Shooting Illustrated: "What’s The Best Way To Clean Brass?"

The article looks at the three most popular methods of cleaning brass: vibratory tumblers using dry media such as crushed corn cob or walnut shells; the ultrasonic cleaner; and the stainless steel pin/liquid media rotary tumbler. As the article notes, the three methods have their pros and cons.

    Initially, I will note that I haven't used a rotary tumbler using liquid and stainless steel pins. I have, however, been pondering over cleaning products on multiple occasions and had other customers in the store just out and tell me that I should go that route for the cleanest brightest brass. I just never made the jump because I've long used a vibratory tumbler, and now use a sonic cleaner.

   What I started with was a vibratory tumbler using dry media. It does a good job of cleaning off crud, but it doesn't leave the brass very shiny. In fact, it looks more like it has been bead blasted to a dull sheen. If you put shiny brass into the tumbler, it will come out with the same bead blasted look. In any event, the author of the article relates:

We can add an ammonia-based liquid to increase the media’s polishing power before each tumbling session. The ammonia reacts with the copper in the brass, so its polishing effect is actually chemical, not mechanical. We might instead add jeweler’s rouge, an abrasive like the media; in fact, we can buy dry media with the rouge already in it.

I've added brass cleaner to the media and haven't seen any major difference, but perhaps I'm not adding enough. Another issue is that granules of the media can get stuck in the primer pocket or flash hole, and so you need to be careful to get that knocked out of the brass before reloading. Finally, as the author notes, the process produces a lot of dust, which you have to wipe or wash off the brass.  I don't like leaving the dust on the inside of the case, so I started rinsing the brass with water to remove the dust, but then that leaves the problem of having to dry the brass.

    So if you are going to have to get the brass wet, you might as well try the other methods. My father-in-law loaned me his sonic cleaner to try (eventually just giving it to me) and I liked the fact that it was faster than the vibratory tumbler and does a better job of cleaning the interior of the case--particularly the flash hole. I will generally run a batch through two or three cleaning cycles. The downside is that cleans but doesn't really polish, and, at least with the size of the sonic cleaner I am running, I can't clean large quantities at a time.

    If you want the best results from the cleaning process, though, you may need to change your loading sequence because case lube will darken the brass somewhat and requires a second round of wiping off the brass cases. What I do is use a spray-on lube on the uncleaned cases, and run them through the deprimer/sizing die. After that, they go through the cleaning process, which removes any remaining grime (including the lube). After they are dried, I do the remaining case prep such as inspecting the cases for cracks, checking case length, doing any trimming, and reaming or cleaning primer pockets if necessary, etc., and go on with the reloading process.

    As you can guess, I do this in stages. I will take an afternoon or evening and work on depriming/sizing cases and cleaning/drying those cases. These then go into storage until I'm ready to load.