Play With Your Food: Clean Brass With Rice

[tbrice23]

I'm going to give this a try today. Why not? Seems to work and should I ever run short of media I won't have to order. I'll just mosey on down to the nearest Wal Mart.

I'm going to hold you to it.
Let us know if you use polish or not and how long it tales to get results.
Are you going to get medium grain to prevent it from getting in the flash holes?

 

[tbrice23]

I'm going to give this a try today. Why not? Seems to work and should I ever run short of media I won't have to order. I'll just mosey on down to the nearest Wal Mart.

Any luck/ updates ??

I bought some bismati rice today (slightly fatter grain) to try. The problem is that I'm going to have to hurry up and shoot the rest of something so I can reload to try it. ( not a bad problem to have)

 

[flashhole]

Thanks for sharing. I will be trying it too. Imperial is the best lube but I can never get it all wiped off the brass. I wish I had read this before I processed five hundred 223 cases the past two days. Wiping the lube off small cases is kind of hard on my large hands. I can only do it for so long before they cramp up.

FWIW - I use rice in my shooting bags. It packs well and is a bit lighter weight than other materials.

 

[cowboy]

Bringing this back up to see if anyone has any more feedback - plus or minus. That time of year to spend a little or lot of time in reloading room.

 

[kyron]

I have cleaned a couple hundred rounds of 7mm STW with the rice now. Medium grain rice was no good for the large primer pockets got stuck length wise in the pockets, around 98% of the cases.

I switched to a basmati long grain, Kroger brand, 2-3% get a grain stuck in the flash hole now. Cleanes the brass great, no dust to speak of. It is much louder in the tumbler than the walnut was.

 

[J E Custom]

Rice does make a good Media for tumbling and does a good job, but the issue I have with all abrasives is they HAVE to be removed before loading to prevent all of the problems mentioned
to barrels or/and dies. this requires a good cleaning after tumbling adding another step to the process.

When I use the tumbling process, I follow up with a good sonic or solvent cleaning to get my brass truly clean and free of any abrasives.

I have nothing against Rice as a media, just wanted to remind everyone that whatever method you use, be sure that the brass is squeaky clean before you load it.

J E CUSTOM

 

[WildRose]

one of the neatest ideas I've seen in a long time and no pun intended, at the price of rice this is one heck of an idea. Use it a time or two and toss it.

Are you using any sort of desiccant with it to keep it from molding/mildewing?

 

[Kansaswoodguy]

I do tumble my 223 brass typically the next time I replace my media I will give rice a try. In my other rifles that see far less use I typically just use 0000 steel wool with them chucked up in my drill chuck that I use for trimming, and don't tumble them at all. I have a buddy that doesn't even bother cleaning or resizing do to the tight dementions of his chamber in one of his rifles. I could see not always cleaning in a rifle that was only being neck sized where the body of the case isn't in complete contact with the die and the brass is babied. The issue I've ran into with not cleaning cases and full length resizing is I think the smutz left on dirty cases gets into my dies and could build up over time, now this is with semi autos where I think cleaning is just about a necessity because of the mistreatment of that brass. In bolt guns idk I would love to see some imperical evidence that cleaning shrinks group sizes and by how much in terms of %. In my experience many of the things taken for gospel in reloading are never the hard and fast rules that some make them out to be. I think each reloader has to find what works for them.

 

[newmexkid]

I forgot all about this and that I was going to try the rice. Mea Culpa. Anyway, I got a heck of a bargain on some walnut media and never tried the rice.

 

[kyron]

Are you using any sort of desiccant with it to keep it from molding/mildewing?

Have not needed to so far. The current batch has been in the tumbler for two months I think, maybe a little more. It is still hard and dry with no mildew smell or anything of the like.

I live in a fairly humid area (near Nashville, TN.) So I was concerned about it being an issue with absorbing water from the air, but so far so good.

 

[Wado]

I tried it this summer and didn't have much luck. I use the Iguana walnut and RCBS treated walnut as well. I do the ss pins for real dirty stuff but finish up with walnut. I guess it will do in a pinch. These were done in rice.

 

[Mike 338]

I use rice. A person could probably use any number of things but the disadvantage of corn cob for me is that I noticed when using cob, I just couldn't get all the tumbling media out of the case. No matter how hard I tried, I could still get a little out. This became apparent when I changed my case lube method to using a spritzer bottle to lube the inside of a baggie and tumbling the cases by hand inside the baggie. I went through some annoying methods to get a case free of tumbling media but at least with the corn cob, I would always fins some on the inside of the baggie or mouth of the case. Rice works fine. It cleans acceptably and is easy to purge from the case.

 

[WildRose]

Have not needed to so far. The current batch has been in the tumbler for two months I think, maybe a little more. It is still hard and dry with no mildew smell or anything of the like.

I live in a fairly humid area (near Nashville, TN.) So I was concerned about it being an issue with absorbing water from the air, but so far so good.

Just wondering. Rice is itself a pretty good desiccant which is why you'll see it in a lot of salt shakers in humid environments. My only concern here is that with just a little moisture the rice will soften and stick to metal not to mention swell and get stuck in primer flash holes.

I have finally joined the wet tumbler with steel pins to do the real dirty work but I'm not getting rid of my vibrating tumbler anytime soon as it still has it's place as well.

 

[hogheadv2]

This just saved 8-900 45 acp cases.... [Lyman Turbo tub Red...] Could not get the iron oxide out of the inside of the cases. Sawdust was suggested, cleaned a bit ... then I added BB's . Still red inside. 30 minutes of white rice,,, now pink and the brass is clean inside and the tub of red will go to the garage for whatever....
*** Sure glad no Rifle cases were harmed with this experience.