Understand I’m here in the sandbox. In between duststorms I sometimes end up with a decent internet connection and a little time on my hands. I use this time wisely. I peruse the various gun forums trying to glean a little information on shooting and reloading.
From what I have seen, I am impressed with what stainless media does to brass before reloading. But unless one digs pretty hard I don’t see the use of stainless media mentioned much, either here or on some of the other forums. And when it is mentioned there is nothing but good things said about it. So it seems to me the “old” way of tumbling, that is with walnut shells or corn cob media has or should have gone the way of casette VHS tapes. So what gives? Is everyone just set in their ways and see no reason to change things? Or is stainless media an unwise way of cleaning brass?
Not unwise, it does an excellent job. However, aside from the initial cost of a tumbler and media kit around $260-270 it adds extra steps to the process which take up time and extra effort.
Deprime prior to tumbling, rinsing, drying the brass… cleaning, straining and drying the media for later use. Another major drawback is the capacity of the tumbler.
Personally, if I were a loading for bench matches it would be a must. I am however not and there are other reloading luxuaries I would rather have down the road… like a Dillon primer filler thus walnut/corncob work fine for me.
I came to the same conclusion. There is a very long thread on the subject going on at Sniper’s Hide. I have been following it for months and have waffled back and forth on making the plunge. I finally realized that I rather spend my time shooting then reloading. I’ll stay with my corncob.
if thumler or somebody else could make a larger rock tumbler, that would be a home run, since you’re pretty much limited to 175 .223 cases for a 3 hour tumble.
i love ss tumbling, even with the extra steps, though.
I’ve looked at this, too… the long thread on sniper’s hide drew me in.
I’m going to do this, but I haven’t yet, because (1) I haven’t scraped up the money to buy the equipment to switch over and (2) I’m not ready to clean several thousands of rounds of brass yet.
When I do it, I’m going to do it large scale… Nothing against Thumler, but it’s a $180 for a friggin’ toy.
For less money I can get a real cement mixer from Harbor Freight and do a thousand pieces of brass at once.
Of course, I’m going to have to buy 5x as much media, but it’s cheaper to buy it in bulk, and it’ll be worth it to be done 5x as quickly.
Yeah, I can only see two problems with the cement mixer…
I might have to put in a cement walkway around the back of my garage to justify the purchase, or I’ll have to explain to my wife that I bought a cement mixer to clean brass.
I’ll have to find a spot in the garage to store it.
Do not buy a cement mixer from Harbor Freight. It won’t last. The bearings are way to weak to support stuff like that. My friend tried it out (sells brass) and it was a POS.
SS media works and is nice, but 99.9% of handloaders don’t need their brass to be so clean you can drink from it. If you want clean and cheap, use a solution of citric acid and dry your brass on the “warm” setting in your oven. Much cheaper than SS media.
I was trying to find the stats on STM.com and couldn’t see capacities mentioned anywhere. I suspect the ommission of such facts is intentional as it is a very significant negative. Honestly tough if they could get it to even the 300 cases of .223 range it would interest me even more.
No worries, I’m used to buying crap from Harbor Freight. I live 5 minutes from the store, so if it dies, then I’ll take it back.
I can understand that somebody running one constantly (selling brass) would kill it, but I’m not planning to load it heavily or use it frequently. Realistically, I don’t reload enough to run it more than a couple hours a year…
And I don’t know how much 1.25 cubic-feet of wet cement weights, but last I checked a 50lb sack of concrete (dry) is only 0.60 square feet, so a full load of cement must weigh well over 100lbs.
I figure that 500 or even 1,000 pieces of brass and 25lbs of media won’t fill it up more than half way…
Won’t the mixing blade(s) hurt the brass and media?
I don’t see how. The media’s indestructible.
Cement mixers don’t turn very fast, do they? (Slower than a clothes dryer?). The little Harbor Freight mixer is only 1.25 square feet, which is less than 10 gallons, which isn’t very big.
I think the brass is just going to be pushed up the inside of the drum by the mixing blades and then plop down into the water/media at the bottom.
For me, the biggest advantage of stainless media is the elimination of “tumbling dust”. I do all my reloading indoors and do what I can to eliminate lead/primer residue transfer.
As 30 cal alluded to, the capacity limitation is the weight the tumbler can handle. I believe the Thumler’s is fifteen pounds, five of which are taken up by media and eight by water.
It may go without saying, but if you use a larger tumbler (like a cement mixer), you’ll also have to add proportionally more media. Last I looked five pounds was ~$40-50, so depending on how big a tub you get, that could get expensive fast.
Downsides of the Thumler Model B tumbler, as reported by others:
Top rubber gasket wears out (<1 year +/-)
The metal surface of the tumbler interior (beneath the rubber sleeve) often corrodes
Two pound brass weight limit (e.g. no more than 175-200 .223 cases per load)
Longish tumble times - 3 hours give or take to get the primer pockets clean.
While your media doesn’t get “consumed,” you can use a lot of water. 1 gallon to get the tumble going, then up to three gallons or more of rinsing washwater.0
If the rubber rollers on the tumbler base get wet, the unit won’t work.
I haven’t looked at this in several months, but when I did, my impression that $50 for 5lbs of media was price gouging… you’re not paying for the media, you’re paying for the convenience of somebody else picking out the right size and packaging it in 5lbs bundles.
If you buy media in bulk (just make sure you get the right size), then it’s a lot less expensive… more like $75 or $100 for 25lbs shipped.
I might convert over when my regular tumbler craps out, but until then I don’t think it’s worth it to spend that much to get clean brass. Cob gets them clean enough.
The one advantage I do see to liquid tumbling is that the lead residue from the priming compound is trapped in the solution, rather than being airborne, but how do you dispose of it? Do you just dump it down the alley/curb/drain in the basement?
Using cob, I place a dryer sheet on top of the cob and it does a decent job of trapping dust. Maybe not perfect, but it does help.
