doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Double Rifles, Paradox Guns & Gauge Rifles @ doublegunshop.com 12 ga. double bore rifle

I thought of that, but man........six hours?

In about 10 years of (smokeless powder) handgun shooting and reloading I just remember putting around 150 - 200 cases in my tumbler, a little paint thinner, and running it for 2 hours MAX.

Something just doesn't seem right to me. 6 hours to clean some brass (EIGHT shells!) of blackpowder fouling?

Well, I guess I just have to accept it as fact until trying it myself. It just seems so......extreme.

black is a pain. The few times that I've shot it I've left the cases in for a work shift of 8 hours. Might be overkill but they are clean and it's done while I'm at work.

Black etches brass cases quite strongly. I don't worry about the discoloration. I deprime, run them through 3-4 hot, soapy water rinses, let them dry then resize, most of the time only neck size, then run them in my tumbler about 3 hours. I go through more media than when I loaded a lot of smokeless but it's well worth it to me.

Probably 25 years ago I bought a 12 hour timer, a handy box and put a male and female cord on it. I plug my tumbler into the timer cord, plug the timer in and set it for 3-4 hours....works great.

Sorry for the confusion. I use a "Rock Tumbler" with the cermaic rods/sticks inside the tumbler with the cases and water and Lemi Shine. [About a table spoon full]
As the songs says ... it goes round and round. To see what if anything was happining, after 6 hours I checked and found about 98% clean as new cases. So I drained the water off and re-loaded the tumbler as before and went to bed. 9 hous later when I got around to checking again. The cases were as clean as new un-fired cases.
As this was my 1st attempt trying this "mix/methoid", I had no idea if more or less Lemi Shine would work and or do anything one way or the other.
For me, after trying for many years to figure out as easy way as possible to get the fired brass case clean after firing BP in them, this works very well for me and seems to be very easy. I hate reloading and putting black dirty cases in a chamber of my rifles or reloading dies. Perhaps they would not hurt anything and others may not mind at all how their cases look.

Krakow Kid:

Yes, only 8 cases, as that is all I shot for a 1st test of a newly aquired rife.
And as it was the 1st time I had used Lemi Shine, I had no idea if it would even do ANYTHING to the cases or may have even DESTROYED them. At the cost of brass 12 ga. cases, I felt that until I knew what if anything was going to happen, 8 would be enought for me to try for the 1st attempt.

As for "extreme", they may not have needed 6 hours if more Lemi Shine was used. That was just the amount of time that I waited to check them. And as they were not yet to MY STANDARD of clean, I changed the soulition out and ran them the rest of the night. Again, maybe 1 or 3 hours would have accomplished the same thing and or results been the same.

Having some experience shooting a lot of brass cases with BP, in the past, mainly .45-70, .40-65, .450 x 3 1/4" and .500 x 3" and doing 50 to 100 cases at a time, more Lemi Shine may be needed and for a longer time period. This I do not know yet.

So I only reported what I knew and experienced first hand after this first attempt at finding an easy of a way to clean BP fired cases. For someone who may be looking for what seems to me, as an easy of a way to clean them.

If someone has a better/faster way that works for them, GREAT, and what I obsurved may not be a methoid that they would wish to change to. That is fine with me. There are many ways to "skin a cat".

But letting cases get cleaned while I sleep, does seem to me to be rather of a easy way to get the job done.

Blackhorse

Well, I guess this old dog learned a new trick! I'll have to keep it in mind if I ever start using REAL black loads instead of nitro-for-black in my .450 BPE. I probably should work up a BP load, I kinda feel like an imposter using the smokeless in my old Alex Henry.

I shoot many blackpowder muzzleloading shotguns and rifles and never found the cleanup to be a pain, so I just couldn't imagine.......I guess there's more sizzle when you stuff 'em from the back!

When shooting muzzleloaders I found that two things worked best for cutting the black powder crud, baby wipes and windshield washer fluid. I would think that some of the fluid added to just a little water and tumbled should get them clean. Also Hoppes Number 9 Plus is good for cutting black powder residue. Bob