Stainless Pin Wet Tumbling- Gripe

Squaregrouper · Feb 12, 2020

I wet tumbled a bunch of 6.5 Grendel with Dawn, Lemishine (overpriced citric acid) and stainless pins.
Anyone want to guess the precise length of the stainless pins? Yup, the sunsabitches are exactly the same length of the ID of a 6.5mm/.264" cartridge.
I spent more time removing wedged pins from the case mouths than I spent resizing and decapping the brass.

Melnic · Feb 12, 2020

that sucks, did you pull the cases out of the water by hand or try to tumble them out?

are you decapping w/ a decapper or are you sizing/decapping first with a sizing die? If you only decap, it can leave a larger ID.

John from MD · Feb 12, 2020

You need to use a tumble type separator to shake those thinks loose.

Speed3 · Feb 12, 2020

I still dont see the need to clean brass with SS pins. Seems like more work than it's worth.

Believe it or not, you need lube or carbon build up in the neck for a consistent bullet release. SS pins strip all that away.

Clippers69 · Feb 12, 2020

SS pin tumbling

I use SS pins for cleaning rifle brass, 5.56 and larger. I use small pins and large pins depending on the caliber of the brass. I can tumble 1200 5.56 brass at a time using the same formula you use. I pour out the dirty water and rinse the brass by pouring clean water in to tumbler and pouring it out. I then fill a 5 gallon bucket with warm water and dump all of the brass and pins into it. The water level is about 2/3 thirds high in the bucket. I proceed to remove the brass by hand and allow the water to flush out the pins. I have never had an issue, but it does take some time. I occasionally have to shake the brass for some pins to come out. I thought about a tumbler to use for the pin removal, but you can only tumble so much brass at one time. I do this in the summer so that I can lay the brass out on a towel on the deck to dry. I do this on brass I want to load for accuracy loads, not plinking.

Flametamer · Feb 13, 2020

Surface tension of water helps hold the pins to the cases, inside and out. I empty my Thumbler tumbler contents into a Lyman media separator (I still do some dry tumbling at times), liquid and all. Most of the pins fall through the basket straight away. Add fresh water until the tumbler basket with the brass has an inch or three of water in it. Then close up everything and give it 10 slow spins clockwise, then 10 slow spins anti-clockwise. Tumbling the cases under water defeats the surface tension, and good old-fashioned gravity (as opposed to the new fangled gravity) does the rest. Rinse, dry in a free dehydrator off of Marketplace, and then spin the dry brass one last time in the separator. Less than 1% of cases that have a pin stuck inside. The process is not nearly as cumbersome as it might sound. When prepping brass, I set up all the tools beside one another on the bench and simply pour the brass from one tool to the next. The Harbor Freight long-reach magnetic pickup recovers the pins quick and easy.

Maybe I just have different size pins, maybe I am lucky, or just maybe this process does the job.

Squaregrouper · Feb 13, 2020

OP here...
The pins were wedged horizontally across the case mouth. I had to use a pick to remove them. Now I'm concerned about neck tension. :mad54:

kalister1 · Feb 13, 2020

Stop using the pins. Soap and Water gives you clean brass.

Speed3 · Feb 13, 2020

squaregrouper said:
OP here...
The pins were wedged horizontally across the case mouth. I had to use a pick to remove them. Now I'm concerned about neck tension.

You can mic OD of the neck and see if they are far off, I'd imagine they all wouldn't have gotten pins stuck sideways.

Are you using a neck bushing die? If so, you could use a tighter bushing .003 tighter than normal and then open the necks back up with an expander ball.

outrider58 · Feb 13, 2020

Thanks Ky, for talking me out of stainless tumbling(for the hundredth time

).

I have a small wet tumbler that I use for cleaning suppressor baffles. Works pretty good. I tried some 9mm cases in it and it just seemed like a lot more work than dry tumbling.

I'm gonna stick with walnut dry tumbling.

Melnic · Feb 13, 2020

Steel pins cleans the primer pockets that you won't get with normal wet tumbling and to some extent, the insides of the case that normal wet tumbling does not do. That's about all I got out of Pins. I was not using range pickup brass and that is the other thing it does, cleans up REALLY NASTY brass that has been out in the elements for weeks.
It was an interesting thing to try. Its just one of those things that you gotta try it to see if you like it. I started off reloading by wet tumbling, Then someone gifted me a vibe cleaner. I"m back to walnut vibe cleaning mostly with sometimes wet tumbling with soap and lemon shine for when I want them to look Purdy.
Lots of people have different formulas for what they add to the water and how much.

PowPow · Feb 13, 2020

Melnic said:
Steel pins cleans the primer pockets that you won't get with normal wet tumbling and to some extent, the insides of the case that normal wet tumbling does not do. That's about all I got out of Pins. I was not using range pickup brass and that is the other thing it does, cleans up REALLY NASTY brass that has been out in the elements for weeks.
It was an interesting thing to try. Its just one of those things that you gotta try it to see if you like it. I started off reloading by wet tumbling, Then someone gifted me a vibe cleaner. I"m back to walnut vibe cleaning mostly with sometimes wet tumbling with soap and lemon shine for when I want them to look Purdy.
Lots of people have different formulas for what they add to the water and how much.

That's the whole reason I wet tumble my .45 brass every so often. I get a more consistent loading session when I'm not fighting the occasional hard to seat primer.

Unfortunately, you trade one problem for another. That residue inside the case lubricates, and the stainless pins take it off. This often leads to copper build up on the expander. I'd rather have this problem than lots of crud in primer pockets. A scotch brite pad makes short work of the copper.

Pinecone · Feb 13, 2020

I never have had an issue with primer pocket residue build up.

Each time it is fired, the primer cleans out most of the old crud, and adds its own new crud for a consistent amount of crud.

Doesn't seem to slow me down. I do about 1000 per hour on my 650.

Blacksmith101 · Feb 13, 2020

Burnishing media comes in many sizes and in shapes other than pins. You can also tumble or vibrate with other media types for cleaning and polishing.

Burnishing media
https://mk0belairfinish7bfyr.kinstacdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/media-steel-media-bel-air.pdf

Selecting the Right Tumbling Media
https://cmtopline.com/pages/selecting-the-right-tumbling-media

https://www.kramerindustriesonline.com/resources/tumbling-media-selection-guide/

https://mk0belairfinish7bfyr.kinsta...2019/09/media-dry-finishing-media-bel-air.pdf

Anyone know of any scientific tests on the best media for cleaning cartridges?

This shows Firearms Process Examples but gives no details
https://www.belairfinishing.com/firearms-process-examples/

teratos · Feb 13, 2020

I love wet tumbling. I do a final tumble in walnut with NuFinish and have zero problems.

KRC · Feb 13, 2020

I rarely get a pin stuck in the case mouth of 6.5mm cases.
(My pins measure ~.263" length.)

"Now I'm concerned about neck tension."
Are you tumbling AFTER neck resizing?

The purpose (for me) of the SS/wet tumbling is not so much to polish the cases, although they do come out very shiny, but to clean the inside of the case necks. My other method of inside neck polishing is very time and hand intensive. My main gripe with SS/wet tumbling is that the outside and inside deburr/chamfer on the neck mouth gets beat up, and I'm frequently having to re-chamfer them. And it's not great at cleaning the inside of the necks on cases less than 30 cal. anyways.

PowPow · Feb 13, 2020

Pinecone said:
I never have had an issue with primer pocket residue build up.

Each time it is fired, the primer cleans out most of the old crud, and adds its own new crud for a consistent amount of crud.

Doesn't seem to slow me down. I do about 1000 per hour on my 650.

Walnut was fine most of the time, but every so often I'd encounter a case that was very tight when seating the primer. That stopped happening when started running them through the wet tumbler with pins every so often. I can only attribute that to build up of crud in the primer pockets. Everything else remained constant. Same powder, primers, cases, bullets, press, and person.

I use Starline brass and Federal primers. I don't remember having this issue with Winchester primers though. Maybe more build up from the softer Federal primers? Or, maybe you're doing something different with the dry tumbling than walnut and dillon polish?

bpm32 · Feb 13, 2020

I wet tumble everything with pins, but I'll freely admit that it's unnecessary unless you're trying to avoid lead poisoning from primer residue. Obviously if you're careful removing brass from dry-tumbling media, the lead issue is mostly mitigated.

Squaregrouper · Feb 13, 2020

KRC said:
I rarely get a pin stuck in the case mouth of 6.5mm cases.
(My pins measure ~.263" length.)

"Now I'm concerned about neck tension."
Are you tumbling AFTER neck resizing?

The purpose (for me) of the SS/wet tumbling is not so much to polish the cases, although they do come out very shiny, but to clean the inside of the case necks. My other method of inside neck polishing is very time and hand intensive. My main gripe with SS/wet tumbling is that the outside and inside deburr/chamfer on the neck mouth gets beat up, and I'm frequently having to re-chamfer them. And it's not great at cleaning the inside of the necks on cases less than 30 cal. anyways.

I decap/FL resized the cases and chamfered them prior to wet tumbling.
I never had an issue before, but this was the first time wet tumbling 6.5mm/.264"- the pins fit perfectly into the case mouth.

KRC · Feb 13, 2020

FYI - I wet/SS pin tumble BEFORE any brass sizing. On all calibers.
As I mentioned, I don't really have any pin-in-neck issues, but the occasional pin stuck in a LR primer pocket, which are sometimes tough to remove.

Stainless Pin Wet Tumbling- Gripe

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