Stainless media question

[edistoriverrat]

What is the purpose of the stainless media in a wet tumbler?
I put about 200 to 250 9mm cases in a 1.5 quart juicy-juice jug, put two ounces of 100% lemon juice, two ounces of white vinagar, and one teaspoon of dishwasher soap, filled the jug 3/4 water, and put in my homemade tumbler for 4 hours. Then dried, put in corncob/polish media for another 4 hours. Some of this brass 40 pc. had been outside for over a year, and was tarnished black. Every piece is now shiny as new, and slick as eel poo, even the inside is clean enough tho not as shiny, pocket is shiny also. Someday I will have to put up a pic of my tumbler, its different, but it works for me.

 

[kwatters]

You can search the forum for stainless media and find many threads on it.
Vinegar is an acid and many people use it diluted in ultrasonic cleaners with good results. It is recommended you run your brass through a wash process to clean off the acid.

Different roads to get to the same place. Stainless media is attractive because it virtually never wears out.
Wait long enough and someone else will come along and tell you it is a waste of time getting the brass that clean, it's not necessary. They are not wrong either, it is all about personal preference.

 

[edistoriverrat]

Yes, I washed the brass several times with water, towled off to make sure nothing on the outside of brass, and dried under a fan, then tumbled them in the corncob/polish.

 

[Kisada]

I'm a somewhat new reloader and currently use stainless to tumble with. My second batch turned out amazing and I like the idea of not having to replenish media, as well as lack of dust and whatnot. Like others said, one of many ways to the same end.

My personal reason was to get it super shiny in order to see every minor defect in the brass, again being kinda new to the reloading game.

 

[Mosin Mounts]

Stainless Media Works For Me

I use stainless steel media for extremely dirty or extremely tarnished brass cases. My batch size is limited by the size of my rotary tumbler, but it only takes a fraction of the time compared to a vibratory tumbler, and it's much more quiet in the garage. I still use dry walnut and corncob sometimes, but not as often as I once did.

The only downside in the process of wet tumbling is the drying time. With dry corncob or walnut tumbling, you can virtually go from tumbler to loading bench immediately. Wet tumbling requires thorough drying before getting near the bench, but I usually have a couple of batches drying or already dry and ready to load.

To save money and test the method before investing in stainless media, I found some very tiny stainless rivets to use as media. The standard stainless media 'pins' are easy to detect if you miss one, but a tiny rivet can be hard to detect and can mess up a die if you aren't careful.

 

[Mosin Mounts]

Forgot to mention, the biggest advantage with stainless media for me is time savings. If you're already cleaning your brass in a wet solution in a tumbler, you wont be bothered by the part of the process most guys dislike, that's the 'wet' portion.

stainless media + hot H2O + lemi-shine + 30 min. tumble = like-new brass