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What is the consensus on which wet tumbler you use and why?

jonbearman

I live in new york state,how unfortunate !
I am making myself sick from inhaling all the darn dust over the years and am fed up with it. I want to go to a wet /pin tumbler. Which size pins, separator, and tumbler do you recommend and why? I will be selling a rifle off to convert to this so it may take a short while and then sell off almost all my dry tumblers to boot. I have a Dillon large tumbler that works great but powderize's all the polish and what not. I wear a mask but still get the burn in my nose. I do high volume tumbling at times and it sucks.
 
I had a dry tumbler. Then I went and bought the Franklin Arsenal Platinum Wet Tumbler.
Man what a step up. No more media in my primer pockets that I had to pick out that arent even clean. No more powdery film on the cases. This tumbler cleans the shells to the highest degree of shine from primer pockets to insides and all you need to add is a dash of Lemishine, Dawn and Water.
I would pick up the Magnet they sell for it as it great for picking up steel media pins from 5 gallon bucket (which you will need).
I have done well over ten thousand easily and it works perfectly every time.
I think Cabelas is running a sale on them btw.
 
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I agree I have the arsenal and a thumblers. I like the arsenal better. My favorite option on it is the timer. Like you said I'm pretty sure Cabela's is running a special.
 
They are easy to make and if you have parts laying around like I did, I only had to buy the pillow block bearings. If you don't have the parts laying around, try classified ads in your local paper for garage sales, ect. Even Craigslist can help.
As far as the media, there are sellers on Ebay and maybe even on this site that sell the pins or you could go Ceramic media. By far this is the best method of cleaning brass.
 
I am making myself sick from inhaling all the darn dust over the years and am fed up with it. I want to go to a wet /pin tumbler. Which size pins, separator, and tumbler do you recommend and why? I will be selling a rifle off to convert to this so it may take a short while and then sell off almost all my dry tumblers to boot. I have a Dillon large tumbler that works great but powderize's all the polish and what not. I wear a mask but still get the burn in my nose. I do high volume tumbling at times and it sucks.
You switch for exactly the reason I switch - that dust have the lead from the primers in it so. I use the original Thumbler Tumbler and it works great for me for the last 6 years.
 
RCBS SideWinder drum tumbler w/ multiple dedicated drums(untreated/moly/wax/STM) to accomplish the various tasks.

StainlessTumblingMedia s/s pins.

2 teaspoons of LemiShine Booster in warm water, tumble....45minutes....drain...repeat....45minutes....done.
 
Started with a Midway vibrator, bought a Hornady too when the Midway shook itself to pieces. Found a used RCBS rotary for moly'ing bullets; even used it was too much money for what you get.

STM appeared on the scene, I bought a Thumbler's Model B & extra drum, never looked back.

Hornady still gets used for removing case lube once in awhile, otherwise everything gets wet-processed.

Only thing I added was six plastic knobs (brass threaded inserts) for the Thumbler's cover; those cheap stamped wingnuts are awful.
 
I too use the Frankford Arsenal Tumbler. It's large, rubber lined on the inside for noise reduction, and it has a timer - love it! I also have their larger bingo wheel-like media separator, which allows me to separate the ss media quickly, without media flying everywhere. I also use their magnet to transfer media from one container to another. To finish the process, I use their brass dryer, which allows me to dry my brass VERY QUICKLY. As you can tell, I'm a big fan of Frankford Arsenal, because they make my brass processing sooooo easy!
 
You switch for exactly the reason I switch - that dust have the lead from the primers in it so. I use the original Thumbler Tumbler and it works great for me for the last 6 years.
Ok, but unless the lead is oxidized (lead oxide) you probably won't know it.
 
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Started with a Midway vibrator, bought a Hornady too when the Midway shook itself to pieces. Found a used RCBS rotary for moly'ing bullets; even used it was too much money for what you get.

STM appeared on the scene, I bought a Thumbler's Model B & extra drum, never looked back.

Hornady still gets used for removing case lube once in awhile, otherwise everything gets wet-processed.

Only thing I added was six plastic knobs (brass threaded inserts) for the Thumbler's cover; those cheap stamped wingnuts are awful.
+1 on the knob exchange. You made me think of a second drum though. I was switching out every time and it is annoying.
 
Ok, but unless the lead is oxidized (lead oxide) you probably won't know it.

Talk of lead toxicity on gun boards is always difficult as any discussion of toxicity makes you come across as some sort of liberal:rolleyes:, but there are unfortunately bad stuff out there. It does not mean that anybody should stop shooting but a good understanding and proper avoidance is always wise... A little like hearing protection which was po po many years ago and that is why we have so many shooters today with bad hearing...

Not all lead is poisonous but the problem with lead from tumbling media is it is in a fine particular form which means it can be inhaled and its small size allows it to get deep into your lungs where it is trapped and slowly absorbed and not cleared via the mucus. If you can "smell" that tumbling media, you are inhaling that crap....:eek:
 
I used a vibratory for about a month. Then I started using my concrete mixer, and I used that for several years. Like you, the dust got to me. When I was younger, dust didn't bother me. I'm not younger any more.

I built several versions of a wet tumbler that worked inside my concrete mixer, but none of them worked satisfactorily, and one by one, I discovered several of the obstacles to successful wet tumbling. (Speed, fall, volume of pins, etc.)

The compromise that fits my results best is the Thumbler's Tumbler, which is what I ended up with.

The tradeoff I had to get used to with the Thumbler's is that my concrete mixer used to process a five gallon pail of brass at once, and the Thumbler's only does a little dab in comparison. It takes many, many batches, and simply can't compete on a volume scale, but what it does do is make the sought-after "like new", shiny clean.

With the concrete mixer, the bottleneck was inspection. I could "clean" (nowhere near as clean as the Thumbler's) a five gallon pail of brass in about six hours. Have you ever inspected a five gallon pail of brass? The inspection would take forever. Now I can keep up with the Thumbler's rate, and the bottleneck is the tumbling.

That's what I wanted, because shinier brass is so much easier to inspect. That means I have a great deal more confidence in the results of my inspections.
 
I used a vibratory for about a month. Then I started using my concrete mixer, and I used that for several years. Like you, the dust got to me. When I was younger, dust didn't bother me. I'm not younger any more.

I built several versions of a wet tumbler that worked inside my concrete mixer, but none of them worked satisfactorily, and one by one, I discovered several of the obstacles to successful wet tumbling. (Speed, fall, volume of pins, etc.)

The compromise that fits my results best is the Thumbler's Tumbler, which is what I ended up with.

The tradeoff I had to get used to with the Thumbler's is that my concrete mixer used to process a five gallon pail of brass at once, and the Thumbler's only does a little dab in comparison. It takes many, many batches, and simply can't compete on a volume scale, but what it does do is make the sought-after "like new", shiny clean.

With the concrete mixer, the bottleneck was inspection. I could "clean" (nowhere near as clean as the Thumbler's) a five gallon pail of brass in about six hours. Have you ever inspected a five gallon pail of brass? The inspection would take forever. Now I can keep up with the Thumbler's rate, and the bottleneck is the tumbling.

That's what I wanted, because shinier brass is so much easier to inspect. That means I have a great deal more confidence in the results of my inspections.
Good read and interesting experience. I think if I wanted a bit more volume, two drums as mentioned above would be a good idea, that way I could cleaning as I am inspecting!
 
That's pretty much what I ended up with with the Thumbler's. If I inspect and tumble the next load simultaneously, I can stay ahead of the tumbler.

A five gallon pail, on the other hand, working as fast as I could, with a magnifying lamp and conditions as ideal as I could establish, would take me a week to wade through, if I worked hard at it.

(Hard is relative to age. This hard is not the same hard as the the hard I worked in 1978. That was hard. Ice, heat, rain, heavy. This hard involves classic rock, coffee and philosophical musings.)

Side note: I replaced the wing nuts on the Thumbler's with galvanized hex nuts, and put them on and take them off with battery operated impact wrench. Much faster, much easier than wing nuts.

P.S. a five gallon pail of clean, inspected (and sorted by headstamp, if you inspect, sorting is only a matter of where you set it down) .45 ACP brass is enough for me to load for a year. (Six months at the height of my competing.) It's almost five thousand pieces of brass in .45 ACP. It got so my wife hated "tumbling week". There was dust and corncob everywhere, my fingers left dirty smears on the table, I was grouchy and there was dust everywhere.

Everywhere. In my hair. Which meant on my pillow. In the crack of my ass. On my clothes. In the air.

Everywhere.

I had to establish a seat in my office to undress and go straight to the shower when I came up from the basement during tumbling week.

The Thumbler's ended all that. I wish one of my experiments had worked out, but the speed vs. mass when you want the load to tumble, not wallow back and forth on the bottom isn't as easy to establish as one would think it is. You need a certain mass at a certain speed before it will tumble, and that mass and speed is simply easier to obtain with a smaller diameter. (And therefore, a smaller load.)

The one experiment I didn't do was to add enough stainless pins to the load so it would tumble every time in the concrete mixer.

The reason I didn't do it was because I bought 30 lbs. of stainless pins, and that wasn't enough mass, and stainless pins are really expensive at that scale. (I also was experimenting with different types of pins, but that's another story.)

I estimate that you'd need at least a hundred pounds of stainless pins before the mass of stainless pins is physically large enough for a load in a concrete mixer to tumble reliably, and that's more money than I wanted to invest in tumbling technology.

(It would work. The mixer would take it. The mixer is built to eat 80 lb. sacks of concrete, gravel and sand and then add water. It's heavy enough to do the job.)

Finally, the one load I did get to tumble in the concrete mixer (by adding brass) was really, really loud. And at that point, I was wondering if the "fall" would be enough to damage the brass without the cushioning the corncob provided.

That was the point where I started building things to go inside the concrete mixer, and switched to a smaller diameter.

I never got that to work, and the one unanswered question I have is the full-bore, noise-be-damned concrete mixer solution with 100 lbs. or more of stainless pins.

I suppose I'll always wonder if that would really work.
 
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I had a dry tumbler. Then I went and bought the Franklin Arsenal Platinum Wet Tumbler.
Man what a step up. No more media in my primer pockets that I had to pick out that arent even clean. No more powdery film on the cases. This tumbler cleans the shells to the highest degree of shine from primer pockets to insides and all you need to add is a dash of Lemishine, Dawn and Water.
I would pick up the Magnet they sell for it as it great for picking up steel media pins from 5 gallon bucket (which you will need).
I have done well over ten thousand easily and it works perfectly every time.
I think Cabelas is running a sale on them btw.
+1
 
Talk of lead toxicity on gun boards is always difficult as any discussion of toxicity makes you come across as some sort of liberal:rolleyes:, but there are unfortunately bad stuff out there. It does not mean that anybody should stop shooting but a good understanding and proper avoidance is always wise... A little like hearing protection which was po po many years ago and that is why we have so many shooters today with bad hearing...

Not all lead is poisonous but the problem with lead from tumbling media is it is in a fine particular form which means it can be inhaled and its small size allows it to get deep into your lungs where it is trapped and slowly absorbed and not cleared via the mucus. If you can "smell" that tumbling media, you are inhaling that crap....:eek:
We inhale/absorb a great deal more airborne lead contamination with each and every round we send through a barrel than we ever will when dry tumbling.
 
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I have both the Franklin Arsenal Platinum Wet Tumbler and the Thumbler's Model B and both work fine.
I prefer and only use the Franklin now.
 

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