How do you recover and clean stainless pins?

Chris

NES Member
Joined
May 24, 2005
Messages
13,349
Likes
8,154
Location
Just east of Zone 9, but in Worcester County.
Feedback: 6 / 0 / 0
Picked up a second hand tumbler and the stainless pins. First batch of .223 came out amazing. Tumbled only a little over an hour and the brass looks new.

But, draining and recovering the pins was a pain. I have a media separator that works well in getting the brass free of the water and pins. I ended up with that mess at the bottom of a 5 gallon pail. The process of recovering and cleaning the pins was not fun.

Is there a favorite fine mesh strainer that can handle the 5 lbs of pins, but still allow easy draining and flushing?

What do you use?

Telepathically uploaded via Google implants.
 
uploadfromtaptalk1395620725098.jpg

This works pretty well for me.

-Proud to be dad every day, a licensed plumber most days, and wish I was a shoemaker on others.
 
I use the strainer from a salad spinner that has long narrow openings. i dump the brass and pins into the strainer over a small tub 12x15 filled half way with water. I then shake the strainer and everything in the water and all of the pins fall to the bottom. I drain the water then dump the pins back in the tumbler, no mess. It's amazing how the mfg states 4 hours when 90min does the job. I also use half the pins allowing more brass.
 
Haven't started cleaning brass yet but from what I understand about the stainless pins is you should put the media separator half into water when using it and the pins will stay in the water.
Again I have no experience just what I have read and watch on the YouTube..

Rich
 
I use a piece of screen layed into a rectangular strainer that spans the sink ( Wally World for cheap). Easy to rinse the pins, then pick up the screen by the corners and funnel them back into the jug


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Luckily stainless steel is denser than water so I use my Lyman media separator and just pour the water off the pins and dump the whole mess back into the tumbler. I may lose 2-3 pins down the drain but it is irrelevant.

UYVBSR00525.jpg
 
I take the lid off the tumbler, dump out as much of the dirty water as I can, then put it - pins cases and all - into a slop sink and run water into it until the water comes out clean.

I separate the pins from the brass using my regular media separator half-filled with water.

After I separate the pins, I dump off as much water as I can, then dump the wet pins back into the tumbler with the aid of the sink sprayer.

When the pins are all back in the tumbler, I pour off as much water as I can and store them wet in the tumbler.
 
Back
Top Bottom