Cleaning Tumbler Bowls

[Patriot]

Anyone else clean their tumbler bowls? I use the NuFinish car wax in my media and I get a dirty wax buildup along the
sides, bottom and the spindle. When I discard the media I always take a little Dawn dishwashing detergent and hot
water and clean them out. A little elbow grease and it comes off pretty easy. Then let the bowls dry and replace with
new media. I'm good to go until the next time the media dies.

 

[Fixxah]

I haven't done it yet. I am looking into the stainless media and a rotary unit.

 

[EddieCoyle]

I don't worry about it. It'll wear out soon enough and I'll get a new one. I don't think being dirty makes it any less effective, so I let form follow function.

 

[Gammon]

I don't worry about it. It'll wear out soon enough and I'll get a new one. I don't think being dirty makes it any less effective, so I let form follow function.

My Dillon tumbler got pretty ugly with a build up of brass polish, so I cleaned it out. I have noticed no change in performance. I may abandone this form of maintenance. The bowl, however, shows no signs of quitting. It is pushing 20yrs and shows no signs of wear.

 

[DukeInFlorida]

I use NuFinish car polish, which has no wax in it, hence no wax build up.

My Dillon 500 bowl is very old, and has never been "cleaned"... The media seems to do a good job of that. I have burned out the motor bearings twice on that one, and last year had Dillon do the "2001 UPGRADE" on it. They took my base and bowl, and connected them with the same motor, and custom springs as they used on the 2001 sized bowl. I had to cut back on the offset weight bar a bit. But, this motor is super heavy duty, and has special ball bearings (vs bronze bushings for most other motors) for much longer life. I'm not expecting that I will ever again burn this one out.

Sometimes I go on marathon polishing sessions which run batches of brass for days on end. 4-5 days, not stop (changing out brass every few hours, of course!)

I use my 2001 big boy bowl when doing large volumes like that..... But sometimes, I have BOTH tumblers running side by side for days.... Oh my! That's a lot of brass!

 

[EddieCoyle]

My Dillon tumbler got pretty ugly with a build up of brass polish, so I cleaned it out. I have noticed no change in performance. I may abandone this form of maintenance. The bowl, however, shows no signs of quitting. It is pushing 20yrs and shows no signs of wear.

That's good news. I bought the big Dillon about a year ago.

 

[Jasper]

That's good news. I bought the big Dillon about a year ago.

Ive had mine about 2 years now, still going strong.


I do, however, wish i had a bigger media seperator (havent ordered the big one from my supplier due to the shipping costs being nearly 50% the price of the unit).

 

[DukeInFlorida]

The BIG Dillon media separator is not too badly priced.

http://www.dillonprecision.com/#/content/p/9/pid/23662/catid/8/CM_2000_Case_Media_Separator

One on FleaBay right now.....
http://cgi.ebay.com/DILLON-CM-2000-...050?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item19bf44ee12

 

[Bugs100]

Northshore Firearms is where I got my Big Dillon media separator. I think it was around $80.00..

 

[Finalygotabeltfed]

Yes I clean mine when it gets too caked. I use a piece of wood to scrape it then a scotchbrite pad and hot water to get the rest.

I've found that not cleaning the crap off the bottom tends to contaminate new media rather quickly, especially walnut which is more aggressive.