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  1. #16
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    1/2 teaspoon of citric acid, 2 tablespoons of purple power degreaser to every gallon of water. What used to take 1.5-2 hours now takes 45 minutes.

    If the brass will sit a while I'll throw it in a vibratory polisher with walnut shells and a teaspoon of Flitz. Just make sure you re-rinse before use to remove any traces of walnut shells.

    Stop throwing money away on Lemi-Shine. Nothing but citric acid and some perfume.

  2. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Slippers View Post
    Yes, rinse thoroughly by leaving the sealed cap on one side, vented cap on other. Dump it carefully so your stainless pins don't fall out. Fill it again, and repeat about a dozen times until the water is coming out clean and there's no more soap evident.

    On the last water dump, I get out as much as I can, then upend it into one of the big green RCBS media separators. Close it, crank it back and forth until all the stainless pins fall out. Then the brass goes into my food dehydrator.
    Pretty much verbatim my process. Right down to the RCBS and the official Ronco Food dehydrator! lol

    1/2 tsp of Lemishine, 2 tsp of Dawn, water filled to about an inch below the neck.
    "There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong." - H.L. Mencken

  3. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by alamo5000 View Post
    OK so I got my fancy new Frankford Arsenal wet tumbler. The thing works like a charm. Beyond fantastic. I am now a forever wet tumbler fan. On the actual cleaning part it gets all the carbon off even down in the primer pockets. Pretty awesome stuff. Inside the cases, outside, the primer pockets... all very clean.

    That said, when I used the Frankford Arsenal little sample pack all that brass came out all shiny and new looking and is STILL shiny and new looking.

    I got lemi shine and Dawn dish detergent and now all my brass is pretty OD green. It tarnished in no time flat (like a day or so). It will definitely still shoot so there is no question about function... but what do I need to use to get my brass looking all shiny and good? So far the Lemi Shine+Dawn thing isn't doing it for me.

    So many people swear by it so apparently I am doing something wrong. I might end up having to buy more store bought polish because this home brew stuff isn't doing the trick.

    Anyone got any tips or tricks for me?
    I started using Lemi-Shine after the sample packet from Target was posted on here.

    I don't use a wet tumbler, I use a milk jug! Fill it with all the brass I can, pour in a bunch of Lemi-Shine (probably a few TBSPs), a squirt of dawn, then fill to capacity with HOT water. I shake it up for a few minutes then let it soak (a few hours) with an occasional shaking every so often. Then, I rinse it out a couple times and empty, then let the brass air dry overnight on a towel after a quick pat to ensure no cases are full of water, and then in the vibratory tumbler the next day for a bit. Super shiny and clean brass!

    Never had it turn green.

  4. #19
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    ^^ haha I do something similar ..squirt of dawn. , little lemi shine and hot water in a bucket, stir around occasionally with big old soft paintbrush and then rinse and rinse some more, only do this after they have been fired to clean them up and it does work well, never could justify 200 bux or do in wer tumbler and SS pins..

    Then resize,etc and in a normal tumbler with corncob/walnut with flitz or Nu finish..damn clean, new looking and good enough for this guy

  5. #20
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    For future reference if anyone happens to run across this thread...

    There is a technique to using the wet tumbler! Let me explain per my light bulb moment (thanks Slippers!)...

    The tumbler on it's own works on the principle of friction, meaning you want those pins and brass to be picked up and spun around, not just agitated like a clothes washer. The idea is to 'blast' not just merely 'agitate'. Create an environment in your tumbler where the pins and brass actually get tossed around and can rub up against each other and whatever needs to be polished.

    What too much water does is it dampens this effect from 'cascading' to merely 'agitating the water'. Cascade good, agitate, not as good. Too much water slows that action down substantially. That's probably the biggest realization I have made so far.

    Detergents of whatever nature help loosen up crud, dirt, carbon or whatever. I have no reason to ever switch from using Dawn.

    Lemi- Shine-- not sure what that does but it does seem to work.

    The biggest deal of all is proportions. You want to create that 'cascading effect' so that friction and gravity can do it's work. Detergent helps a lot. And the polish does something too...but the combinations of all three make for the most effective results.

    Yes, there is a learning curve to using a wet tumbler.

  6. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by alamo5000 View Post
    For future reference if anyone happens to run across this thread...

    What too much water does is it dampens this effect from 'cascading' to merely 'agitating the water'. Cascade good, agitate, not as good. Too much water slows that action down substantially. That's probably the biggest realization I have made so far.
    You know, I tried it this way once, under the same assumption, but didn't get great results. I don't remember the exact outcome, but I wasn't thrilled. It may have been my mix was off lemishine:water:dawn. I may have to revisit this again. It does make sense, but my initial, cursory testing didn't pan out.
    "There is always a well-known solution to every human problem--neat, plausible, and wrong." - H.L. Mencken

  7. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by DutchTerror View Post
    You know, I tried it this way once, under the same assumption, but didn't get great results. I don't remember the exact outcome, but I wasn't thrilled. It may have been my mix was off lemishine:water:dawn. I may have to revisit this again. It does make sense, but my initial, cursory testing didn't pan out.
    I had fairly successful results with partial tumble and not my final 'system' so now I know a lot more. I will be doing some more .223 pretty soon and will try to tweak the system some.

    I bought a couple of 2 gallon buckets and those came in extremely handy. About half full (or a little less) of cases (of whatever type) is a good amount for the tumbler. Too many cases and it becomes an unwieldy mess. Which that contributed to part of my problem too.

    I didn't fill my tumbler up to the top with water. I filled it to where the brass was covered by about an inch of water or a little more.

    When I was done I could put the whole drum in the bucket and rinse aggressively and not lose any pins.

    I then poured off all the water I could and let it drain as much as possible and put the brass in a turkey roasting pan in the oven at 250 degrees. After it was dry the media seperated easily from the brass and I could pick it up with a magnet that I bought.

    It worked pretty good especially considering on my last tumble I didn't do a full 3 hours and I only used lemi shine with no Dawn (I had tumbled the same brass a couple times previously so I was just trying to get a shine back). This batch is definitely good enough to use and is only a shade off of the commercial polish despite all my testing and tarnishing. Inside the cases is spotless. Inside the primer pockets is spotless. I still think I can improve my system some.

    One other thing I have found is to try not and get any spent primers from depriming mixed into your brass. Somehow they work themselves back into the primer pockets.

    Slippers definitely got me on the right track.
    Last edited by alamo5000; 4 August 2016 at 07:45.

  8. #23
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    A little update and a big thank you to Slippers! (You're the man!)

    I have run a couple of runs of brass and it's turning out better and better each time.

    I bought 2000 cases of 100% Lake City military brass. I made a separate discovery there by the way. I tried using my Frankford Arsenal case prep station to take out the crimps. All you have to do is screw the trimmer into the socket and off you go. But I experimented some and think using a power drill is a much more efficient way to go. Put the crimp trimming bit into the drill and grab a few cases and zip zip zip... done. I did probably 500 cases in a lot shorter time with the drill. That said both are effective.

    Then again next time around I might just give them an extra $20 bucks to swage the cases for me. I am glad I only have to remove the crimps once because that is seriously a pain in the ass.

    As for the trimming and all that... the case trimmer is just awesome. The machine I bought is just great.

    On the tumbling Slippers was right on the money. I filled my tumbler with about 4-500 cases. I might work my way up to more later on but trying to stuff the tumbler too full of cases is definitely not a good idea. Also too much water... no bueno.

    I put about 1 or 2 inches of water above the cases in mine. Then I put between a dime and a quarter size bit of Lemi Shine in my hand then dump it in... and then a couple of good squirts of Dawn...I probably used 2 maybe 3 good squirts...way more than what I would use for dishes

    The first go with that method turned out pretty good but I didn't shake off the water from the cases good enough before I put them in the oven to dry and it left some minor spots... This time around I shook the water off really good and put a towel down in a container and just rolled the cases around some and gave them a bunch of really good shakes and rolls... and when I dried them in the oven... WOW. They came out looking like new.

    Yup... definitely a technique involved.

    Thanks again!!

  9. #24
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    LemiShine is mostly citric acid. While Dawn serves to degrease and wash the gunk off, and stainless pins serve to scrub the brass, the citric acid chemically cleans the brass. It also chemically treats the brass through a process called "passivation." The old arsenal process was done with concentrated sulfuric acid with nitric acid and at high temperatures; this did a couple of things, including passivating the brass.

    TL/DR: the outermost layer of metal is chemically changed to become far more resistant to corrosion.
    MSgt, USAF (Ret)
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