Cleaning primer pockets

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Thanks for the quick answer-back, Wild Man!

Like I said, my ceramic gets my brass clean ... and I shoot almost exclusively BP.  (I do shoot smokeyless occasionally, but haven't used the ceramic on anything but BP cases because I have only shot BP since getting the ceramic from Dick.)  My ceramic must have a few "non-standard" length pieces because I get quite a few (every 5th  or 6th case) that I have to dig a piece of CM [ceramic media] out of the case where it has lodged and WON'T come loose except by prying out with a hook of some sort) and that becomes VERY tedious.  I do use what is sold here as "TSP" but it says clearly on the label that it isn't the real stuff, so I don't know if it does what Dick said it should do ... but it's all I can get.  My brass comes out a very clean gold color, but it looks to be a flat gold, rather than the jewelry-look gold that I used to get.

Oh, well. clean is the name of the game, NOT shiny.


Glad to hear that your Alice-humping days are past.

(Oops - I mean Alice Pack humping!)


Korean winters can be brutal, I hear.  I never made it there.  Just Ger-mer-man and Saudi-Iraqi-Kuwaiti winters for me - besides Kentucky & Kansas, that is.

[sail32]

With reference to Mako's comment on polymer blanks

I did a tour of Australia's Lithgow Arsenal in 1966 or 67. I obtained some samples of there cartridges and had a sample each of .30-06, 7.62mm Nato and 5.56mm Nato blanks. Each was a different colour, red, black and white, if I remember correctly, and they all had an aluminum bases. The polymer part of the blanks were shaped to look like a loaded cartridge.
 
The old .303 blanks we used in the Canadian Army in the 60's, were brass cases with the neck closed over and caused feeding problems in the Lee Enfield No. 4s we were useing for exercises. The 7.62mm Nato blanks were all brass with and were shaped like a loaded round.

It's interesting in that the reinactors using Henry and Spencer rifles, are now using metal and plastic blanks for their 1860 Henry Uberti replicas.

If the military are still using plastic blanks, they may have an answer for the easy cleaning plastic out of the bores. A compliant made on some reinacting forums.

Sail32

[Montana Slim]

.....................  It has gone into the great bog of stopping progress called the JSSAP, and the black hole ARDEC.  Now they have rolled it into their lightweight weapons program.  Wooooo hoooo! How many years have they been beating that horse?

You're right about it being not in your lifetime, not with that bunch at the controls.  Cement boots for everyone!!!!

~Mako

I generally take a size 12

[Four Eyes Henry]

I have had about the same experience as will52100 with the STM.
Maybe it's the combo of my (Lortone) tumbler and the media. It took more time to get it clean, but it was not shiny.
Even after I dried it in my vibratory it didn't get as shiny as I was used to.
This stuff works but I'll stick to my ceramic for the straight walled BP brass.
So, I deprime, rinse with soapy water, get it in the Lortone with CM and some detergent and after 3 hours I put the brass in a vibratory to dry, et voila, like new.
@ Steel Horse Bailey
I too have stuck CM every now and then, a little tap on a hard surface and it comes out.

[will52100]

I'd say it does as good a job as the ceramic, just not quite as fast.  Use dawn and lemon juice and a tablespoon of TSP and it will come out like polished gold.  Unfortunately when I wet tumble, no matter what I use it dulls as it dries.

Korean winter was rough, but worse than that is the drivers, I've seen people drive better in Kuwait.  Were down around Pusan, and just looking at the mountains and terrane you get some idea of what our troupes faced when they pushed the NK back.  Fighting up and down those mountains would definatly not be my idea of a good time.

[Four Eyes Henry]

@ will52100
After wet tumbling I toss the brass in a vibratory with walnut and a little Frankford arsenal polish to dry.

[will52100]

Last time I put brass in with walnut and it wasn't completely dry it packed in the cases like concrete.  I wound up throwing several out as I couldn't get the media out.

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Yep - I NEVER put brass in a tumbler to dry.  It's always dry first.  It usually takes an hour or so in the sunlight; summer or winter.  Overnight if I leave it out to dry inside the house.  But I've got so many M/T (empty) cases, I never have to wait on dry, polished brass. 

4 Eyes Henry, I have SO many CM pieces that won't come out by "force" that I've made a tool for it specifically.  Stainless Steel lacing wire, folded over in the shape of a little hook and pressed into a Brownells small-diameter file handle.  I use a Dillon media separator VERY vigorously and STILL have to pick out many more than I'd like.  I've started taking the piece that gets stuck in a case and holding it in a pliers, I break it in half.  In about 10 years I should have ALL the oversize ones down to a usable size!

   

The Dillon separator throws 'em around so well that a tap on the table won't dislodge them, only picking them out by hand works.
 
I have to put the thing in a high-walled box because I can launch those little ceramic buggers 6'-8' away from where I do the separating.  The normal basket that comes with the thing is about 8" or perhaps 10" high, and I can STILL sling 'em out easily!  I learned this the hard way when I first tried using the separator on my deck outside my back door.  I lost a number of the ceramic pieces between the plank spaces!

[will52100]

Pretty much the same here, except most times I can tap them out on the edge of the sink.  Got an old double steel sink with water out behind the shop.  Some times I have to use a pick and break or dislodge them.  If I'd had more time I'd have seen how the SS media did with the larger cases.  Will give it a try when I get back in.

[Mako]

I ran a couple of hundred .44 spl, .44-40 and .38 spl cases and ten 12 ga brass hulls  last night with my pyramid ceramic media.  The geometry of certain case sizes will find certain media sizes and shapes that will lock up in a case.  In this case it was the .38 spl cases, out of maybe 200 I had 11 with jammed media.

I use a Kinetic bullet puller.  It works almost every time, I have resorted to dental picks for some bottleneck rifle cases on rare occasions.  The Kinetic puller is FAST and requires one "rap."

I tried something different to see if I would get a better shine.  I had been reading the directions from the Stainless Steel media vendor and they said to use "Lemi-Shine" which is marketed as preventing water spots on dishes in hard water conditions.   I needed to run to the grocery store so I bought some to try.  I really didn't do a very controlled test but I tried three techniques:

• Just using the industrial surfactant for mass finishing  
• TSP (trisodium phosphate)
• TSP (trisodium phosphate) tumble followed with a Lemi-shine tumble for an hour

The surfactant alone was duller, but clean.  The water and media was also noticeably dirtier.  The TSP alone looked pretty good, and the media rinsed cleaner after use.  The TSP and Lemi-Shine seemed like it dried with less mottling.  I really needed to try Lemi-shine alone.

The test wasn't very well done, I had some freshly shot brass and some brass that had sat around for a couple of months.  Now that I know I get a difference, I'll have to run a test.

~Mako

[Steel Horse Bailey]

Mako, I hadn't thought of using my bullet puller (kinetic type) and will give it a try.  Still makes the job waaaay longer than it should be ... but I will try.  Eventually, all the oversize pieces will be found and I'll be happy.

Thanks for the idea.