Hi folks,
Recently I decided, since it was on a 60% discount, to give wet-tumbling a try, specifically with the National Metallic rotary case tumbler kit. The thing comes with the following items.
1.) the tumbler motor itself
2.) the tumbling vessel, a rather large one
3.) five pounds of stainless steel pins (the cleaning medium)
4.) a screener to recover the stainless steel pins after tumbling
5.) an instruction book
The cases that I'm currently tumbling, as I type this, are .45 Colt cases, about 300 of them. They were a bit dirty after use, not horrifically so, but you definitely can tell that they'd been used.
Best results are, I'm told, gotten if one first deprimes the cases, so that the stainless steel pins can also clean the primer pockets. So, I did that. I am currently using straight tap water, without the often-recommended Lemi-Shine. The built-in timer is set for two hours, so we'll see how they turn out. It's fairly late here, approximately 10:00pm Eastern Time, so I'll check them in the morning.
If this does a good job, then I will have found a way to clean cases with a lowered risk of breathing in the residual lead styphnate dust from the spent primers. Some experimentation, possibly with a little bit of Lemi-Shine, may be required for best results. We shall see.
Wet-tumbling with the National Metallic rotary case tumbler
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