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Rotary tumbling or vibratory?

A rotary tumbler with water and pins cleans better than a vibratory tumbler with media.

Steel pins on brass cause peening. Most visible on the case mouth after enough time.

Neither way makes a difference on pistol brass.

You don't want rifle brass peened.

Weigh up the pros and cons.
 
M-61 said:
New to me. Corn dust wearing steel barrels out.
Never looking back is never seeing how far you’ve come or fallen.
I’m the 3rd generation using the same shovel to move coal.
Just guessing here but coal is harder than corn dust and though I’m not a metallurgist I’ll also guess the #2 coal shovel is softer than barrel steel. I see no signs of wear on the shovel yet.
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M-61, this is another one of Mother Nature's cruel and amazing tricks....

In one place, you may hear the word graphite and you think of a powdered lubricant. But, it is that same graphite in another form that makes up a hard coating called DLC (Diamond Like Carbon) or synthetic diamond abrasive.

Just a little difference in the atmosphere between the ground versus up at high altitude when bombers first started flying there, and they discovered that the graphite brushes in the commutations of electric motors were turning from a slick low wear material, to an aggressive abrasive that wore out the motor commutations quickly.

Carbon requires the water (humidity) in the air to be a low friction lubricant. That same material in a vacuum or dry atmosphere becomes an abrasive. Go figure?!?
 
SteveOak said:
Are there any negative(s) to a vibratory tumbler that a rotary does not have?

I would run it in the garage so noise is not an issue. Nor is a modest amount of dust.

I use corn and a little Nu Finish.

Thank you.
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I run both in the garage and you can hardly hear them.

If you want them shiny beautiful, go rotary.

If clean is good enough, vibratory.

That's what I have learned in my very short reloading experience.
 
r bose said:
I'm glad I found reference to this on Compass Lake's website. I would never suggest Frank, his family or his company would publish such information without extensive testing. Perhaps a call Monday is in order?
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How do you do extensive testing of corn dust wearing a barrel out quicker? Do you shoot 1000s of rounds thru 25 barrels and measure wear. Come on use common sense. Gunsmith don't do extensive, expensive research in their machine shop. It's just his personal opinion without any facts.

There are two kinds of people in the world: some people believe what other people want them to believe and some people use their brains and common sense to consider the facts or lack of facts. Consider things like, it's one person’s opinion, does he have the tools to make the determination, did he explain how he made the determination, he is the only person in the world that possesses this knowledge, how do tiny particles survive combustion without being carbonized, are corn particle abrasive, does it make sense ect.
 
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RegionRat said:
M-61, this is another one of Mother Nature's cruel and amazing tricks....

In one place, you may hear the word graphite and you think of a powdered lubricant. But, it is that same graphite in another form that makes up a hard coating called DLC (Diamond Like Carbon) or synthetic diamond abrasive.

Just a little difference in the atmosphere between the ground versus up at high altitude when bombers first started flying there, and they discovered that the graphite brushes in the commutations of electric motors were turning from a slick low wear material, to an aggressive abrasive that wore out the motor commutations quickly.

Carbon requires the water (humidity) in the air to be a low friction lubricant. That same material in a vacuum or dry atmosphere becomes an abrasive. Go figure?!?
Click to expand...
I thought we were talking about corn cob dust.
But I found your post informative.
 
Interesting…….my conclusion. Use what ya got, if your happy with it and it works, by all means change. The old, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

Carbon in case necks, yes, no, yes, no. If you anneal it comes off.
 
Got a HF rock tumbler and some SS chips. Not impressed honestly. Pain to dump each case of wet chips and then dry. It does clean ok though. Doesn't look new, usually grainy looking.
 
I went down a pretty “dark” path with my brass cleaning due to my OCD. I bought multiple high end tumbler, vibratory, and ultrasonic units in the pursuit of the best solution.

What I ended up finding out is that for my style of shooting (bench/clean environment), cleaning is virtually completely useless (besides a quick wipe of the necks and primer pocket cleaning tool.

only thing I actually use now is a rotary tumbler with rice to get the sizing lube off of large batches.
 
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r bose said:
Had a well known gunsmith tell me to wet tumble. Dry, vibratory tumblers leave a small amount of corn dust in the cases and when fired will wear barrels quicker than normal. Went to wet tumbling, no pins, and never looked back.
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Some people insist on using nylon bore brushes for the same reason.
 
r bose said:
Had a well known gunsmith tell me to wet tumble. Dry, vibratory tumblers leave a small amount of corn dust in the cases and when fired will wear barrels quicker than normal. Went to wet tumbling, no pins, and never looked back.
Click to expand...
Wouldn't any corn cob dust be turned into carbon from the 3000+ degree flame?
 
I "tumble" precision cases across a microfiber damp with 90% alcohol or other light solvent of your choice. Short vibe session to remove case lube...Maybe. But, I'm not processing range brass, either
 
Ive had the same Thumblers B model for years. I only started wet tumbling because I was shooting BPCR. And water is needed to break down blackpowder fouling. I used it with ceramic media. Ive cleaned a lot of brass with the stainless pins. And so far the only advantage to me is how clean the primer pockets get. I use the tumbler more and more lately with dry corn cob. Less steps. Simpler. No drying. My son inlaw is just starting to reload and I told him to buy a vibratory tumbler and keep it simple.
 
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