Back into Reloading......

Foggy is yours steel? Mine is aluminum
 
Went into a pet store yesterday. What kind of reptile bedding is used? Thy had calcite and and coconut hulls.
 
bigboreblr said:
Went into a pet store yesterday. What kind of reptile bedding is used? Thy had calcite and and coconut hulls.
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Rice is currently my preferred tumbling media. This article is a good background on why, somewhat precision rifle focused but it works good enough i'd use it for general purpose cleaning too.

Play With Your Food: Clean Brass With Rice :: Primal Rights, Inc

Cleaning your brass is a necessity. Foreign material in or on our cases can cause all kinds of problems. Damage to expensive reloading dies, damage to rifles, and various other issues can arise if proper care is not taken.
primalrights.com
 
I'll give that a try. I got some 450 marlin brass that needs some rough cleaning. Got some green stains on it. It if was 30-30 or 308, I'd throw it out.
 
I tried some corn husk pet bedding years ago and didn't care for it.


As for powder position in large cases or light loads, do they still make Pufflon? (just looked, they do) I used lots of it in my 577/450 cases, and played with it a bit in .40-65 and .45-90.
 
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Haven't got a chance to shoot my light load marlin 450's. However, I did put a tuft of poly fill. Kind of stuff they put in stuffed animals. A little nervous doing it. Neck was bothering me pretty good sunday, so decieded to go shoot another day. The cases look like they can handle the load ok, I will try the H4227 w/o the polyfill.
 
A set of verification weights can save you a lot of time as well as loosing a body part or worse. I saw a decent set on eBay for $40. Dial calipers are another thing that should be on a reloading bench.
 
b116757 said:
Foggy is yours steel? Mine is aluminum
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Yep....mine is steel. I think I bought it about 1998 or so. Hauled it out to SD a few times for PD shoots......but it's really not very portable.....and I made mine heavier by increasing the size of the wood top with 1" thick plywood too. At that time we were shooting some pretty good distances.....and weight was kinda my friend. Not sure what I was thinking....lol.

I did make a prototype bench too.....not sure what happened to that?? Always wanted to produce a portable shooting bench.....but shipping those things made it impractical.....and there was no decent profit margins in it for me.
 
bigboreblr said:
I'll give that a try. I got some 450 marlin brass that needs some rough cleaning. Got some green stains on it. It if was 30-30 or 308, I'd throw it out.
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I'm not sure its any better at getting nasty brass clean than the traditional corn cob or walnut media, its just less dusty and easier to get out of cases.

Stainless steel pin tumbling is the way to get nasty brass clean. I just dont use it typically because its more effort than vibratory tumbling with rice and it cleans the carbon off the inside of case necks and I want the carbon there. This is the most economical commercial way: https://www.amazon.com/Frankford-Ar...rankford+arsenal+steel+tumbler,aps,358&sr=8-3
I started with cheap rock tumblers from harbor freight and they do the trick just the same but batches are small and they are a little more cumbersome to work with than the frankford arsenal tumbler. I dont recall if I threw it away when i moved in 2020 but if i still have it id be willing to ship the harbor freight rock tumbler to you with some steel pins if you want to give it a go? I haven't used it in probably close to a decade.
 
That would be great wind gypsy.

Looking at a snall one like that to scarify seeds.
 
I use a MJR tumbler and no complaints. You can make your own canisters if you want, but I just use the two I bought with it, one is good for about 50 rds of rifle or less and the other is good for 250+. Looks like the price has more than doubled since I bought mine.

But once you look at a MJR, you might decided to just build your own. Pretty simple stuff.

The only problem I have had with wet tumble is if you are cleaning lube off or any brass with oily residue, you must add a good degreaser to it (simple green). Otherwise it comes out with a gray film covering everything.
 
A drop of dawn, a sprinkle of Lemishine, water, SS pins and things always came out sparkly for me. Every once in a while a guy needs to tumble clean just the media to get the residue off of it.
 
Wind Gypsy said:
A drop of dawn, a sprinkle of Lemishine, water, SS pins and things always came out sparkly for me. Every once in a while a guy needs to tumble clean just the media to get the residue off of it.
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It does seem to be a problem for only some of us, and even for me its hit and miss. I just did a batch the other day that were fresh from the range, no lube so I did not add any degreaser and they came out with the gray residue. It may have just been that the pins were contaminated. So maybe it depends on the type of oil? I use lanolin, and it certainly creates that gray film, but just a cap ful of simple green gets rid of it.
 
West_Fork said:
It does seem to be a problem for only some of us, and even for me its hit and miss. I just did a batch the other day that were fresh from the range, no lube so I did not add any degreaser and they came out with the gray residue. It may have just been that the pins were contaminated. So maybe it depends on the type of oil? I use lanolin, and it certainly creates that gray film, but just a cap ful of simple green gets rid of it.
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Yep, i'm assuming the lemishine might do something similar on mine? Definitely needed to run media cleaning runs with lemishine/dawn and just the pins to get the film off them occasionally or brass would come out with the film on it.
 
Wind Gypsy said:
Yep, i'm assuming the lemishine might do something similar on mine? Definitely needed to run media cleaning runs with lemishine/dawn and just the pins to get the film off them occasionally or brass would come out with the film on it.
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IDK, I tried a heavy dose of lemishine and I swear it made it worse. I use a teaspoon of lemishine, few drops of dawn, and a splash of simple green and haven't experienced since, but I also give lubed brass a good rinse in hot water before tumbling too. It's about as close to a martini as I get these days.
 
Carbon residue left inside? Whats the advantage?
 
bigboreblr said:
Carbon residue left inside? Whats the advantage?
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I think it has something to do with friction and the bullet being released from the case when fired. Voodoo that perhaps I will ponder.

As of a week ago, my whole shooting and reloading scheme fell apart. Shot 40 rnds and watched the groups continuously grow until they finished at around 3" and shifted down 2". The scope was 9 moa low from the get go since my last session.

So I either have issues with the new brake I just made that has very little clearance, I think around 010"?
Issues with my optic?
Or I had moisture in my cases?
Or I have a bad batch of bullets?
Or my throat just went (only about 300rnds on it)?
Or seater is messed up worse than I thought?
Forgot to torque barrel?


I'm a mess.
 
Im no armorer, but a good cleaning has fixed alotb of guns. Look for signs of copper fouling on the brake.

I brag how close i shoot em, so dont mess much with long range.

If you shoot about 150 grains of powdwr rhen rest, its hard to damage a throat. 3 shots 308 down to 5 shots 30-30.
 
Sounds like something is loose or your scope is not holding zero.

I’m pretty sure most commercial muzzle devices have multiples more clearance than that brake though so maybe there’s something to that?
 
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