Filthy Brass

[spike1]

Am I crazy ?
I came by 1500 + rounds of 223 brass. This brass has been sitting for over 10 years. This stuff is so dirty that I tumbled it for 4 hours and it was still ugly. Out of desperation I removed some media and put in about 3 cups of sand from the kids sandbox. This seems to work ? When I am all done I will have to tumble it again in regular fine walnut shell to get some shine back in it.

Is this crazy or what ?
:eek:
:p
:confused:
:(

[Catfish]

If it`s clean and just ugly it will work fine. The are different polishes on the market that will take the corission off, but it will take several hours if they are like some I`ve seen, and being cheap like you, salvaged. I would be sand would be to aggressive and do alot of damage to your tumbler, especially if it`s a vibrator type, rolling type alot less damage as you can tumble rocks in them.

[Jack]

I don't like the idea of sand in the process at all. I can see a grain of sand ending up scratching a die, or even worse, a bore. All it takes is for one grain of sand not to be cleaned out.
If you really need to shine up the brass, and the typical tumbling media hasn't worked, you might try some of the solutions you dip brass into. I believe Iosso makes one.

[Dan Morris]

When I have scarfed some bad brass I just use a chemical
cleaner. Do NOT use Brasso...this eats away a small amount of brass!
Dan
:)

[skeet]

Iosso brass cleaner

[spike1]

OK here is how it went down about 30% sand then it took 2 hours a load. I took an old batch of media that I saved and did them for about 30 minutes a load to get any sand/dirt residue off them. Now I am back to the last step with clean (new) light walnut and they look great. WOW what a pain ! I knew there was some reason to save old media. It may be a good idea to have it to get the initial cleaning on brass picked up after a rain or that may have dirt stuck on it. Then go to the good stuff without contaminating it.

:p

WOW am I cheap.

[gumpokc]

I've heard of using sand/media mix before but never done so myself.

I usually use a crsuhed walnut/jewelers rouge mix, when new it'll clean nasty ( and i mean nasty) brass well.

Bought 10 lbs of the stuff about 15 years ago and still have 8 lbs new unopened. Of course i dont use as much as some of you do either.

[dakotah]

I agree with Jack. But then I usually did on another forum as well.

If a person is trying to remove tarnish above and beyond the dirt and such, I think it is a mistake to continue to remove material (brass). It is just an opinion but that tarnish is not bad enough to remove layers of metal to get it off.