Brass Tumbling

[BE Mike]

I was reading on another forum recently that before tumblers, the cleaner of choice was koolaid. As reported, it's a mild acid and does a nice job of cleaning, and sugared or not makes no difference. There is sometimes a discoloration that is unremoved, but it doesn't affect accuracy. BE Mike, I can appreciate pride in work and workmanship. I would say that given a choice between form and function, I would choose the latter every time. It seems, however, that given a choice of one or the other, you are choosing both, and I can't exactly fault that either.

This is a slight threadjack from the OP, but I thought it might be of benefit to our members here who reload.

Blessings,
Bill

I never heard of Kool-Aid, but way back when I first started reloading, I got a recipe from an NRA article. IIRC, It said to use vinegar, salt and warm water. Put it in a jar, put a tight lid on and shake it. The brass was then rinsed in fresh water and then placed on cookie sheets in a warm oven or out in the sun to dry. It worked, but tumblers are so much nicer.

 

[DHolder]

I use warm water, a little dish soap and some lemon shine on range brass. That helps to get the tarnish off, turns the brass a light pink were it has worked. This also gets dirt and cobwebs out. Dry in the sun on a towel. I have cob media with a little lemon shine in it, this I use to tumble for half an hour to scrub the brass. I sift it and return it to a media mix of cob, hard rice and nu-finish. Tumble for polish a couple of hours. The longer you tumble the better but it seems it just tarnishes up after reloading.

 

[jim7310]

My main concern in tumbling empty brass is to make sure all of the grit and dirt is off of the case so it does not end up in the die - I also like shiney brass. I also briefly tumble loaded rounds (separate media) to make sure all the lube is off the brass.

 

[1$Chuck]

Thread resurrection:

I was recently playing with soaking brass in some different solutions that I'd read about on here and other places. I'd like to find a pre-soak that I could use before tumbling to clean tarnished brass and also to help clean the inside of the case as well as primer pockets. I know there are already solutions out there like Iosso and Beachwood Casey, but I wanted something cheap and easy to find.

I tried the orange cool-aid, vinegar, lemon juice with salt, and "The Works" toilet cleaner diluted 4 to 1 with water. Believe it or not, all of them did a pretty good job of cleaning brass if left to soak for about 12 hours. All of them caused some discoloration of the brass, leaving some pieces slightly pink. Whatever it was came right off with a little Flitz. I probably need to shorten the soak time down to 8-10 hours or so.

Of the 4 solutions, there was one I thought yielded results quicker and also had much cleaner primer pockets and that was the diluted "The Works" toilet cleaner. Sorry, I didn't take any pictures and try at your own risk, but I'll be experimenting further.

 

[gixer454]

Thread Resurrection yet again! I am in the process of trying a moxture of "citric acid", 2 teaspoons per quart of boiling water. I came into a large quantity of range brass that was tarnished so bad it was black. I cleaned in hot soapy water to get the dirts and bugs out of it, and then I added the brass to the above mixture. It came out pink in less than 5 minutes. It's in the tumbler now, if it works I will post pictures of before and after.

By the way, you can get citric acid in the canning section of the grocery store, I picked mine up at Rural King in Logansport for $4.