guzma393
Active Member
It's mainly the dust for me. I frequently tumble really grimy, bottom of the bucket brass that would probably get dry media all dirty and gunked up in a few cycles. Soap, water, and citric acid sounds cheaper and more expendable.Other than the dust, I've never seen a reason to wet tumble - it just doesn't get things functionally any cleaner than dry. Maybe if I was a competition bench rest shooter, I'd want to take the case back down to its basest basic format - as clean as a whistle inside and out - but for what I do, the vibratory tumbler is where it's at for me. I don't have to worry about pins, I don't have to worry about drying, and I don't have to worry about red rot - that's something else that can happen with wet tumbling.
Red rot is basically the de-zincification of brass where the zinc gets leached out due to a chemical reaction, leaving just the copper behind. What's left behind is very weak and brittle. Red rot, if it gets bad, is the kiss of death for brass musical instruments. I've seen situations on reloading groups where someone wound up with a whole bunch of ruined brass because of that - I've never seen that with dry tumbling.
Red rot can totally be avoided while wet tumbling. This occurs because of adding too much citric acid. If you really want to get "scientific" with it, you can grab those litmus paper test kits to see how acidic/basic the solution is.
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