Tumbling Question

I am getting into reloading and have a question about tumbling.

I see alot of you all are wet tumbling, Do you do this before and after decapping and resizing? Or do you decap dirty?
Also how do you dry the brass?

My brother has been teaching me and he uses a vibratory tumbler, he tumbles in corn cob to clean then decaps and resizes then corncob again and then walnut.

Just trying to figure out what would be better for me.

Here is my wet tumbling process.

- Decap dirty brass with Lee universal decapper

- Wet tumble

- Pistol gets here reloaded, rifle gets resized and tumbled again to remove lube, some others
use a vibratory tumbler to remove lube.

Brass is either air dried after a good cold water rinse or tossed on a cookie sheet in the oven for 20 minutes if
we just got done using the oven. I don't heat it up just to dry brass.

HTH, good luck.

I deprime with a universal depriming tool before tumbling. You'll want to tumble first before depriming in a sizer die.

Walnut is superior for cleaning brass, corn cob better for delubing. However walnut also works for delubing.

Polishing additives are not necessary. The primary task is clean brass, high polish is not required. However some degree of polish (straight from untreated walnut) aids inspection of brass for cracks or other defects.

All of the wet tumbling methods (ultrasound or stainless media) are absolutely not necessary. Even a tumbler is not needed for good success in restoring nasty pick up brass; I've been cleaning up brass for a few years now by simply letting it soak in a Lemishine solution for about 4 or 5 days, followed by a tumble in walnut. This doesn't remove all the carbon, but it cleans up bad tarnish and allows brass to be put back to use.

Even tumbling is not required when small numbers of brass are in work - wipe 'em off with a rag and solvent, maybe Hoppe's No. 9, and press on. So what if the brass is green, it needs only be clean.

There just happens to be a "how to thread" about this subject.

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