Lee Loader

mikld wrote:FWIW; tumbling cartridge cases is prolly the most talked about but least important part of reloading...

That is a great statement. I think back to the thousands of rounds that I loaded with Lee Loaders!

I agree with the value statement but when I buy a product it needs to work.

They have not responded to my email. Took an hour of scrubbing with industrial solvents to clean the tub. In the end, WD-40 worked best.

I have another test run this weekend possibly.

GasGuzzler wrote:I agree with the value statement but when I buy a product it needs to work.

For sure, I agree with that!

Lyman has yet to reply to my email. Today I tried one last time to see what the Treated Corncob Media from Lyman does with 9X19 cases.

These cases were treated to (in order):

• Wash with boiling water in a tumbler with a tiny drip of dawn and about 12 granules of Lemi-Shine per batch
• De-primed on Lee APP
• Tumbled in Lyman brand model 1200 tumbler with Lyman Corncob Plus Media
• Media removed from flash holes during the use of the Lyman flash hole uniformer
• Primer pockets swaged on Lee APP
• Tumbled again using Lyman brand model 1200 tumbler with Lyman Corncob Plus Media

...and the flash holes still have junk in them. Plus the pockets aren't any cleaner than I can do with water (please note these cases still had spent primers when I washed them). These are the first seven I grabbed out of the bunch.

I quit using dry media because of the mess on the floor and the dust that had to be washed off the cases anyway. That was back when I was using fine walnut provided by a small independent seller. It works well to clean but had a lot of dust. A couple years ago I tried Lyman corncob media (untreated, I still have almost all of a 6-pound jug) but found it clogged flash holes. Recently I tried the Lyman media again only the treated type. Same result and these cases are FULLY prepped other than trim to length. As we speak there is another batch running in the Lyman 1200 only with the fine walnut media. Let's just do a comparison after the walnut get the same amount of time as the Lyman media (about three hours).

Yep, but the primer would blow those out of the flash holes, no problem...

Here is the result of the fine walnut media. Back to square one. They're cleaner but covered with dust. Brass is a better color and primer pockets are cleaner. There are two not as clean as the others, compare the pics. They're also much cleaner on the inside (hard to photograph with a phone).

FACEPALM

About the only thing that I've been pondering through your trials, and this is for my purposes, is why wash the brass at all? This is thinking that has come with the APP. All my brass is going through a decapper rather than a sizer now, so there is no brass/dirt/steel contact other than via the decapper.

I started washing the brass to avoid scratching a sizing die body. Like your work, the washing is primarily with my pistol cartridges. I've been shooting on a brass catcher ground cover for two years now and that brass is not touching the soil. The 30 Carbine and 7.62x39 from the semi-auto rifles are ejected into brass catchers nets.

My other thought is that you cannot get a perfectly clean primer pocket with media alone. That''s what primer pocket tools are for.

Being I got you into the Corncob Plus, I would like to buy it from you if you want to move it along.

I agree with the above. This very large lot of brass combined with the newness of the APP has taught me a lot about streamlining my process.

I just wish Lyman would reply to my email.

GasGuzzler wrote:I agree with the above. This very large lot of brass combined with the newness of the APP has taught me a lot about streamlining my process.

I'm thinking of using my current batch of CC+, 15 cycles on it, for the initial cleaning. Maybe a 30-minute run to knock any debris off. Then start a new batch for cleaning the decapped brass. What filled out my Frankford vibrator well was a 1½ of the CC+.

GasGuzzler wrote:I just wish Lyman would reply to my email.

Yeah, that surprises me. I always thought that I might be a Lyman customer, if not Lee.

Been following this with interest. Hopefully Lyman will reply. I have a Frankford model and it gets occasional use. Corn media and no black scum. Was going to try walnut but after reading about dust issues I think I will stick with corn.

I use a sonic cleaner for all brass. Not because it has to be shiny but because I honestly believe that clean brass shoots more consistently. I can't prove it and maybe it was all those white glove inspections I endured and eventually performed myself. Necks and primer pockets are a pain to clean manually but 6-10 minutes in a hot water solution of citric acid and Sunlight dish detergent and both are clean.