Stainless Steel Media Question

[dean253]

I am needing some advice or brainstorming ideas.

I am wanting to start using the Stainless Steel media to clean my brass but I have my brass weight sorted into 50 round count boxes. I am not willing to mix up my already sorted brass into 100 - 200 piece batches to go into the Thumbler for cleaning. I would be cleaning 6.5x47 & .284 brass. I will really be cleaning them in preperation for annealing them so I will usually do most of the brass when I set up the Annealer. So here is the million dollar question:

How do I tumble my brass and keep them sorted in the 50 round count boxes without it taking FOREVER!?

If it takes 4 hours of tumbling & I can only do 50 at a time because of my weight sort criteria then I can't see where this could be better for me than Ultrasonic cleaning. I think I could clean 50 to a 100 at a time in about 30 minutes with the right ultrasonic cleaner that I could seperate them in the basket.

I do know I could go back to 100 round count boxes but I really don't want to. The 50 round count boxes have worked best for me.

All help and ideas are appreciated. Thanks, Dean-o

 

[Rotortuner]

Re: Stainless Steel Media Question

If you shot those in a bolt gun and they are not like totaly tarnished, they clean up pretty good in only about 1.5hr of tumbling. you could do 2 or 3 loads a night and thats not too bad.

Just be aware that I have noticed some peaning of the brass at the lip, I have a giraud trimmer that cuts the lip with the sharp vld type chamfer and after tumbing the nice lip is gone, to keep the jackets of the bullets from getting pealing during seating I have to run a hand deburring tool on each one. Im not that dissappointed about it, but it did add another step. I have a 1k of once fired lapua that has the giraud lip in place, I think Im just going to walnut tumble those, since they arent too bad. The SS tumbling IMO is most usefull on really dirty semi auto fired brass like range pickup 223 or pistol cases.

CJG