Brass Tumbler Material Brain Storming

[Tony Wells]

Paint the inside with truck bed liner material. Rubber tough.

 

[Silverbullet]

Some good ideas on here. My thoughts are if it's gona wear , I'd go with the PVC pipe idea you could make several and leave different media in them . My vote is its gona wear out quickly use the best and cheapest to replace . Plus you could use the rubber liner on them also. Just a thought!

 

[seanb]

I built one with pvc pipe it is plenty tough its for sale if you want it at my cost plus shipping there's a thread on ar-15.com about building one

 

[seanb]

I also have some 8" diameter pvc pipe I can cut you off a piece or sell you the other tumbler wet tumbling really works well but its a little work on the back end. Its hard to find 8" pvc in anything less than 10ft lengths

 

[joshua43214]

I am a precision shooter.
When I heard you say "agitating fin" I actually cringed...
Brass work hardens. No way I would ever put my nice Lapua brass in a drum with an agitator, I have enough trouble with putting it in with walnut shells. I would be even more concerned about my .45 brass that gets reloaded more frequently and I pay less attention to the brass. Banging the brass around is just going to result in more split cases.

Wet tumblers are just rock tumblers, they are coated on the inside with rubber, and are hexagonal (actually the bigger the drum the more flats) in profile on the inside. The idea is that the stuff should slide around, not bump around. The media and liquid are also amount to a fair amount of weight, so you need a decent motor to drive it. If the drum is made from metal, then you need a bigger motor.

Still no reason you could not weld up some aluminum plate into a 6 sided drum, then turn the outside round. Then just fill it with the rubber stuff that people dip tool handles in and pour it off. Repeat until you have a nice thick coat. No idea how well it would hold up, but I bet it would work pretty well. You will want to find out how much he reloads at a time, and then get the dimensions for a tumbler one size up. Wet tumbling is such a PITA that he will probably want to do larger batches.

Alternately you could start with a pipe and add a form inside it and try to pour the rubber into it. Maybe pour resin into the form then coat that with rubber.

-Josh

 

[Tozguy]

Yes to the one end fixed and other end removable but why wet? Wet introduces the problem of drying, clogging primer holes, etc. .....a royal pain!
Go dry. Make a six sided drum with 3/8th blue camping mattress liner, use walnut shell media dusted with red rouge, make sure there is much more media than brass in the tumbler and turn at around 60 rpm. Never wears out. Makes brass look like gold after an hour or two or threee. Want pictures?

 

[joshua43214]

Yes to the one end fixed and other end removable but why wet? Wet introduces the problem of drying, clogging primer holes, etc. .....a royal pain!
Go dry. Make a six sided drum with 3/8th blue camping mattress liner, use walnut shell media dusted with red rouge, make sure there is much more media than brass in the tumbler and turn at around 60 rpm. Never wears out. Makes brass look like gold after an hour or two or threee. Want pictures?

Wet tumbling is just the latest craze with reloaders.
The justification is that opening the standard vibratory tumbler releases a bunch of poisonous particles into the air.
Wet tumbling also somehow magically makes the brass cleaner, and we all know that cleaner brass is more accurate...
Strange how people will not hesitate to get on the freeway, breath toxic diesel exhaust gas for an hour so they can sit at a bench and breath gunpowder, then worry about the dust in their tumbler when they get home. You see folks getting dressed like they are part of a hazmat team.
Folks also feel compelled to buy media from one of the big companies because somehow if it comes in a green or a red box it is better, makes the brass cleaner, which of course leads to better accuracy. Somehow walnut reptile bedding with a dash of chrome polish is just too old school (and there for less accurate). Takes me a few years to go through a big bag of walnut bedding, and the stuff is pretty cheap.
Also, wet tumbling is done after de-priming, so the primer pockets get sparkly clean, which of course is better than a pocket cleaned with a brush, and makes your load more accurate, never mind the hassle of getting stainless steel pins out of the flash hole.

I do find handling the used media pretty distasteful, it has an unpleasant texture and does feel a bit creepy. I just use one of those 3 piece cat box's that have a strainer built into it.

Shooters are just a bunch of sheeple, that run from one craze to the next imo. I stopped contributing to those forums years ago because of it. Leave it to shooters to take an operation that gives great results for very little effort, into an operation that takes hours, requires an extra inspection step, and is purely cosmetic.

That's a good idea with the rouge, I will have to try it. My old can of turtle wax chrome polish is starting to dry out - I suspect it is the cause of the weird feeling the walnut has.

Sorry if I stepped on any toes, or went too far OT.

-Josh

 

[Bill C.]

Have you looked at rock tumblers? They can be noisey put whatever you use in a corner. Might want to add a shutoff timer too. Good luck with your project.