'm sure we all have plenty of suggestions on what to do / use next time, myself included, but none of that helps the OP with his current problem)

Closest thing I've went through is sim to DudeDog.

Getting the tumbler and media back in working order first is where I started

After that, one may consider working through the 2,500 pieces in very small lots,,, either by themselves ~any way you see fit~, or perhaps mix a few in with some 'un-tainted' brass and try the tumbler again...
 
Getting the tumbler and media back in working order first is where I started
409 was my friend there as well.
Lucky I had bought a gallon bottle at Sams Club.

Seemed like a good plan to add car wax at the time,
Opened it up expecting super shiny brass and saw the results and said :cuss:
Went to clean it and said :cuss::cuss::cuss: about an hour later I had a clean drum and pins, brass took a bit longer.
Almost just tossed the brass but is was a fight getting it clean and I didn't want to lose.
Car wax in dry tumbler with corn cob/walnut = good
Car wax in the wet tumbler with pins = :cuss:
 
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I think the wonderful solvent MEK would cut the stuff very easily.

I prefer the toxic solvents over all the go Green stuff.:)

I tried some "green" gun cleaner and it is useless, might as well have used Simple Green.

Heck I have cleaned surplus rifles with 5 lbs of cosmoline on/in them and seems it was less trouble than cleaning some damn lubed brass!
 
409 was my friend there as well.
Lucky I had bought a gallon bottle at Sams Club.

Seemed like a good plan to add car wax at the time,
Opened it up expecting super shiny brass and saw the results and said :cuss:
Went to clean it and said :cuss::cuss::cuss: about an hour later I had a clean drum and pins, brass took a bit longer.
Almost just tossed the brass but is was a fight getting it clean and didn't want to lose.
Car wax in dry tumbler with corn cob/walnut = good
Car wax in the wet tumbler with pins = :cuss:

I would poke fun at you, but I tried Simple Green once on some nasty old brass. The Simple Green tore into the rubber liner and redeposited the rubber grunge on the brass. Luckily a normal tumble cleaned them.

Yeah, the wax in Wash and Wax works great (pick your brand) just adding wax. Nope.
 
Dry tumbling and the nasty dust, hassle, unlcean primer pockets. No thanks when wet tumbling is so easy.

What dust? If you control it there is no dust. Your breathing in more contaminates shooting your firearms then from the tumbler.

What hassle, put cases in tumbler, tumble for a while, dump cases in separator and turn a few times, remove from separator and load. Yep lots of hassle there. I spend less then 5 minutes handling time to tumble 500 pieces of brass.

As for primer pockets I would just as soon spend the few minutes cleaning them then messing around with washing brass. After the first time uniforming the primer pocket its quick and easy to drop the case on the reamer for a turn or few while doing the case mouth after trimming.

Do what you want but when one can't get case lube off of cases without looking at using harsh chemicals and extra steps I would think that maybe wet tumbling isn't the best choice in all situations. From what I read most guys that are wet tumbling brass also dry tumble to remove lube.
 
****** PROBLEM SOLVED ********

Thanks to all of you who suggested solvents, heat, dry tumbling, and other great solutions. Since I have only a wet tumbler, I decided to first try a solvent and picked up a pint of 91 per cent Isopropyl alcohol at the grocery store.

It worked great! I poured only a pint of it in the tumbler, added about 500 pcs of slimy, waxy, dark gray brass and ran it for about fifteen minutes. The brass came out perfectly clean. I recovered the alcohol, which was almost black, with a funnel, and used it again to clean another 500 pcs for about fifteen minutes. They too came out shiny and clean. I was able to recover about 80 per cent of the alcohol after cleaning about a thousand cases of .223. I'll continue to use this alcohol despite it's black color to clean the other 1,500 or so lanolin coated cases. If it feels like I reach the limit of this alcohol's ability to dissolve the lanolin or my ability to recover it, I'll just get another bottle for a final rinse of this brass. Turns out, a little bit of Isopropyl goes a long way.

The brass seems to be very clean and it has the smoothest feel of any brass cases that I've ever handled. I suspect it is because there is a very thin coating of lanolin left on the brass after the alcohol dries off it. The only reason that could be a problem is if I drop a cartridge in the dirt and some abrasive sand could stick to it. Anyway, I'm not worried about that and I'm just happy that I didn't have to dispose of these 2,500 cases.

Thanks again to everyone at THR who contributed to this thread and offered ideas!
 
Glad the IPA worked :D :rofl: I was fairly sure a given amount of lanolin (not much, but sticky, nasty) would go into solution with a lot of alcohol. Given your reuse of the IPA, kinda proves it. I would have just poured the black juice out......in a strictly cathartic way!!:(:D
 
AWESOME NEWS!!!!
And the 'fix' didn't involve a lot of $$$ or risking 'accidental death or dismemberment!'
 
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