im new to reloading and was wondering how many tumbles is corn cob media good for? How many times can you use the same media? Do you keep adding polish everytime you reuse it?
I have at least 25 cycles on the media, I add polish when it seems to be taking a long time to get things shiny again.
If you put dirty, muddy brass in it you can expect to get as little as 1-2 cycles on it. If I pick up dirty crap off the range I put it in a bucket with soapy water and swirl it around first to get the gunk off.
I use a 50/50 mix of Lyman Treated Corn Cob and Corn Blast. I also add 1 or 2 used Bounce dryer sheets to keep the dust down and collect a lot of the dirt. It also extends the life of the media.
My criteria for replacement is, if the brass takes more than 4 hours to get to the same level of clean as new, then I replace it.