Jim, I bought a Thumbler rock tumbler from my friends estate about a half a dozen years ago and it came with white ceramic cut at about a 45° slant. I don't know the diameter off hand but it was probably the stuff that Dave Maurer sold. It works very well with a shot of Dawn and about 45 min. in the tumbler with just a little more water than it takes to cover the ceramic. Haven't seen any sign of peening on the case mouths.

The ceramic media is available from Shiloh along with a jug of cleaning solvent. I have used the angle cut ceramic for years and it does a very good job. I also tried some 3mm balls and it worked ok but not as well as the angle cut. I use a good squirt of Simple Green and a bit of lemishine in a large drum tumbler,  I use a Rebel 17 high speed,  it is an upgraded copy of the Thumbler Mod B.
Sam

I tried the ceramic years ago, used the round cylinders with the angled ends.  I don't use a tumbler, I have an ultrasonic polisher.   

I use my brass as fired, don't resize.  What I found is that using the ceramic media to clean tended to slightly round in the mouth, so that the bullets wouldn't seat or would shave lead.  Because of this, it added a step of sizing the mouth open again to my routine.

Using it with a bit of lemishine worked very well, although it left the brass dull, not shiny.  It didn't clean the primer pockets well.  I used it with blackpowder fouled cases.  If I just rinsed the cases and threw them in, it created a black water that would leave the cases stained brown/black on the outside, from reacting again with the brass.  The best procedure was to rinse, clean in the ultrasonic cleaner, and then clean with the ceramic and lemisine.  This produced unstained cases.

Eventually, I quit using the ceramic, and went back to rinsing in soapy water while cleaning inside with a brass bore brush in a cordless drill, rinsing again and then cleaning in the ultrasonic with lemishine.  No cleaning beyond that, just dry them and use them as is.  If they start getting too stained, I polish them in walnut hull in my dillon case cleaner.

Mine is the Frankford Arsenal version. 

I started using the ceramic media and steel pins. This was for straight wall BP cases. I also added a bit of Dawn and Lemishine. They didn’t come out real shiny and primer pickers and case interior were not real clean. But the tap water was really black.

Just last week I cleaned (225) .30-06 cases, smokeless powder. The changes….
No ceramic. If it can migrate into the case it will never come out of the bottleneck case. 
Steel pins only.
Frankford Arsenal “bug juice” was used. 
Distilled water instead of tap water. Tap water can “stain” the cases.

Have to be careful to get all of the pins out of the cases. The cases came out very shiny, inside and out, with really clean primer pockets. Best looking results so far!

Tom

I like the 3mm ceramic balls a bunch better than the angle cut

Just curious what quantities everyone here is using in the tumblers (e.g. #'s of brass, pints/quarts H2O, amt Dawn and Lemi-shine) and for how long?
Thanks

G,day, I don’t use any media just water lime juice and washing up liquid! No damage to cases,primer pockets are not perfect ,but plenty good enough. Mal in au.

toppkatt wrote on Mar 24^th, 2025 at 1:02pm:


It isn’t an exact science.  My tumbler is homemade.  It uses either a 4” diameter PVC pipe or a 6” diameter PVC pipe depending on how much brass I’m cleaning.  Both tubes are about 2 foot long.  I treat both the same.  About 5 pounds of SS pins, enough water to fill the tubes, a squirt of Dawn, and a spoonful of citric acid.  Run for an hour.  90% of the time that’s enough.

Been using a Thumblers B for a long time. Started out using ceramic and just a bit of dawn for my BPCR that I used with mostly Black Powder.  I actually like the Stainless pins a bit better, The ceramic I had was angle cut cylinders and would sometimes bridge in a 45 -70 case and jam up.  No problem with the pins down to .38 special.  Never have seen any damage to the cases.
I think wet tumbling is very over analyzed .. I put a  little bit of Dawn in the water. Ive used Simple Green also. And sometimes have added some concentrated lemon juice. IMO most of the cleaning is mechanical in nature.  Tumbling for much over an hour or seems over kill to me.  I dont need it to look like jewelry. But it usually is very bright and new looking.  I actually use the same tumbler with corn cob media sometimes just because its easier.  Experiment with your time and what level of clean you can live with.

I have been using SS chips to clean BP cases for a few months now.  Yesterday I tumbled 91 40-65 cases using 5 lbs of chips, 1tsp of Shooter 2 cleaner and 40 ounces of hot water (that's just enough to cover the cases).  Ran for 30 minutes, drained off the dirty solution, flushed with clean water and then added 1 tsp of cleaner to the barrel with the water level just covering the cases by an inch.  Ran for 1 hour and rinsed the clean cases.  I have never used pins, but this is definitely faster than the ceramic media I have been using.

Cheers,
Steve

msdh wrote on Mar 25^th, 2025 at 5:49pm:

From what I have read and experienced, peening of the case mouths happens due to too much water in the barrel.  Having about 1" above the cases is all that is needed.   

FWIW, 
Steve

I have 2 tumblers that I use. The small one is a Thumbler AR6, the big one is a Rebel, same size as the large Thumbler. I like the small diameter angle cut ceramic. The problem for me is when I purchased it I only got a half order due to the small tumbler. However even that smaller amount does a nice job at cleaning the cases. In the smaller tumbler I just cleande 45 44-40 cases that were pretty nasty in the inside. For that I used the 3mm balls and they came out pretty nice other than a bit of crud in the corners of the primer pockets. 
I saw where Buffalo Arms had angle cut so I ordered a pound and a half. Sadly it is larger diameter than what I had been using, I asked and was advised to not mix the 2 as it may cause them to stick/stack in cases.  I will set the balls aside for really small cases and use the larger ceramic in the small tumbler for pistol cases. 
As a bit of an up side, I did find out that my AR6 barrel will set in and run just fine in the Rebel base. To me thats a big bonus.
Sam