Step 1, clean brass in tumbler (How?)

[Erud]

Here's a pic of a bucket o' .308 brass cleaned in plain white rice for around an hour and a half. Click to enlarge.

[Ironbear]

Any reason white rice over brown rice? Availability?

Makes me wonder if wheat would work. Seems that in some rural areas, you could could source that pretty cheaply and still pay the farmer way more then they could get from the elevator.

OK. I checked out of curiosity. The online place I've ordered grain from shows about $52/50 lbs for white rice and $46/50 lbs for wheat (shipping included). I think I can get rice cheaper than that locally since it doesn't have to be shipped, but I think if you caught a farmer, at a convienient time, he would would be pretty happy to fill a pickup for $200 (present spot price is $5.12/bushel... 60 lbs).

[Erud]

The only reason is that we happened to have a brand new 20# bag of white rice in the closet when I first heard of using it as a tumbling media. That was 2 years ago, and I just used the last of it in May. Other varieties of rice might work just as well, but I don't have any experience with them.

[Bitter Bastard]

I assume it doesn't matter, but is white rice also good to go for tumbling pistol brass? I'm low on media and might buy a small bag of rice just to try it soon.


Bitter Bastard

[Erud]

I assume it doesn't matter, but is white rice also good to go for tumbling pistol brass? I'm low on media and might buy a small bag of rice just to try it soon.


Bitter Bastard

I haven't cleaned any pistol brass with it, but I can't imagine why it wouldn't work just fine.

[wrench]

If you have a Grainger near you, a 40# bag of corn cob is about $35 last time I looked.
That's years worth of media for most of us, a little squirt of Nu Finish or similar, (I use a 3M auto polishing compound), lasts a long time.
I have my tumbler on a timer, 3 hours makes very nice shiny brass.