An Amatuer's Take on Wet Tumblin

[picker]

I have 2 Frankford dry tumblers because I shoot a lot I have one filled with walnut shell for cleaning and another one with corn cob for polishing and they work good, but thought I would try the wet tumbling just to see what I was missing.
It works well and it does clean the inside and I suppose the pocket if you took the time to deprime your brass, truthfully the only advantage I can see about the wet tumbler I bought is you can flat load it up, 30# of brass and liquid and I did that and it cleaned it nice, it's a little more hassle with the pins and rinsing the brass and then drying it, but if you got a lot to do this might be your baby it cleans a lot in a short time, if you don't wanna spend the extra bucks for a wet tumbler and you have some really old dirty stained brass, it's a simple matter of cleaning it like new with walnut shell and glass beads, the kind of media you use in a small sand blaster one cup of that in your walnut media works wonders on old stained brass, don't put too much it tho because it will clean but it will also dull, still have to use corn cob to polish wet or dry.
Best/picker

 

[Toprudder]

Never tried the glass beads, but thought about it one time when I was at Northern Tool.

I like my wet tumbler. I like to wait until I have enough to till the Frankford rotary tumbler, which is about 1000 .40 or 1200 9mm. With those amounts, the extra actual labor compares favorably to dry tumbling. And I don't have to worry about lead exposure from primer residue. JMHO.

 

[GBExpat]

the only advantage I can see about the wet tumbler I bought is you can flat load it up, 30# of brass and liquid and I did that and it cleaned it nice

For a long time I had been putting off cleaning up a box of 5.56 brass (2k+) and a couple of bags of accumulated .44mag cases (500+). I have 2 vibratory case cleaners that I use with CC media (+polish), but the job represented a LOT of hassle for me with those, since I also wanted to acid-wash the cases to make them bright.

I found that in 3 batches of 3 hours/ea the Frankford wet tumbler (plus a spoon of citric acid and a bit of Dawn and the sack of SS pins) made all of this brass look like NEW.

Excellent!

Since then I have replaced the Dawn component of the process with Armor All Wash & Wax.

 

[therealwormey]

For a long time I had been putting off cleaning up a box of 5.56 brass (2k+) and a couple of bags of accumulated .44mag cases (500+). I have 2 vibratory case cleaners that I use with CC media (+polish), but the job represented a LOT of hassle for me with those, since I also wanted to acid-wash the cases to make them bright.

I found that in 3 batches of 3 hours/ea the Frankford wet tumbler (plus a spoon of citric acid and a bit of Dawn and the sack of SS pins) made all of this brass look like NEW.

Excellent!

Since then I have replaced the Dawn component of the process with Armor All Wash & Wax.

whats the advantage using the armor all instead of the dawn and do you use the same amount of AA as you did dawn.

 

[GBExpat]

whats the advantage using the armor all instead of the dawn

The wax. The cases have a slight wax coating which should keep them brighter longer and may also help them to move more easily thru the sizing die (I have read where one person reported that).

I have not yet loaded any of my W&W cases, using up the others first. I do, however, have them segregated from their Dawn-wash brethren so that I can more easily compare the two as time goes on ... I am interested to see if they do resist tarnish better.

And, yes, I use about the same amount, perhaps a half ounce per batch.

Quite frankly, though, the magic is in the spoonful of citric acid.