Wet Tumbling Brass with Stainless Media — Eye-Opening Results
On our main Accurateshooter.com website, you’ll find a comprehensive review of the STM system for cleaning cartridge brass with stainless media. To clean brass with stainless media, start with five pounds of small stainless pins sold by StainlessTumblingMedia.com. Place these along with a gallon of water, a little liquid cleaner, and two pounds of cartridge brass in a rotary tumbler, and run the machine for one to four hours.
CLICK HERE for Stainless Media Brass Cleaning System Review »
Forum Member Tests STM System
Our reviewer, Forum member Jason Koplin, purchased the STM media and a new Thumler’s Tumbler. He then tested the STM cleaning procedure on his own brass, including some extremely dirty and tarnished “range pick-up” brass. Jason was thoroughly impressed with how well the STM process worked — as you can see from the “before and after” photos below. Brass which looked like it was ready for the scrap heap was restored to “like-new” appearance. Check it out:
Works Great on Both Rifle Brass and Pistol Brass
The process works equally well on both rifle brass and pistol brass (see below). Jason observed that one surprise benefit of the STM cleaning procedure is a big reduction in noise in his reloading room. Jason said the water-filled rotary tumbler was much quieter than his vibratory tumblers.
You’ll want to read Jason’s full review which shows more before and after images. The full article features a “how-to” video created by Forum member Cory Dickerson, the young man who pioneered the stainless tumbling process and founded STM. The video shows how to load brass, media, and cleaner solutions into the tumbler, and how to separate media from brass once the tumbling is done.
Similar Posts:
- How It Works: Wet Tumbling Cartridge Brass with Stainless Media
- Get Brass Super-Clean — Wet Tumbling with Stainless Media
- Cleaning Brass with Stainless Tumbling Media
- Review of Stainless Tumbling Media Brass Cleaning System
- Wet-Tumbling Cartridge Brass with Rotary Tumblers
Share the post "Wet Tumbling Brass with Stainless Media — Eye-Opening Results"
Tags: Brass Cleaning, Corey Dickerson, Jason Koplin, Stainless Media, STM Media, Ultrasound, Wet Tumbling
Some F Class shooters believe the tumbling actually damages the mouth of the case and that causes uneven neck tension which causes wide velocity spread.
I wonder if anyone else has seen this?
I’ve always figured the damage didn’t matter as long as the inside of the neck gets chamfered after the stainless media tumble.
Yeah, it works great. However, the wet system is a mess to deal with. The cases come out wet, you have to dispose of the dirty water and detergent, hope you have a deep sink, and the steel pins stick in the cases. Unless you have the magnet gizmo to remove the pins you’re going to get some pins in your load no matter what you do. Ill stick to dry media.
A magnet isn’t a big deal…they’re cheap. Cheaper than the time to poke compacted softer media out of places!
Ultrasonic cleaner for me. Run it in the cleaner then bake off the moisture, no messing around with pins stuck in the case or potential damage from tumbling a harder and tougher metal into a softer metal.
Some one with the equipment to a before and after inspection of the soft brass following impact cleaning by hard pins.
Pretty is not always good.
Wet stainless media with Dawn and Lemmi Clean produces an amazing as-new shine. I’ve never experienced damage. Pouring away a couple cycles of gray to black water tells you the state of cleanliness. This is the difference between washing your hands under the faucet versus just rubbing them together with a squirt of sanitizer. Maybe this doesn’t have to be done every single firing for many guns. Dry media particles cannot begin to scour the inside of pockets let alone the interior void.
I station a Texas Tumbler by Mark Roberts at a utility sink and simply tilt and refill it with the accessory sprayer. No need for magnets, just reach in, gather eight or so into your hand case necks down, and all the pins fall out with a couple shakes. In one motion remove and then put the neck up cases under the running sink faucet to flush them out, them drop them into a towel lined box.
The best case cleaning system yet. Have cleaned hundreds of cases over the past year. Never a problem. There is no damage to the cases. Recommended
I use a strainer to catch the stainless media while rinsing.
I tried dry with corn. Took over 8 hours to clean and didnt do a very good job on the inside of the case at all. Swithed to wet with SS pins and the before and after is insane and took about 1-2hours.
I will be sticking with wet, using a magnet clean up was easy and not more dust or corn in my cases.