My question is what affects does dirty brass have on accuracy if any? I am trying to decide if it is worth the time to clean all my once fired brass. This is not brass that I dug out of the dirt it is my own brass that i have picked up after i fired it. Thank you in advance for your responses.
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Is clean brass more accurate then dirty brass?
- Thread starter Painjob38
- Start date
Maybe , maybe not. The only reason i tumble to clean is to keep dirt and sand out of my dies.
Back when I first started reloading I washed and dried my brass.
Now I just toss it in the tumbler when I get home and take a nap.
Now I just toss it in the tumbler when I get home and take a nap.
Dirty as in not shiny and a little carbon, no. And brass that is too clean can be less accurate because of inconsistencies in neck tension.
I do this same exact thing. Throw some brass polish in there if you want really shiny brass if not just tumble.
I usually take a good pic of the primer side sitting in a 50 or 100 round box to identify a load that might be iffy.
Used to keep them separated 1, 2, 3, and 4th fired, now it's new cases (to make once fired) and few and many fired.
Had a 100 round box mix up 10 round loads on the trip home once.
Now I ring the primer with a colored sharpie for each load.
Used to keep them separated 1, 2, 3, and 4th fired, now it's new cases (to make once fired) and few and many fired.
Had a 100 round box mix up 10 round loads on the trip home once.
Now I ring the primer with a colored sharpie for each load.
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To the OP's initial question:
Depends on how clean. Squeaky clean: No.
I tumble to keep gunk out of my expensive dies.
Depends on how clean. Squeaky clean: No.
I tumble to keep gunk out of my expensive dies.
I'm not saying you are wrong here, but I really think the methods used may be the deciding factor here. I really don't think overly shiny brass coming form corn media will affect anything, as the inside of the case does not get cleaned for the most part. If all the brass was tumbled at the same time for 2 hrs, that's the baseline.
I think he’s talking more about cleaning brass with pins.
Normal media tumbling doesn’t clean the inside of the neck spotless and that’s a good thing in my opinion.
My bolt gun brass never hits the ground and rarely gets tumbled. No issues with accuracy. I could care less about shiny brass. I am more worried about what happens at the target.
Yea I said too clean not too shiny. You are never going to get brass too clean with dry media.
That's kind of what I said, isn't it?
A sonic cleaner that actually does it's job, even worse than pins.
Most of my brass does not have mud or dirt, just carbon.
The outside of the case gets cleaned so it grabs the same in the chamber.
I neck brush to remove any firing residue for uniform bullet tension.
Corner of primer pocket picked so I get equal seating.
I Collect neck size, full length body size, sometimes mica bullet bases, sometimes not.
Does it help my accuracy? Obviously not.
The outside of the case gets cleaned so it grabs the same in the chamber.
I neck brush to remove any firing residue for uniform bullet tension.
Corner of primer pocket picked so I get equal seating.
I Collect neck size, full length body size, sometimes mica bullet bases, sometimes not.
Does it help my accuracy? Obviously not.
I never understood the insanity of Uber clean brass.
I at most tumble every tenth loading and I recently looked into my Redding body die and it looks mint inside after what’s close to or over 6k uses.
I tumble, before and after sizing, always have, always will. We are on the same side here, I was vocal against pin usage from the onset.
Shooters with gadgets are worse than women with wardrobes.
Shooters with EXPENSIVE gadgets are worse than women with wardrobes.
Yeah you want to make sure your brass is spotless before you put it in your sizing. Die. No contaminants on it and typical tumbling medium leaves. Lots of contaminants on the outer case as well as it's electrostatic charge. All during the tumbling medium portion of cleaning your cases. After out of the tumbling medium l suggest an ammonia-based cleaning solution in an ultrasonic bath barring that just a good soaking ammonia. I use Mr clean as it leaves the shell casing bright and shiny. I then clean my sizing die thoroughly as if I were cleaning a gun barrel. And then run grease everything up and then run it through the sizing die. There's a reason why caselube cost so much. It's because they're formulas leave no residue. And post sizing and decapping their practically ready to reload after trimming. Using commercial cleaners that is. Irregardless after priming charging and seating I always give them one more bath. A spray more than a bathroom really. On clean. Terry cloth and you'll see the color that Terry cloth turn black even after all that effort. Long story short, they get stuck in your chamber because you're chamber is filthy. Especially once the barrel heats up and you try to extract the brass, it'll stick. It'll either bend your firing pin or not your firing pin but your firing pin retaining pin. Or break your extractor. Keep that chamber clean.
In case anyone doesn't know ammonia can destroy your brass.
It has to be an attempt at same. My only concern is that it wasn’t too obvious and could lead some new OCD type loader to follow it to the letter.
I did laugh out loud upon reading it though.
The only cleaning my brass gets is an hour in the tumbler to remove sizing lube. Gets dropped into my huge harbor freight tumble as it's released from my Henderson trimmer. Run for 1 hour after last case is trimmed. Removes most exterior carbon cept a lil residue on outside of neck, leaves most residue inside of necks, which I personally want to keep there.
I try to keep brass from touching the ground mainly so I don't lose it in the grass at the farm... And the public range has a concrete slab that dings it up.
So it tends to stay pretty clean going from ammo box to chamber back to ammo box.
I have a tumbler with corn cob in it but don't use it much lately. Brass gets inspected while I lube it for sizing. After full length sizing and the neck mandrel, I wipe the lube off with alcohol on a paper towel: A) to keep my clumsy ass from dropping it and B) to keep powder kernels from sticking inside the case mouth.
I tend to baby my bolt gun brass a bit. Semi auto brass... not as much. The receiver/chamber of an AR platform is a tough place to work if you're a piece of brass.
Mike
So it tends to stay pretty clean going from ammo box to chamber back to ammo box.
I have a tumbler with corn cob in it but don't use it much lately. Brass gets inspected while I lube it for sizing. After full length sizing and the neck mandrel, I wipe the lube off with alcohol on a paper towel: A) to keep my clumsy ass from dropping it and B) to keep powder kernels from sticking inside the case mouth.
I tend to baby my bolt gun brass a bit. Semi auto brass... not as much. The receiver/chamber of an AR platform is a tough place to work if you're a piece of brass.
Mike
IMHO clean on the outside with carbon inside the neck shoots vastly better than Uber clean brass, tumble brass, a simple in/out of a bore brush leaving the grey film inside the neck aids in bullet release, ie lower ES, clean or dirty primer pockets shoot the same, but but but I do recommend not letting the carbon build up there, uniform primer seating depth is the reason. Go to a bench rest match, just watch how they load there ammo, ultimate accuracy is all that matters to them, it’s an eye opening lesson.
Carbon on the inside of the neck is a form of neck lubrication. I've been doing a significant amount of testing involving different neck lubes (including none, residual carbon, moly, graphite, HBN, Neolube, and mixtures of a couple of them).
The results have been surprising. As it relates to residual carbon, I've found it to be sort of middle of the road - not the best, not the worst. One thing that was very interesting is that when I ran the uncleaned, residual carbon cases through my 6 BRA (which I run close to max), I got a slightly heavy bolt lift on all cases. Cases with all other types of lube (and lack thereof) cycled normally.
Never trust anyone who uses the word “irregardless”.
cleaning my brass is my watch movies understated time since no one wants to help clean brass I am left alone for hours and hours . but it does nothing to help my shots hit targets better or worse . I do like knowing if my brass should hit the floor I could identify it from 50 other peoples brass with out much struggle it's way cleaner than other people I know even those that use soap and water which never touch my brass . a hand drill and brasso is my choice cleaner .
I do the same by not polishing mine. I find that I can find mine easily among all the shiny brass.
You fools are missing all the illegal alien opportunities. I have a polishing hut out back cleaning thousands of rds per day. Not to mention all the free tacos and shit they make for masser2000.
I've never noticed a difference in accuracy for clean vs non-cleaned. I tumble it when the mood strikes me and there may be months, even years, between cleanings. I do clean the primer pockets every time but I think annealing is more important than tumbling. This in an effort to effect consistent neck tensions.
Jury is still out as I'm testing some mixtures, but right now moly disulphate is performing best. I mentioned finding unexpected results, and I'll be making a video to showcase what I did, but so far:
- Hexagonal Boron Nitride is by FAR the worst. Like it is all over the map with respect to consistency. It actually RAISES the seating force, indicating it's acting more like sandpaper than a lubricant.
- I was hopeful Neolube would work out well, but it's just slightly on the lower end of things.
- Measuring 10 shots in my 308 (small sample size, but gives a basic direction), graphite and uncleaned brass gave about an 8 SD, while moly clocked in at 5.9. Neolube was slightly lower than the other 2. I didn't even bother measuring HBN.
- I started using the 21st Century moly. They state on their website that they also found it to be the best. HOWEVER, their application media blows. the Imperial graphite application media is 1mm, and I think the 21st Century is either 2 or 3 (I still need to measure). The larger size does not allow for even coating, and I also found it getting stuck in my 6mm cases. I love 99% of what they do, but count this in the 1%. They got the material right, but failed on the application. I bought a large bag of 1mm plastic balls for application media, some jewelry/face cream jars, and made my own. Works much better.
EDIT: I should add that I'm using an AMP Press to measure the seating forces. The moly so far has the most consistent plots
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Thanks. I have only tried graphite and HBN, and have not done any calibrated testing, but I would say my results between HBN and graphite support your: Graphite seems pretty consistent, and HBN was all over the place. I wasn’t even aware that there was a dry powder version of moly, I might pick some up to try it out.
What micron size wrere you using? Some is supposed to be too fine and sticky, 0.5 is just right, and others are too coarse.
According to the label, the HBN is .5 micron.
What's interesting is that the moly is larger - part of the reason I was surprised by the results. I'll post some of the AMP Press plots when I get back to my office. I've measured a correlation between seating force consistency and SDs, but have never had the fidelity and recordability the AMP offers. Very telling.
42 responses and not one person asked: "What type of accuracy are you hoping to achieve and or with what rifle and equipment?" Back in the day I always tumbled (primer in) and ran the cases through a Dillon 650. I molly coated my bullets back then. On 200 yard reduced 600 yard targets the ammo with me as the shooter using an M1A and iron sights was capable of 100-7X. I was very happy with those results. Now 20 years later I find myself shooting off a bench at F class targets at 300 and 600 yards. I got lucky with my first Dasher. It would just stack any load with the Berger 105 hybrid targets. And I cleaned many targets at 300 and 600. The 105s became unobtanium and I've struggled since. When I was successful, I was wet tumbling with pins. As my scores declined, I tried just about everything people more experienced than I said worked. Some of it was what world benchrest champions recommended.
"Don't clean your brass just wipe it down. You want the carbon in the neck for more consistent bullet seating. Just run a brush through the neck. Finish cleaning with a patch of lock-ease. Let it sit 20 minutes and remove. None of any of the recommended changes I made helped. I'd get potentially great groups with unexplained flyers.
Today I reverted to wet tumbling with pins, no molly for the inside of the necks to aide bullet seating and instead of lock-ease I used Breakfree CLP for the after clean patch. I had to use a sizing mandrel just to use my Henderson trimmer. I'll try a larger neck bushing next time to avoid the mandrel... but reverting to what was working worked again. 2 5shot groups that looked like this with 4.1 sd and 12 es. It's in the neighborhood of .25 + or minus. There is no one size fits all in shooting. Conduct your own experiments and find out what you have to do to meet your requirements. I have not tried tumbling only with the dasher. It might be fine. Dirty primer pockets didn't matter on service rifles. If you are trying to shoot sub .3s they probably do as it would affect seating depth and ignition. MHO.
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You. Put periods sorta. Randomly. And some sentences make. Sense. Others do. Not.
Come on everyone knows a clean car rides smoother than a dirty car and that same principal applies to
clean brass.
clean brass.
You have to do what works for you. I will say, for others reading,, I stopped cleaning primer pockets before I ever owned a gun chambered in 6 Dasher. I have a hard time finding something that is NOT better than .3, and that is off a bipod and rear bag. I went through a period where I tried all the ocd shit. I have pretty good luck with the 3 B's and a damn good gunsmith.
