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4 All That Glitters is not GOLD, Brass Cleaning By Ace of Hearts, SASS #77697 SASS Chronicle May.pdf We will take this article from one end of the spectrum to the other on how to get your brass ready to reload. When you get home from the range, you will have a quantity of the little critters that have been retrieved for you by those unsung heroes of the shooting bay, the brass pickers. The first thing you should do is inspect each piece for splits or cracks. Sand and grit on the outside of the case can damage even your carbide resizing die over time, not to mention what it may do to your gun barrel. The sand and dust that adheres to the inside of the case is stuck there due to the lube from the bullet and usually forms a light sand colored coating on the top inside of the case. If you don t remove it, the next bullet loaded picks up this fine dust/sand and carries it down the barrel when you shoot it. If you are a minimalist, then you can simply wipe your cases with a cloth lightly treated with alcohol and run a cotton swab of the right caliber into each case, and you are ready to start reloading. If you like your cases a bit cleaner, you can use one of those great little Scotch Bright Green Pads to remove the stain from the outside. Quite frankly, this process is just too darn time consuming for me. The shooters, that are more in the majority, do a bit more in cleaning their cases. Cleaner cases will cost you more money, mainly in equipment to clean them and some sort of media to do the actual cleaning. And, I will not discuss the pros and cons of de-priming prior to cleaning. That is strictly your choice. But to clean the primer pocket, you have to remove the primer, doubling the amount of press time. The most common way of cleaning cases is with a vibrating tumbler and cleaning media. Where you buy your tumbler is up to you. There are inexpensive ones at places like Harbor Freight to very expensive ones sold by reloading suppliers. The construction of all of them is very similar. A bowl to hold your brass and media mounted to a stand that encases a motor with a weight on one side of the shaft to cause it vibrate like crazy. The design works well until the bearings on the motor fail. Most bearings are non-replaceable. Some, like the Dillon, can be replaced. Now for the media. Corn Cob Media Works great for polishing, but almost useless for cleaning unless you add some sort of cleaning compound. Ground Walnut The most common media. (Get the plain. The red rouge used in some media just makes a mess.) You can go to pet supply stores and buy Lizard Litter, which is ground walnut shells. Harbor Freight sells two sizes, coarse and fine. The fine doesn t jam in the primer flash hole as easily. Ceramic Works great for cleaning, but will get inside every case and jam themselves so tightly it makes removal impossible. The result is a couple of hundred cases headed for the trash. I will not go into how I discovered this fact, but several hundred perfectly good cases went into the trash. I really recommend you do your case cleaning outside in an area away from your neighbors and your bedroom. The noise of several hundred cases being vibrated can be objectionable. The dust that is generated is not good for you and makes one hell of a mess after awhile, not to mention the spillage that occurs when you are

5 handling the media either in filling or emptying the bowl and in separating the media from the cases. Media separators can be as simple as a colander stolen from the kitchen or nice fancy ones that you rotate. Another reason for tumbling outside is the danger of fire. More than one of these tumblers have caught on fire in the middle of the night while running in the garage. Try to tumble while you are awake and can check in with it every now and then. The longer you run the cases, the prettier they will be. You can even add polish to the media to bring out the shine. After you are done tumbling and separating, you really should inspect the cases again for splits, media jammed in the primer flash hole, and if you are picky, cleaning of the primer pocket with a hand held tool designed for that purpose. Now the loading can begin! If you are really picky, like me, you can go the ultimate cleaning route. Inspect and de-prime your cases as above and then really clean your brass. A Thumbler s 15 lb rotary tumbler is the key to getting brass for reloading that looks like new both inside and out. Thumbler s Model B rotary tumble will set you back about $175 depending on where you purchase it. You will also need a five-pound bag of stainless steel pins from a supplier as the media to put inside the tumbler. A bag goes for about $45. You will also need some Original Lemi Shine and some Liquid Dawn. Both are available at your local supermarket. You can fill the tumbler about half full or less with brass. Add the five pounds of stainless steel pins. Cover the brass and pins with water and then add a quarter teaspoon of Lemi Shine and a quarter teaspoon of Liquid Dawn. Put the cover on the tumbler and let the magic begin. The brass will look like it just came from the factory. It will be cleaned on the outside and the inside, and the primer pocket will be almost spotless. Now you have several hundred very wet cases. Use your media separator to separate the stainless pins and water from your cases. I recommend the RCBS case separator for this, as it is covered, and in just a few turns of the handle in each direction removes almost 100% of the little pins from the brass. I say almost because there will be a few of those pesky pins that manage to pair up and wedge themselves into the flash hole. We will deal with these few cases when they are dry. You can simply spread the cases out on a towel and let them air dry, but this will leave water spots on your brass. What I do is put the damp brass in the vibrating tumbler, add the corncob or walnut media and, if you wish, a little polish, and tumble till dry. Drying time is dependent on temperature. When dry, inspect the cases for splits, and media in the flash hole. If any of the stainless pins get jammed in the flash hole, I use a wooden dowel to push on either one end or the other to expel them from where they are jammed. A needle nose pliers is the standby tool for when they don t come all the way out. By the way. You Holy Black Shooters can now have pretty brass, too!