Dirty Brass Q

[long colt lawrence]

Howdy Gents,

    I've got another newbie question. How clean should my tumbler make the brass? I've got some 45-70 that had pyrodex through it with blowback on the case and the tumbler won't remove it. I followed the directions for proper amount of brass polish to add, mabye half the bottle is what people really use. Or should I be doing some sort of cleaning before tumbling? At any rate none of the brass (45LC.) comes out brand new clean. What am I not doing?


Thanks

Franklin Arsenal tumbler and polish
Avg. tumble time = 4-5 hours
Total number of cases polished so far appr. 400.

[SingleShotShorty]

First of all deprime the brass (I use a universal dpriming die) then soak the brass in cider vinegar for approximately 20 to 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Rinse the brass with clean water then dry them in the oven set as low as possible around 170 degrees to dry them. Then place them in a tubler with corncob media treated with Flitz polish. Tumble them for about 3 or 4 hours and they should be brite as a new penny.

[rickyp]

with the 45-70 cases soak them is water with a little bit of soap to remove the salts from the pyrodex dry them well you may want to use walnut media. and I have heard that once you use B.P. (or the like) in a brass case you should never use it for smokeless powder anymore.

[Flint]

It's important that the brass be clean, but that doesn't mean, necessarily unstained.  Discoloration from propellant chemistry etc is not critical.  What you want is to get rid of dirt, grit, fouling solids and such, so you don't damage (scratch) your reloading dies and rifle or revolver chamber.  Brass tarnish is not hardewr than steel.