Polishing Brass

[Preacherman]

I saw on another site the other day a guy was using uncooked long grain white rice to polish brass before reloading. Tried it seems to work great. It's cheap enough to use a couple times and toss.
Any body else tried it?

Preacherman
Acts 10:13

[PaulS]

Ground corn cob is cheaper and lasts longer. It shines up the cases too. I used rice just once and got tired of cleaning the rice kernals out of the flash holes. Like rice cob polishes nice but it doesn't clean cases as fast as walnut shells. I use the walnut shell media because it cleans fast and that is more important to me than a high polish. The ground shell mix is also cheap if you buy it at a feed and grain store rather than as "cleaning media" for cases. You buy this stuff in bulk putting it into your own sack 20 pounds at a time for a couple of dollars. Twenty pounds of rice is going to cost a bit more than that.

[PA-Joe]

You can get corn and walnut hulls in various sizes in the rodent bedding area of most major pet stores. I use walnut to clean and corn to polish.

[Questor]

I think corn cob media must be available in bulk for pet supply purposes too. The guy who runs my favorite reloading shop buys it in bulk and sells it cheap. A bag that's big enough for my cleaner costs $3. It's not treated, but it works as well as the expensive reloading brand of corn cob media. I thought it would be tactless to ask him where he gets it, so I didn't ask. In any case I'm happy that he sells it and I'll keep buying it from him. I can clean about 10,000 45ACP cases with it before I need to pitch it, but replacing it after 5,000 is something I should do because the cases are pretty dingy after a lot of cleaning cycles.

[handyman06]

i tried it, it didnt work nearly as fast as walnut for me.

[Don Fischer]

I use walnut for cleaning and treated corn for polishing. Mostly I just clean. I also have a 1" wood dowl with a 16 penny nail glued into it that I use to clean out primer pockets and flash holes when media does get stuck in there.

[ihuntbucks]

Preach....don't toss it,cook it when you're thru .I use Lyman "tuffnut" only......Rick

[wienranch]

I've been wondering about used coffee grounds.  Haven't tried it yet - can anyone think of any reason not to?

[Tom W.]

I've tried the rice, I've tried the rodent litter from the pet store, and I've tried mixing the two together and adding a lot of Midway's polish. I've also found out that I was better off buying the corn cob media that is made for cleaning cases.

[DWTim]

I've been wondering about used coffee grounds.  Haven't tried it yet - can anyone think of any reason not to?

I'd be afraid of the acids present in it. They're probably weakened after use, but it'd probably make the cases discolored.