Wet Tumbling vs Dry media

[crystalgayleguy]

get brass juice it makes brass shine like jewelry

 

[Art Dirindin]

I originally bought a Chicago Electric tumbler from Harbor Freight. Has duel drums and works awesome with SS pins as a wet tumbler. Saw a YouTube video where A guy used 4" PVC pipe and made a single drum to replace the duels. Made one of my own and it works awesome and I can easily now do about 200 HG or 100 rifle brass at a time.

I can not strongly recommend a Franklin Arsenal separation magnet to separate, retrieve and deposit your pins back once your done. I can not imagine using SS pins with out it.
I converted my old Lyman vibratory cleaner to a poor mans sonic cleaner which works surprisingly very well. I use a solution of 50/50 WD40 and odorless mineral spirits as a cleaning solvent. I use it strictly for cleaning gun parts.

First time I used it was for cleaning well used BCG's for my AR's and it did a impressive job after a 45 minuet soak.

 

[DngBat7]

New reloader here. Have watched a lot of videos and read threads regarding wet vs dry. Still undecided. Question I have with dry tumbling is: I have seen some de-prime their brass before tumbling and cleaning. But, if you do this, isn't it going to damage the die and possibly scratch the necks of all subsequent brass you de-prime? is it better to clean brass first, then de-prime and manually clean the primer pocket?

One thing that does not get mentioned to much is that dry tumbling puts a lot of carbon filled dust in air that’s not good for the lungs when pouring it through a screen or using a rotating separator to separate the brass from media. Doing this over a lifetime will not be good to breath in. For that reason to me it was worth going to wet.

 

[243Lapua]

I don't wet tumble or use vibratory cleaning. I shoot 6ppc and my necks are neck turned to thin on a .262 neck. So I just clean the primer pocket, FL size with bushing, brush the inside of the neck, Wipe clean and reload.

 

[cw308]

I switched from dry to wet after 25+ years , will never go back to dry . As listed above the dust is a good reason to switch even though I switched because of how well it cleaned inside and out , like reloading with new brass every time , no harm in giving it a try , the harbor freight single drum tumbler is a good starting point that won't break the bank . I still use it for small volume cleaning.