My Saturday chores may be different than yours...

Doing my chores takes on a different meaning than most probably bring to mind. Cleaning house, vacuuming, dusting, wiping stuff, polishing brass...Hang on, what was that last one? Cleaning brass? Hmm...I actually know how to clean brass. I'm good at it too!

There is a basic three-stage process to making ones' own ammunition:

De-priming and cleaning
Case preparation and resizing
Filling with powder and seating the bullet (Charging and seating)

Each stage has multiple other elements like: Annealing, neck-tensioning, neck-concentricity, de-burring, chamfering, lubrication, charge dispensing and weighing, bullet seating depth and so on.

Let's keep it simple though.

I have done another post about actual weighing, charging with powder and bullet seating: https://steemit.com/life/@galenkp/relaxing-on-my-day-off-in-the-garage

Today I was doing some case cleaning so I thought I'd continue to show you what it's all about.

**Depriming the fired brass.** I do this with a tool purpose-made for the job. Insert the case, line it up, depress the lever and you're done. As you can see I have a lot to do. There's about 500 pieces of brass here. You will note a red marking and some down deeper in the bucket will have blue. That's how I identify my brass over other competitors brass. You can also see the little depression in the silver primer which is the point where the firing pin has struck the primer to start the process of firing.

Here's a video of me demonstrating the tool in action. This is a step that some other people don't do, but when I tumble the brass to clean it I want the primer pocket to get a clean as well. More on that later.

I de-primed a lot of brass but I won't make you watch it all. Here's how quick I work...I'm not sure why the video came out wacky and skinny, maybe user error?

Cleaning
I use a wet tumbler for this job but there are other methods. I get the best results with this one though. Stainless steel media is used in a solution of a little detergent, Lemishine and water. The rotary action and solution does all the work removing carbon build up from firing the round which is important for when the case is run through the resizing die. A dirty round will foul up the die and eventually ruin it. They aren't cheap to buy. Also, I'm reloading for precision and accuracy here so every element is important. Besides, they look better. Shinier.

Stainless media

The brass (cases) and media in the tumbler

Just the lid to screw down and away we go

Here's the tumbler in action. I leave it going for about 4 hours or so with about 250 pieces of brass in it. I'll do this lot this weekend and the remaining next weekend. I also have another 400 .308 cases to do and about 3000 9mm pistol cases to do. The ones I did today are for my 6.5 Creedmoor ammunition.

The way it works is that the stainless steel pins get into the inside of the case, the primer pocket and rub on the outside and together with the chemicals in the water it polishes the case clean. These media tumblers can also polish rocks and gems etc.

Once this process is finished the tumbler is opened and drained. The water is very dirty at this stage. I re-fill it and drain it again then empty the brass and media into a bucket. I use a fine paint strainer bag to capture them all in.

I rinse them in a solution of water and bicarbonate soda which halts the acidity of the Lemishine and then rinse them again. Not rinsing can leave some staining on the brass and it's all about the look right?

Here's the tumbler after I have drained the water. Camera operation and draining is impossible as I only have two hands. You'll have to imagine how dirty the water was.

Here's the rinsed and drained brass and stainless media in the paint strainer bag I mentioned.

From here the bag is emptied into the media separator. This is a big box thing with an inner basket that can be rotated with handles that protrude out of each side. It spins and centrifugal force throws the media out of the brass to collect at the bottom. Simplistic but effective.

This takes only a minute or so and on opening the separator you have cases left within the inner compartment with the media spun out and in the bottom of the box. In the image below I have magnified the media sitting in the bottom of the box for you.

Now it's a simply matter of placing the wet brass into a dehumidifier to dry them off. I use a standard food dehumidifier as they are cheap and work very well. Below you can see it in action. I set it on bout 58 degrees celsius and it operates for about an hour, or as long as it takes to dry the cases.

When that is finished the cases are packed into boxes and are now officially ready for the next stage. I anneal my brass (the case neck) which is a process of heating to very high temperatures to return the case neck to its original malleable state. On firing, the brass becomes brittle and if not annealed will be more prone to neck splitting which could either cause a dangerous malfunction on it's next firing or render it useless. Either way, I do not risk it so anneal each case, after each firing. It simply means I can reload the case multiple times rather than having to buy new brass too often.

Clean on left, unclean on right.

Anyway, I hope you feel little more informed. If you made it all the way to this point I assume you're interested and if you didn't well, I understand. Some people just want to get through their lives with a limited understanding of what's going on. Sticking one's head in the sand is easier then seeking understanding. Anyway, they're not here reading this anyway, so I can say what I want. :)

Any questions? Shoot me a message. I'll be happy to answer to the best of my understanding. (See what I did there? Shoot me a message?) :)

Thanks for reading champions of steemit. Have yourself an excellent Saturday wherever you happen to be in the world.