Rubberduck270
Well-Known Member
Back sometime last fall, there was a thread floating around about tumbling media and types of case cleaning. BigD_625 was gracious enough to provide a link to a YouTube video where a guy used stainless tumbling media and a rotary tumbler from Harbor Freight ( Here and Here using this Tumbler and this Stainless Media ). I thought it looked like a pretty good set up so I bought one to try out. I've used it a few times but decided to do a little review on it.
Here's what I started with, 66 pieces of deprimed, 1X fired 7mm-08 that weren't exactly nasty but they weren't clean either:
Off into the little drums they went, 33 pieces per drum.
Tossed them onto a set of digital refrigeration scales to weigh out the drum.
I then added 8 oz. of stainless pins and topped the rest off with water to get me to the 3 lb. mark.
One thing I've learned with this set up is the more pins and the fewer cases you use the better but, not enough water cuts down on effectiveness too. 25 pieces of brass and a full pound of pins would have been a better way to go on this batch but I wanted to run them all in one batch. Also note, the weight of the lid adds about 2.5 oz. to the total weight of the drum so "technically" I'm over weight on each run by 5 oz.
Little squirt of Dawn dish washing detergent and a sprinkle of LemiShine, toss on the lids and put them on the tumbler for 3 hrs and this is what you'll have.
Primer pockets are pretty clean but this is where you know you needed a few more pins. Most (75%) of the crud is out of the pocket, the remaining stuff will come out when I run them over the primer pocket uniformer so I'm not worried about what's left in the bottom.
Quick rinse and a shake then I turned them upside down in case holders to finish drying.
Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how it performs. It does better with .308 based cases when trying to run several at a time but 20 7mm Rem Mag cases turn out pretty good as do that number of 30-06 based cases. I haven't ran any 300 Win Mag through it yet but I'd suspect it would only handle 30ish (15 per drum) given their length. If you're someone that shoots a ton of Magnum sized cases all the time you'll definitely want to look into a larger tumbler, but for shooters that deal with smaller batches of brass at a time (such as myself) it's not a bad way to go for the money.
Here's what I started with, 66 pieces of deprimed, 1X fired 7mm-08 that weren't exactly nasty but they weren't clean either:
Off into the little drums they went, 33 pieces per drum.
Tossed them onto a set of digital refrigeration scales to weigh out the drum.
I then added 8 oz. of stainless pins and topped the rest off with water to get me to the 3 lb. mark.
One thing I've learned with this set up is the more pins and the fewer cases you use the better but, not enough water cuts down on effectiveness too. 25 pieces of brass and a full pound of pins would have been a better way to go on this batch but I wanted to run them all in one batch. Also note, the weight of the lid adds about 2.5 oz. to the total weight of the drum so "technically" I'm over weight on each run by 5 oz.
Little squirt of Dawn dish washing detergent and a sprinkle of LemiShine, toss on the lids and put them on the tumbler for 3 hrs and this is what you'll have.
Primer pockets are pretty clean but this is where you know you needed a few more pins. Most (75%) of the crud is out of the pocket, the remaining stuff will come out when I run them over the primer pocket uniformer so I'm not worried about what's left in the bottom.
Quick rinse and a shake then I turned them upside down in case holders to finish drying.
Overall, I'm pretty pleased with how it performs. It does better with .308 based cases when trying to run several at a time but 20 7mm Rem Mag cases turn out pretty good as do that number of 30-06 based cases. I haven't ran any 300 Win Mag through it yet but I'd suspect it would only handle 30ish (15 per drum) given their length. If you're someone that shoots a ton of Magnum sized cases all the time you'll definitely want to look into a larger tumbler, but for shooters that deal with smaller batches of brass at a time (such as myself) it's not a bad way to go for the money.
@ Dave! 
