With the Lyman walnut tumbling media I get a fair amount of the red dust but found that throwing in strips of paper towel or case cleaner in there keeps it from getting all over the brass but I did notice there's still a good amount of that dust in the tumbler. Is there a good way to clean the dust out of the media? I thought about just throwing it in a screen and rinsing it out with water and letting it air dry throughly.

The dust is the polish. Loose or not, it still polishes and helps renew what has come off the walnut. It doesn't stick to walunut as well as to corncob, so if you keep removing it, I think you will discover the walnut gets more and more walnut colored and polishes less and less well. You can remove it by going outside and dropping your media into a bucket while a fan blows across the top of the bucket, but I don't think this is a good idea. A better technique is to dump all the media, dust included, into a plastic bag, then tumble the brass in plain corncob to wipe it clean. That only takes five or ten minutes of running time.

Boy M1 you must have some powerful dirty cases to have to use walnut media :rolleyes: :D I just use corn cob and leave it in for 2-3 hours.

RJ

The kind of bullets and the powder used determines what is needed to clean cases. Lead bullets with petroleum based lubes can coat chambers and cases while light charges of powder such as Unique may leave stains. Walnut does a good job of removing this crud. The best of all worlds is jacketed bullets with a clean burning powder. Corn cob is sufficient to clean here.

I recently,last week,decidedto sift my walnut media through a fine window screen to eliminate the dust that clings to the cartridge cases.I does work,but is somewhat time consuming.
I'm getting close to discarding that batch of walnut media.
Frank

My Walnut media must be realy worn out!?, I have to tumble my cases for closer to 15 to 20 hrs to get them as clean as I think they should be?, the media was in a milk jug when I got the tumbler, the guy gave it to me with the tumbler.
I'm still scratching my head when you guys say it only takes a few hours to get cases shiny?.
I've run 10 or 15 used dryer sheets thru my media, usualy three at a time, and they come out FILTHY!, must be time for new media!
And I use Dillon Rapid Pollish in it as well.

My Walnut media must be realy worn out!?, I have to tumble my cases for closer to 15 to 20 hrs to get them as clean as I think they should be?, the media was in a milk jug when I got the tumbler, the guy gave it to me with the tumbler.
I'm still scratching my head when you guys say it only takes a few hours to get cases shiny?.
I've run 10 or 15 used dryer sheets thru my media, usualy three at a time, and they come out FILTHY!, must be time for new media!
And I use Dillon Rapid Pollish in it as well.


I suspect that the sharp edges of media are rounded over time/use that diminishes it's efectiveness. I just throw it out and start with new from time to time. A fresh batch with some polish works very fast.

Cheezywan

My Walnut media must be realy worn out!?, I have to tumble my cases for closer to 15 to 20 hrs to get them as clean.

My guess is you are using a rotary drum tumbler, like for lapidary work. Most of us use the vibratory bowl tumblers. They are much faster, but much noisier. I own both because the vibratory tumblers won't handle wet media, but sometimes I just use the rotary so I can go away and forget about for a day. Works fine.

Don't worry about red rouge wearing out. It is used to polish glass, so it is dramatically harder than brass and not prone to shattering into smaller pieces as silicone carbide does working steel.

I used to use the corncob and it works great but I found that the walnut seems to be more abrasive and cleans them quicker. I just picked up a second tumbler and figure I'll run them through the walnut for a bit then finish with the corncob. I don't have the problem I used to with the dust since I've been putting in some polish or paper towel strips. They do come out nice and shiny though...

My guess is you are using a rotary drum tumbler, like for lapidary work. Most of us use the vibratory bowl tumblers.
I'm using the vibratory bowl type, it has about 150rds of 454 Casull in the photo.

Bounce gets the dust out!! Swipe one or two sheets from the wife and throw then into your tumbler THE NEXT TIME YOU ARE CLEANING BRASS...AMAZING.

Dave :cool:

I'm using the vibratory bowl type. . .


I'm surprised at your cleaning times, then. Pick up a plastic bottle of the green Lyman corncob and see what that does for you? Typically, I find it twice as fast as the walnut, though the green polish is coarser, so you don't get quite the mirror surface.

One can buy walnut at either Petsmart or a local sandblasting company. Walnut at a sandblasters here is around $20 for 50lbs. Petsmart is around $20 for 25lbs.
Then you can add either Brasso at $4.00 for a small tin or Nu Finish car polish at $9.00 for a huge bottle.

I don't bother with cleaning by any means or throwing in used dryer sheets when it can be gotten so cheaply.

Cheers

One can buy walnut at either Petsmart or a local sandblasting company. Walnut at a sandblasters here is around $20 for 50lbs. Petsmart is around $20 for 25lbs.
Then you can add either Brasso at $4.00 for a small tin or Nu Finish car polish at $9.00 for a huge bottle.

I don't bother with cleaning by any means or throwing in used dryer sheets when it can be gotten so cheaply.

Cheers


Beware of the cirncob media at Petsmart.
I made that mistake and the individual kernals are larger then those at the Gunshow.They get stuck in the primer pocets and even inside of 30 caliber cases.
Frank

. . . add either Brasso . . .

Avoid Brasso. It contains ammonia that weakens brass. Premature splits and head separations both result. I don't know about the Nu-finish? As long as it doesn't have ammonia, it is probably OK. There are some other threads on polishing. Take a look for other suggestions.

Avoid Brasso. It contains ammonia that weakens brass. Premature splits and head separations both result. I don't know about the Nu-finish? As long as it doesn't have ammonia, it is probably OK. There are some other threads on polishing. Take a look for other suggestions.

I guess it must since I only get an average of 40 reloads on 22-250 brass. :) There isn't sufficient ammonia nor does it hang around long enough.


Cheers

It's funny. If you search the threads you'll find people who've used ammoniated polish for years without trouble and others who started to get significantly earlier failures when they tried it. It may depend on other factors, like how they apply it. I can see, for example, how someone doing full-length resizing of cases for a rifle whose chamber is on the large side will get a lot thinner and more vulnerable pressure ring brass to start with. Someone crimping hard or using higher load pressures is going have more stressed brass, too. If the stuff dries on the media before you use it, the ammonia will largely evaporate off, so that is a factor. Since you get a lot of reloadings, you are evidentally not using the brass hard, so it makes sense you are less likely to see the problem.

There's some old NRA information on this based on arsenal studies. They actually found tumbling to be generally hard on brass, which is why they leave the annealing mark stains in place in mil spec ammunition making. Flitz, who makes some ammoniated polishes leaves it out of the one they recommend for brass tumbling for this reason. I just figure there is no point in adding the metal stress factor since it can be avoided with other polishes.

I have used the walnut from Petsmart, and I don't add anything. Usually tumble for 8 hours to get old surplus cases clean and then use Grit-O-Cob for about 4 hours to get them nice and shiny. The walnut media is really cheap, so I don't worry about cleaning - I just dump it and start with fresh media. Grit-O-Cob comes in a 50 lb bag, for less than $20. There are various sieve sizes available; you just have to get the one that won't get stuck in the flashhole... forget what that is but it's not hard to figure out if you do a web search.

There's some old NRA information on this based on arsenal studies. They actually found tumbling to be generally hard on brass, which is why they leave the annealing mark stains in place in mil spec ammunition making.

Curious...I wonder, have tumbler designers changed the action of tumblers since that study??? Perhaps the newer equipment isn't as harsh on brass.
I also read somewhere, awhile back, that tumbling creates "notches, cuts" (have a problem finding the right word at the moment) on the edge (top) of the case mouth and this creates a stress point. This results in early initiation of crack which propagates into the neck. Again, this is heresay.

. . . Curious...I wonder, have tumbler designers changed the action of tumblers since that study???. . . "notches, cuts". . . the case mouth and this creates a stress point. . .

To the first point, it wasn't the polishing method that was the problem, but that any kind of polishing removes the oxide layer left on new brass after neck annealing. Hatcher's Notebook reports an experiment tried at Frankford Arsenal. They left polished and unpolished new cases on their roof for a year. They arsenal was in an area populated with chemical plants. This was between the world wars, when there were no clean air regulations, so the air was corrosive. After a year, the polished brass was all heavily corroded, but the unpolished brass was fine.

The NRA Handloading book’s chapter on brass cleaning mentions that most brass cleaners contain ammonia and that ammonia weakens brass. It goes on to describe a hot 4% sulfuric acid pickle, which apparently the military did use, but which does not weaken the brass. I imagine this is a cleaning process that precedes the neck annealing. I don't believe manufacturers use annealing processes that involve quenching; just careful localized flame application with the right timing. So, the whole case heats to some degree and gets some oxide, even down where it never gets warm enough to anneal.

I don't know about the neck dings starting stress cracks. Rotary tumblers drop brass on itself which makes neck dings, but I routinely see much harder dents occur during ejection or on landing after ejection. I've never noticed any pattern of neck splitting appearing due to those. Vibratory tumblers don't drop cases, so I don't expect they are capable of creating real dings; dropping brass in and out of them still can. High power rifle cases need their neck re-annealed periodically anyway, and that relieves stress, including what a ding might have created.

I've seen cases come out of a machine gun with severe dings on every neck. These had a sharp inside corner and the cases could not be straightened without starting a crack. Military brass is hard to start with, so perhaps re-annealing the necks before trying to straighten them or re-annealing them half way through straightening them would have helped? They were also stretched pretty long, though, so we gave up trying to salvage them.

If you have two tumblers use one before sizing and the other after to remove the sizing lube. Sizing lube reduces the life of tumbling media drasticly