5-gallon wet tumbler from dryer

[coachjpg]

I needed a way to clean *lots* of brass. I tried a bunch of different approaches, and settled on the following.

I took an old gas-fired clothes dryer whose heating mechanism had failed, & removed the "paddles" on the sides of the drum. (Just pop the top off the dryer and you can access the screws holding the paddles to the drum.)

I took a 5-gallon bucket from Home Depot or Lowes, with a GASKETED lid. Fill with 4 gallons of brass. Add a 2" layer of stainless tumbling media on top, plus a healthy squirt of Dawn. Fill with water, seal the bucket with a rubber hammer, lay it in the bottom of the dryer drum, and turn the dryer on. The bucket rolls along at the bottom of the dryer drum. 2 hours cleans once-fired brass. 4 hours cleans the nastiest range brass. There's a $2 tool for popping open bucket lids that you'll want to get. They'll have it in the paint department.

Some folks also add lemishine to the bucket. I'll probably try that sometime.

You can use smaller buckets for smaller amounts of brass, as long as the lid is watertight. In my experience, that means it has to be a gasketed lid. I bought "watertight" buckets without gaskets, and they leaked. I now own several sizes of gasketed buckets.

I thought I needed more agitation than simply a rolling drum, but I was wrong. All that extra agitation did was beat up the case mouths.

I'm not sure how many 9mm cases it takes to fill 4 gallons, but it's a lot (8,000?). It took me a week to sort & decap them. I'll post pictures when I can.

I'm embarrassed to think of all the more complicated things I tried before I settled on this solution. It's far cheaper and simpler than anything else I tried, and it works at least as well. I've seen other, more complicated dryer-tumbler solutions on the net, but I've not seen this one, so I figured I'd post.

 

[Fixxah]

Great idea. Are you selling lots of brass or just stocking up for..when SHTF?

Sent from the Hyundai of the droids, the Samsung Replenish, using Tapatalk.

 

[mac1911]

I have had that thought in my head for ever, only thing is I have yet to come across a dryer that had a good motor. I have considered a cheap small cemet mixer.

 

[Boris]

you can try this configuration:

link here: http://www.gizmology.net/mixer.htm

basically it could be used as a small ball mill to pulverize/ mix powders. I guess it could be used to tumble things too. Lots of water is probably not necessary. Good thing about this particular design is that no heavy reduction needed from the motor.

 

[coachjpg]

I got the dryer from Craig's List, for free. You want a gas dryer so it runs of normal 110V power. Small is fine.

I coach a shooting team of HS kids, so we go through *lots* of ammo. A High-Power rifle match is 80-100 rounds/shooter. We often go through 1,000 rounds of 9mm in a well-attended Scholastic Steel Challenge practice.

The guy who sold me my Garand had a beautiful reloading room, with a big vibratory tumbler that could clean 100 cases/day. He pretty much runs it continuously. I pointed out that we shoot 1000 rounds/week. I clearly needed more capacity.

There are lots of ways to rotate a 5-gallon bucket. The dryer approach was simplest for me. Remove 6 screws to get rid of the paddles, throw your brass and media in a 5-gallon bucket, and move on to your next project.

FWIW.

 

[Jamie]

I like it.

*off to see what the GFs reaction will be as I disassemble our dryer*

 

[Finalygotabeltfed]

How did the case case mouths look after tumbling?

 

[coachjpg]

How did the case case mouths look after tumbling?

They look OK to me. The middle case is not cleaned/tumbled. The outer cases were wet tumbled for 4 hours in a rolling bucket with dawn and SS pin media without agitation. We're pushing the limits of my camera here, sorry about the image quality.

 

[coachjpg]

Nothing fancy. Very simple. If you're going to be opening these buckets a lot, you do want the $2 lid popping tool.

 

[EddieCoyle]

Can you fit two of them in there?

 

[01SVTvert]

Can you fit two of them in there?

EC needs to clean 10K 223 at a time, that way he only needs to do 50 batches a year....

Great idea on a large scale, love seeing the ingenuity of some of the people around here.

 

[coachjpg]

Can you fit two of them in there?

Yes. The buckets will rub against each other, so you'd need to choose buckets that won't catch on each other. I'll try it with 2 buckets full of water. I'm down to very small quantities of dirty brass.

You could also use one larger drum. Here's a 10-gallon one that would work: http://pkubrich1.site.aplus.net/Prod_containers.htm.

 

[Gammon]

Sorry, but I just don't see the advantage of wet tumbling. When your done tumbling, you still have to dry the brass. I just picked up a Lyman tumbler that does about 1000 cases at a time for under $100. Put the brass in the tumbler, add dry media and turn it on. When your done (3 to 4 hours) you just run the brass/media through a sifter and you're ready to load. Why complicate the process?

 

[01SVTvert]

Some like the perfect look of wet tumbled brass that has been deprimed. Totally clean, new looking brass, including the primer hole.

I am fine with dry tumbling but if I could get in cheap on wet tumbling I can see the attraction. New looking components including getting back to perfect some really ratty looking brass.

 

[dcmdon]

The ultimate wet or dry tumbler is a cement mixer from Harbor freight. A friend of a friend uses.

$220

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[coachjpg]

Sorry, but I just don't see the advantage of wet tumbling. When your done tumbling, you still have to dry the brass. I just picked up a Lyman tumbler that does about 1000 cases at a time for under $100. Put the brass in the tumbler, add dry media and turn it on. When your done (3 to 4 hours) you just run the brass/media through a sifter and you're ready to load. Why complicate the process?

It depends whether you want the crud you're cleaning off the brass as a liquid or a dust. I don't want to breathe that stuff. I teach kids, and I also don't want kids breathing that stuff. I find it easier to control and dispose of a liquid. That dust scares me.

Does your $100 Lyman tumbler handle 1,000 30-06 cases at a time? The 5-gallon bucket tumbler does.

Drying time doesn't bother me. I have 3 buckets of 9mm cases at the moment. One has been drying for half a day, one for a couple of days, and one for nearly a week. The cases I cleaned today will have plenty of time to dry before I get to them. Some guys dry their brass using a hair dryer, a heat gun, their oven, or their outdoor grill. I've never felt the need.

I'm glad you have a solution that works for you. I'm not saying my approach is better or worse than any other. It happens to work well for me, given a team of teenage shooters who go through a lot of 9mm and 30-06.

There are lots of folks who have written about the advantages of wet tumbling with stainless media. www.stainlesstumblingmedia.com has lots of info. I'm no expert, but I read about it and it seemed the best approach for me. YMMV.

 

[EddieCoyle]

If you get sick of wet tumbling and want to try it with dry media, I have a big Dillon that'll hold 1K .30-06 cases. You're welcome to try it if you want. I can meet you at HSC.

 

[coachjpg]

If you get sick of wet tumbling and want to try it with dry media, I have a big Dillon that'll hold 1K .30-06 cases. You're welcome to try it if you want. I can meet you at HSC.

Thanks, but I still worry about breathing the dust.

If you want to try wet tumbling, I'll do a "load" of your brass for you. For a full load, I fill a 5-gallon bucket to about 6" from the top.

 

[dcmdon]

If you get sick of wet tumbling and want to try it with dry media, I have a big Dillon that'll hold 1K .30-06 cases. You're welcome to try it if you want. I can meet you at HSC.

How has your dillon lasted? I've heard of people having trouble with the motors.

Actually that seems to be the main benefit of the Thumblers. That the motors last. It seems like the vibratory ones are constantly giving out.
I have a literally 20 year old Lyman that started out as a 600. Then I put a 1200 bowl on it. Now I have a 2200 bowl on it. Its still going strong.
I had a new hornady crap out in a year.

Don

 

[dcmdon]

Thanks, but I still worry about breathing the dust.

If you want to try wet tumbling, I'll do a "load" of your brass for you. For a full load, I fill a 5-gallon bucket to about 6" from the top.

How many pounds of SS media do you use for a 5 gallon bucket full? That stuff is expensive. (I realize it lasts forever) But I'm still guessing there's $200 worth of media in each 5 gal bucket.

But then again, you're probably cleaning 5000 9mms in one shot.

 

[coachjpg]

How many pounds of SS media do you use for a 5 gallon bucket full? That stuff is expensive. (I realize it lasts forever) But I'm still guessing there's $200 worth of media in each 5 gal bucket.

But then again, you're probably cleaning 5000 9mms in one shot.

I'm guessing that a 5-gallon bucket will clean about 8,000 9mm cases. I haven't counted them very carefully. When I pour in the brass, I leave 6" of space at the top. Then I add 2" of media, a healthy squirt of Dawn, and fill with water.

The media costs $5/lb, less if you buy the 50-lb bag, which is what I did. I probably use about 5-7 lbs for a 5-gallon bucket, so that's $25-35 worth of media. That's about what it costs for a big container of walnut shells or corn cobs.

If I had it to do over, I'd buy 15 lbs of media. I'd have one bucket tumbling while I empty and refill another. I got more media because I thought I'd be able to put 3 buckets in the dryer at once, but it turned out that that was too much weight for the dryer.

I read that the thumbler folks use a little over 1 lb of media per gallon, so I do the same. It seems to work.

 

[EddieCoyle]

Thanks, but I still worry about breathing the dust.

If you want to try wet tumbling, I'll do a "load" of your brass for you. For a full load, I fill a 5-gallon bucket to about 6" from the top.

I might take you up on that.

One benefit of the dry tumbler is that I can throw lubed and sized rifle cases in it for a short time to remove the lube.

How has your dillon lasted? I've heard of people having trouble with the motors.

So far so good, but if it dies tomorrow, it's your fault for jinxing it.

 

[coachjpg]

One benefit of the dry tumbler is that I can throw lubed and sized rifle cases in it for a short time to remove the lube.

Right. I'm limited to using something like Hornady One Shot lube, so I don't have to remove it. I also use that stuff to lube the moving parts on the press that come in contact with the cases, so I have to have it around anyway. I'm not sure this is the best approach, but for me, it's the simplest.

 

[Gammon]

It depends whether you want the crud you're cleaning off the brass as a liquid or a dust. I don't want to breathe that stuff. I teach kids, and I also don't want kids breathing that stuff. I find it easier to control and dispose of a liquid. That dust scares me.

Does your $100 Lyman tumbler handle 1,000 30-06 cases at a time? The 5-gallon bucket tumbler does.

Drying time doesn't bother me. I have 3 buckets of 9mm cases at the moment. One has been drying for half a day, one for a couple of days, and one for nearly a week. The cases I cleaned today will have plenty of time to dry before I get to them. Some guys dry their brass using a hair dryer, a heat gun, their oven, or their outdoor grill. I've never felt the need.

I'm glad you have a solution that works for you. I'm not saying my approach is better or worse than any other. It happens to work well for me, given a team of teenage shooters who go through a lot of 9mm and 30-06.

There are lots of folks who have written about the advantages of wet tumbling with stainless media. www.stainlesstumblingmedia.com has lots of info. I'm no expert, but I read about it and it seemed the best approach for me. YMMV.

I'm guessing, but I think the Lyman tumbler should handle about 750 3006 cases. I know many shooters who consume large amounts of ammo and they all use the "dry" method. Wet tumbling is time consuming and its greatest benefit is that the cases come out cleaner. The problem is that you really don't need cases that clean. The way to avoid lead contamination is to change the tumbling media often.

 

[coachjpg]

The problem is that you really don't need cases that clean. The way to avoid lead contamination is to change the tumbling media often.

Some of my dies are the high-end precision rifle dies with the micrometer seating stems etc. I figured I wanted the brass going into those expensive dies to be as clean as possible. Now that I think about it, the sites that were raving about wet tumbling with stainless media are the long-range precision rifle folks.

For bulk pistol ammo, I agree that the brass does not need to be pristine.

Wet tumbling with stainless media works for me. I'm glad the dry approach works for you. I'm not trying to convince or convert anyone. I just wanted to share what I learned in setting up for wet tumbling with stainless media.

 

[dcmdon]

Wet tumbling is a hassle that is dealt with on a batch by batch basis.

Your batches are so large that in the end its not much hassle when you figure how many rounds you do per batch.

It is great to hear from people like you who do large volumes. I learn a lot. Thanks for all the great insight.

One question I have is around drying. How do you dry them? do you turn them every day? Do you have any problems with corrosion.
Corrosion concerns are why I've never done a wet method.

I've often thought that one of my grandfather's old dry-cleaning machines would have been ideal for processing large amounts of brass. It filters the carbon tetrachloride and recondenses the vapors durring the dry cycle. (They are a "dry to dry" machine)

 

[EddieCoyle]

Wet tumbling is a hassle that is dealt with on a batch by batch basis.

Your batches are so large that in the end its not much hassle when you figure how many rounds you do per batch.

It is great to hear from people like you who do large volumes. I learn a lot. Thanks for all the great insight.

One question I have is around drying. How do you dry them? do you turn them every day? Do you have any problems with corrosion.
Corrosion concerns are why I've never done a wet method.

I've often thought that one of my grandfather's old dry-cleaning machines would have been ideal for processing large amounts of brass. It filters the carbon tetrachloride and recondenses the vapors durring the dry cycle. (They are a "dry to dry" machine)

Nowadays, it's probably easier to get weapons-grade Plutonium than it is to get carbon tetrachloride.

 

[dcmdon]

Ok. My grandfather used two chemicals. I don't remember which came first and was rulled to be too dangerous, and which came second.

The two are

1) Carbon Tetrachloride
2) Perchlorethylene

I'm guessing Perchlorethylene is the safer one. I'd bet "Perk" would work great in that system if you could come up with a way to filter it.