Cleaning Brass

[DuneBoer]

Please forgive me if something like this has been posted before.

I tried making a brass tumbler out of a 5 gal bucket and an old fan motor. I saw this done on a DIy thread here. I used the stainless steel pins etc. My wiring and the over worked motor caused it to spark and burn. Luckily I was watching when this happened so my house didn't burn down.

After some thought I decided to buy a small cement mixer out of Harbor Freight $129. I had some left over truck bed liner that I used to paint the inside of the drum. I put 20 pounds of stainless steel pins in and tried it out. After some laughs from my friends I fired it up with some 762 brass. Much to my surprise it worked out I mean it really works! It was spitting some of the pins out but a piece of screen and a rubber band fixed that. I put about 200 to 300 pieces of 762 in for about an hour and it cleans the primer pocked too. Now my buddies want to come over and clean brass all the time!

I won't be throwing my match Lapua brass in here or my 300 WM brass but for my 556 and 762 that I use in the bullet hoses it will work fine.

FYI

 

[samnev]

Neat, my brother in law did almost the same thing and it also worked out well.

 

[kansas]

I thought about this and a friend tried that however couldn't get it to work. Maybe he didn't try enough pins but it sure seems like it should work.

 

[DuneBoer]

I used 20 Lbs of pins in the mixer. The mixer has a 1.25 cubic feet drum. It's pretty small. I found it cleaned better when the drum was tipped to the side horizontal but the drum spit out some of the pins. I just used a piece of screen with a rubber band holding it on and that keeps the pins in. Water still sloshes out a bit though.

 

[DuneBoer]

For the money, sounds like you got the best bang for your buck!
I spent some extra money and got one made. It runs great.
View attachment 32672

That looks great! What did it cost to have it made? I would be ashamed to show you a photo of the first one I tried to build it was pretty awful.

 

[forrestgump01]

Hmmmm.... my dad has an old cement mixer laying around . Might have to try this.

 

[Unknown]

Where do you guys find the electric motors? I need one, but can't seem to find one locally.

I have my annealing table mostly done, but need the motor to power it. Obviously, I'll have to work out the speed via various sized wheels, or a rheostat. I have torches, gas supply, regulator, table, just need the motor.

 

[PBRACEGUNS]

I built a tumbler similar to the BigDawg rig. same basic layout. Made short and long drums for it. Short drum will do about 500 .45 cases easily and I tumbled 28 lbs. of 9mm in the large drum with no issues. 31/2 hrs. and even the brown tarnished 9mm came out looking like new.
Simple Wallyworld Presto food dehydrator to dry brass. Had all 500 .45's in there at one time. 30 minutes or so and they were all dry.
I build them for sale but I won't advertise on the hide as I am not a official site sponsor. Maybe one day if finances allow I will become a advertiser here.

 

[dsnipe]

I just started doing cleaning with stainless media. I bought the cheap double drum one from harbor freight. Bought 2.5lbs of stainless media from Ebay. All in I got about 55 bucks in all of it and by far the best investment I have made. I only do rifle rounds but I can fit about 100 pcs or so of 308 size cases and around 80 300 win mag at a time. It works great so far. Everytime I have used it the brass looks factory new. Great Investment.

 

[PBRACEGUNS]

Cleaning Brass

Where do you guys find the electric motors? I need one, but can't seem to find one locally.

I have my annealing table mostly done, but need the motor to power it. Obviously, I'll have to work out the speed via various sized wheels, or a rheostat. I have torches, gas supply, regulator, table, just need the motor.

Try www.surpluscenter.com
I buy electric motors and gear reduction boxes from them for machinery I build for customers. For a annealing machine you would want a DC variable speed motor. Being able to regulate speed would be a big plus without the need to experiment with different pulleys.
I started drawing up a design for a case annealer but haven't picked out a drive motor setup yet. A very low torque output motor is all that would be needed to turn a turntable that could hold several pieces of brass at a time.
I was planning mine to have a automatic case ejector that would drop the cases into the cooling tank. Once I have it done I will probably post up something in the DIY section.



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