Today, let’s address what some would consider “prepping the brass” for reloading. To do this, you’ll need to decide what brass cleaning method will be the best for our personal needs.

There are several ways to clean brass, one of the simplest being the use of 0000 steel Wool. You have to handle each case one at a time, but you will be able to put a high polish on the brass quickly. Some shooters like to use a Scotch Brite cloth instead of the steel wool, but the Scotch Brite will not leave a bright finish on the brass.

Another popular cleaning method is rotary or vibratory cleaners. The vibratory cleaner has, for the most part, become the work horse cleaning system for most reloaders. You can use the nut, or the corn cob, media with it. The rotary cleaner is the next unit that you would use with these medias. I have found that the rotary is slower, but I do feel that it gives you a better cleaning.

The next method would be what has been taking the reloading community by storm lately – ultrasonic cleaners. These are better than the vibratory or rotary cleaners because they’ll clean the carbon out of the interior of the case, as well as the primer pocket. These units work well and they will clean quickly. The only thing you need to remember is that they will not put a bright shine on the brass either. If you’re somebody who likes a good shine on the brass, you’ll still need to polish it with media to put the shine back on. One tech tip we picked up from a shooter is that you can re-use the solution by filtering it through a generic coffee filter. We tried this, and it does work well, and will help in the economics of your cleaner mix.

Another cleaner we carry at Sinclair, is the Iosso Liquid Case Cleaner Kit. This comes with a plastic pail, drawstring bag, and the cleaning liquid. You would put your brass into the bag and then let the cases sit in the solution for two to four minutes. Let the liquid drain off the cases back into the pail since it is re-usable, and then rinse off the cases in hot water. When that is done, I will generally let them air dry overnight so that I can work with them at that point. One thing to remember is never store the liquid in a metal container since it is mildly acidic. That’s the reason that the plastic pail is provided. The acidic part is biodegradable and will not harm you or any plumbing. It is in a highly concentrated industrial grade detergent, which helps in the cleaning process. We discovered several years ago, during the Moly Coated Bullet Testing, that the Iosso cleaner is very effective for pre cleaning bullets before applying the Moly to them. We have also found that it is effective for removing the Moly as well.

Another type of brass cleaner that we carry is polishing cloths: the Nevr-Dull and the Krazy Kloth. Both of these are chemically treated so that they are very good at removing carbon and tarnish from the surface of the brass. When you clean the brass off, it will have a bright polish to the exterior surface for you.

Another type of cleaning system is a watertight rotary cleaner that uses stainless steel media. Make sure the primers have been removed from the brass and use it with water and dishwashing liquid. Some shooters find that putting a little lemon juice in the mix reduces water spotting on the cases. This method works by allowing the stainless media to work on all of the surfaces of the cases, and the media is is enough that particles will go through the flash hole and clean the primer pocket without bunching up like nut or cob media will. A shooter that I’ve shot benchrest with called me after doing this, and he said the cases he used had been fired 20 times in his gun, yet they cleaned up so bright that they looked like brand-new, polished cases inside and out after they had dried.

I want to address how you use the different types of media. The ground nutshell media is generally used for harder cleaning jobs, such as badly tarnished cases or those with a carbon buildup. The nut media will leave an oily residue on the cases, which is naturally in the nut shell, so use corn cob media to remove this and leave a bright polish on the case. The liquid cleaners are generally used the clean the inside of the cases and primer pockets. The stainless media must be used ONLY in a sealed, rotary tumbler with the liquid.

One of the questions asked is “how do you tell when your media is not doing its’ job?”. You will be able to tell when you notice that it is taking longer to get the brass clean. You can deal with this one of several ways: remove half of the media and replace it with fresh media of the same type. Run it by itself, and this will generally bring it back. If it is very dirty, you can always add one of the reactivator additives we carry from the folks at Rooster, Iosso, and Lyman. At some point, the media will be so dirty that you will simply have to replace it, which will also help keep the interior of the tumbler bowls clean. This is even more important with the use of the nut media because of the natural oils it has in it. I clean my tumbler bowls out after I have used the nut media so that the oils from it will not slow down the other type of media from working properly for you.

Some handy accessories… Having a media sifter will greatly speed up separating the brass from the media. I find that the Rotary Separator from RCBS works very well for this. For those of you using a vibratory cleaner, one of the Lyman Quick-Release Nuts works well for getting the lid off and on fast when you want to check on the progress of your cleaning.

As you can see, there are a lot of ways to keep your brass its best. Keep in mind that the amount of cleaning and polishing you have to do depends on the type of shooting you’re doing. The person shooting a lot of handgun may not need brass cleaned to the level that a benchrest shooter would demand. But you can be assured that there’s a cleaning system that will make this job as easy and quick as possible for you.

As always, if you have any questions about brass cleaning – or any other reloading subject – please do not hesitate to contact any of us on the Sinclair Tech Staff.

Bob Blaine
Reloading Technician
NRA Certified Reloading Instructor
NRA Certified Range Safety Officer

This entry was posted on Friday, January 27th, 2012 at 4:10 pm and is filed under Sinclair News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.