Stainless Steel Media Tumbling

I have been reloading for close to 20 years now, My Father & I started with some old equipment we bought at an estate sale. We now have our own set-ups and reload almost every caliber we own.

Last year I bought myself a stainless steel media tumbler from these guys: http://www.stainlesstumblingmedia.com/

Funny thing is the company I bought the tumbler from is in Utah, but the tumbler is made in Auburn, just a few miles from where I live....

Anyway, I decided to make a post about how this stuff works.

The pins are tiny, two or three would fit in a primer flash hole (and sometimes get stuck there)

So to demonstrate how well these work, I will start with some really ugly brass. I found this stuff in an old shooting pit (not used for the last year or so). I picked up about 10 lbs of brass, most of it I could use, a few odd ball calibers, but mostly 9mm, 45 ACP, 38 Spl, and quite a few 40 S&W (which I do not reload).

This is a pic of the 40 S&W brass after I rinsed the mud off of them.

 

From past experience I know that the stainless media can get these clean, but they will need a bit of help, so after de-priming them I soaked them in vinegar for a few hours to help loosen the corrosion.

 The vinegar turns an aqua blue/green color from the copper oxide.

Next I will rinse in hot water and put them in the tumbler

After one 6-hour cycle in the tumbler this is what the water looked like

  This is what the brass looked like, I will try another round in the tumbler

After another 6 hours in the tumbler we have success:

some still have a pinkish hue to them, but most came out looking like new

here are a couple of before and after pictures to show the difference