Rice to clean brass?

When I started handloading rice was what my mentor used,so I did too. I worked in a grocery store,and supplied him with our damaged bags. We found that short grain rice didn't get stuck in the primer pockets as bad as the regular,long grain. Both cleaned the same.
 
I started using this stuff... it's small and doesn't get stuck in flash holes.

Add cap full of car polish and you are set. Make sure you run tumbler for few minutes to let polish mix in before adding brass.

View attachment 326176
I started using it also. Good stuff and like you said, doesn't stick in flash hole. Last quite awhile also. 👍
 
I use a mix of rice and crushed walnut to clean after sizing. It can stack up in a case, occasionally, and it does have a bad habit if sticking in the flash holes. But, I used to use a mix of corn cob and walnut and had the same issues. It's definitely cheaper than cob/walnut, and easy to find.
I always clean BEFORE sizing. I don't want what's on my shells going into the sizer dies...cleaning after is like closing the gate...after the cattle have gotten out! Just me.
 
What happens if I shoot a pin down a premium cut rifled barrel?
Hopefully you'd fess up to making an error that could have resulted in much more than a damaged barrel and blame yourself for not correctly prepping your loads. It would be a cop out to blame an inanimate object for being where you put it...

If someone doesn't trust themselves to use a process because they're worried they can't do it correctly, probably best for them that they don't. Doesn't make the process any less useful to people who do trust themselves.
 
I always clean BEFORE sizing. I don't want what's on my shells going into the sizer dies...cleaning after is like closing the gate...after the cattle have gotten out! Just me.
I clean initially with a stainless tumbler. I just use the rice/walnut mix to get the lube off after sizing.
 
Y'all know you don't have to do it the same way every time right? You can use SS or wet tumbling when they get really nasty, then go another few loads with another method (or just don't clean them at all :eek:) before you need to spruce them up again. If you're going to scrub a barrel down to change bullets over, you can do the same to brass.

I do this all the time with hunting loads, mainly because I get bored and tinker and rarely shoot more than 50-100 of a bullet before I move on.

Edit: Also because I like to tinker I actually just yesterday picked up two 2-gallon buckets and 8 quarts of 91% isopropyl alcohol. I'm drilling holes in one bucket to make a nested strainer and I'm going to try dropping cases into the alcohol after coming out of the sifter post wet tumbling to see what it does to drying time and how the cases look. No idea if it'll do anything, but it's cold here now and I'm bored.
 
Last edited:
Hopefully you'd fess up to making an error that could have resulted in much more than a damaged barrel and blame yourself for not correctly prepping your loads. It would be a cop out to blame an inanimate object for being where you put it...

If someone doesn't trust themselves to use a process because they're worried they can't do it correctly, probably best for them that they don't. Doesn't make the process any less useful to people who do trust themselves.
How would I know what I did or if it happened? How do you account for each and every pin? I can use a propane torch to cook a steak in my kitchen, but there is a reason I don't.
 
Do you have any firsthand experience with the SS pin wet tumbling process, or are you setting up straw men to argue against? There's no greater risk in SS pin tumbling than any other type of media tumbling as long as you follow safe loading practices.

It's not hard to separate brass and media - I use the same process no matter if I'm getting cases out of corn cob or walnut or rice or wet SS pins. I dump the cases and media in a separator, I shake them, the media separates. If the brass is wet it gets dried and I'll shake them again.

I don't use the same exact separator for wet versus dry media: I use a Lyman dual sifter for pins and a FA separator for dry media. FA has sifter caps for their rotary tumbler so 95%+ of the water is out before dumping into the sifter.

Amazon product ASIN B01EIFV6GY
Amazon product ASIN B004J4F09O

Do you not look inside your brass while prepping it? All it takes is a flashlight when they're in the loading block before charging to notice things like an SS pin or corncob stuck in the bottom.
 
Last edited:
Top