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by bagman45
Tue Dec 22, 2020 1:51 am
Forum: Reloading Forum
Topic: Article: What’s The Best Way To Clean Brass?
Replies: 24
Views: 15521

Re: Article: What’s The Best Way To Clean Brass?

While I absolutely love watching Alton Brown's cooking show "Good Eats", the man can over complicate ANYTHING. I've been reloading for around thirty five years, and this discussion strikes me as the same thing. As always, it depends on what you and your needs are, but I've just been rolling with a decades old Lyman vibrating tumbler with good old, cheap corn cob media, and it's done all that I need it to do. No de-capping first, just throw the dirty brass in the tumbler out in the garage, plug it in, and come back in a few hours - or the next morning. If it's not clean enough, I plug it back in, go back inside and check it when I get a chance.

Once it's clean enough, I just use the top of the tumbler lid; which has slots in it like a colander, over a bucket, and pour the brass onto it, then just rake the brass around until all of the corn cob is out of the cases - I do use disposable gloves and an N95 mask for that part so as not to inhale the bad dust bits. That's actually a new procedure for me, as I didn't used to do that and am still kicking, but what the heck. my better half has gotten paranoid lately.... No need for another "media separator", which is nothing but a uni-tasker and just another thing I'd have to store somewhere. That said, I did read about using Nu Finish and decided to try it out. It actually worked great. The brass is like jewelry, and slick as snot on marbles, even the cases out of an HK91, so I'll likely do that going forward. Only downside is that the corn cob gets filthy and will need to be replaced more frequently, but so far will stick to that method unless I find out that it gums up my dies or something.

As you can likely tell, I'm an older guy, who adheres to the KISS principle whenever possible, not to mention a cheap bastard. While your mileage may vary, this works for me, so I have no need to add lots more gee-gaws that would just cost me more and require more places to store. At this point, I'm trying to simplify and downsize, so unless there is an unbelievable advantage to a new approach, I stick to refinements to tried and true processes......

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