Brass looks almost brand new, process is messy - Frankford Arsenal Reloading Tools Platinum Series Rotary Tumbler 7L

After 10plus years of dry tumbling and two burned out tumblers, I decided to give wet tumbling a shot. I considered the Frankford Rotary Tumbler Lite but decided to go with the larger unit so that I could clean more brass each time.

So today, I set it up and used it for the first time and I am very pleased with the results. I loaded it with 325 .45 casing and 130 6.5 Creedmoor casings. The tumbler had no problem tumbling this load for two hours. Once the entire process was complete, the brass looks almost brand new. The downside is that it is a much more involved and labor intensive process than dry tumbling. The upside is that this process does a much better job than dry tumbling.

Prior to cleaning, I deprimed and resized all of my brass. This allowed the cleaning of the primer pocket. You can’t do that with dry tumbling unless you are prepared to pick corn cobs or walnut shells out of each primer pocket. While the primer pockets were not spotlessly clean, they are as clean as I can get them with my case prep machine which is great for quickly trimming the necks of rifle casings but I never liked grinding my primer pockets with that thing. This wet cleaning process gets the primer pockets as clean, if not cleaner, without grinding on the base of the pocket.

Another advantage over dry tumbling is there is no media residue. It does not matter how much I shake and tumble the brass, I never get all of the corn cobs out. My “clean brass” bucket always has a small pile of corn cobs on the bottom and there is frequently a dusty residue on my brass. While these aren’t major problems, if you’re OCD like me, it’s nice to eliminate them.

So, why four stars instead of five? The product does what it is supposed to do but I had one really annoying issue when I set it up. It was leaking around the end caps. It took me several attempts to tighten the end caps and stop the leaking. And I felt the need to check on it every few minutes to be sure it had finally stopped. I have ordered some silicon grease that I will apply to the seals and I hope that will eliminate leakage. If you do use grease on the seals, use silicon grease and use a very thin film. A little goes a long way.

A few quick tips I have learned already:
- You will need a magnet. Don’t do this process without one if you are using the steel pin media. Those little pins get everywhere but are really easy to clean up with a magnet.
- As seen on YouTube, I used Dawn( 2 - .45 casings full) and citric acid (1 - 9mm casing full). This combination worked really well although I may do a bit more “load development” to optimize.
- Wear gloves, it can get messy.
- Plan on about an hour to complete the whole process once the tumbling is complete.