Ok gang I went all out and bought the RCBS vibratory case cleaner, Lee case trimmer, and decapping die. Thanks to all for their advice on the equipment.

Now to my questions. I just decapped my first box of once fired brass (Winchester Power Point) and they are in the vibratory cleaner as we speak. I noticed that the primer pockets have a lot of dark burned looking material. I imagine that the vibratory cleaner will not clean that area very effectively.

1.) Do I need to clean the primer pocket and how do I do it correctly?

2.) Also for maximum accuracy should I not mix brass from different manufactures when trying to work up a load?

Thanks for your help with my questions. Mike

First off, welcome to the world of reloading. You need to clean you primer pockets with a brush or a primer uniforming tool. I don’t mix brass of different manufacturers. There are a lot of people that do, I don’t.

You need to segragate your brass by headstamp. Depending on how much you have of each, tupperware bowls work nicely. Or you can concentrate on one brand and trade the other brands off.
Depending on what level of accuracy you want, decides on how anal your case prep needs to be. Are you talking bench rest, hunting, friendly target shooting, etc?

I would suggest that you NOT deprime before cleaning in the tumbler. The problem is that you can and will get small pieces of material in the flash hole. Just toss the fired cases in the tumbler and deprime later. I always clean out the primer pockets with a uniformer tool (which also cleans out the pockets). You will also find that the tumbler does not do a good job of cleaning out the inside of the necks, so I use a case neck brush before resizing. I also use bronze wool to clean the outside of the case neck and shoulder, as again, the tumbler does not seem to clean those areas well. When working up a load the key is uniformity, so, do not mix headstamps.
Peter.

yes I discovered that I had to blow out some debris after the tumbler so in the future I will deprime after tumbling.

I checked the archives and there is a lot of information on cleaning primer pockets. I see some have had good success using vinegar and a q-tip. I may try that and see how it works for me. Thanks. Mike

Peter, how do you get out all the media --or even know about the media -- that is clogged inside the case if it isn't deprimed? My final move is to hold each case up to the light and look thru it.
I wipe each case, looking for defects. Brush the inside of the neck. Lube the case and (lightly) the inside of the neck. And resize. Then, into the cleaner they go. When they're clean, I take them out one at a time, hold them for a moment against the inside of the bowl to let the vibration clear the media out, use a Bic pen to pop out any media that's jammed in the primer hole, wipe them off, look thru them, and thy're ready to prime.