Overtumbled brass

mballai

November 23, 2002 17:48

OK, here's what happened, I had a whole bunch of 38 special brass in the tumbler and had it going for about two hours, when the lady of the house dragged me off to go shopping. Should've known that this mini expedition would not have been of short duration.

Anyway on returning home, the brass was real clean...but it looked a lot closer to nickel than brass! I'm wondering if I actually wore more than the finish and weakened the cases. Some of it was once fired. Should I ditch it or what?

Three Precious Metals: Gold, silver and lead

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  buddyb

  November 23, 2002 18:09

  I dont think it could have damaged the brass if you were using regular media(corn cob,walnut).I have tumbled rifle brass 24 hours with no ill effect.

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  Shootist3006

  November 23, 2002 21:17

  I agree with buddy. What media and polish agent were you using?
  
  Quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem.Semper Fidelis

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  mballai

  November 24, 2002 06:28

  It's well used walnut media. The weird thing is that when I looked at it this morning it was brass yellow again but still rather dulled in finish.
  
  I took a casing and wiped it with some brass polish and it looked almost like new. Maybe it's just time to change the media. Strange.
  
  Three Precious Metals: Gold, silver and lead

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  queeksdraw

  November 24, 2002 09:43

  I'v also let brass get to this stage with no ill effects, but I once also got the bright idea of inventing a supper tumbler- clothes dryer with heating elament removed. Couple thousand 38spl cases add a few coffee cans of corn cob media,turn on to run till I turn it off 3 hrs later, you could not even tell what cal. brass was I think that was over tumbled.

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  leeblackman

  November 24, 2002 10:46

  I've left my tumbler going with media in it for several days at a time, sometimes when I get some old grody looking stuff I do that, never had any problems. btw, I use corncob media.

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  mballai

  November 24, 2002 10:55

  Well I reran the brass a bit through some fresh media with a little polish additive. Looks just fine now. I must have put so much brass through the old batch it was saturated and not fully cleaning. The temporary color "change" I can't quite figure out. I'll change the media more often.
  
  Three Precious Metals: Gold, silver and lead

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