When I was at Harbor Freight Saturday (yesterday) I saw they had a couple of decent deals on vibrating cleaners. If I fill them with the walnut hull stuff from PetSmart, will that clean brass as well as a tumbler?

Also, I'm going with a Lee press with a de-capper built into the sizing die. Will I need to knock the spent caps out before cleaning or can I just dump the brass in cap and all?

One more thing. How important is cleaning brass before reloading it, anyhow? If I'm not worried about the "pretty" factor, do I really need to clean the stuff any way?

You guys are the ones with the knowledge and experience so I will listen to you.

Generally speaking, it is best to de-prime before cleaning your brass if only to get what carbon is present in the primer pocket.

It is however not always necessary. One can clean one's brass without cleaning the primer pocket. Not doing so eventually causes a buildup of carbon that causes one's primer to not fully seat. I have experienced this and today clean all my primer pockets as a part of the reloading process. Again however, not always necessary.

As for cleaning altogether. Really, if a person were to just wipe off the brass and insure it's clean, a person can reload that brass more than one time. Sometimes a guy can just rub the brass with a green Scothbrite pad and do as well.

eb

A cheap vibrating tumbler and pet grade walnut media will do a good job. True tumblers are very expensive, though you can use wet tumbling in those. If you clean brass for bench-rest shooting, it could make sense, or if you did rock polishing or something similar.
Pet walnut media is cheap, and you can add a bit of auto paint polish and this will get brass just as shiney as all the name-brand case cleaners. I add a teaspoon of "Turtle" brand Chrome Polish and Rust Remover to the media. Once the walnut looks kind of gummy, and it's taking longer and longer to get a good shine, chuck the stuff out. It's not going to hurt your wallet. I also keep a bucket of dry walnut media for final polishing.
I will de-cap and resize at the same time, then reprime before I use the tumbler. If you decap and resize, then tumble, you have to clean any media out of the flash holes. If you want to clean you flash holes too, then this regime should be most time effective.
The question is whether a bit of media in a flash hole makes any difference. I've purposely left a chunk of walnut in a 44 mag case flash hole, primed and reloaded as usual. There was no hangfire/misfire that I could tell. Accuracy wasn't effected. There were no pressure signs. I wouldn't do this for a rifle case.
You're also asking if clean brass makes any difference. Well, when the military reload ammo for their snipers, it's certainly very clean. I bet an AK or SKS could digest filthy ammo without any major problems. The reloads which go into my ARs are nice and clean. It would be prudent to have clean ammo if your life depended on it. So, it all depends.
One aspect seldom mentioned in regards to cleaning brass is the fact you'll wind up paying more attention to the state of the brass. It's easier to spot splitting case necks, or impending case head seperation.
In a [wal]nutshell: You don't have to spend much. Cheap alternatives work just as well as name-brand specific purpose products.

Albatross.

The HF is the same as most of the other vibating tumblers. Some may be a little longer lasting than others but they all work the same. I have an older Midway vibrating tumbler. I've used the walnut from PetSmart, it's okay but I find it to be dustier than corn cob media. I just pour the tumbler outside when I use it. Rotary tumblers are used with stainless media (the same type of tumbler that is used to polish rocks only larger). I haven't used one but know people who swear by them.

I tumble before sizing and depriming. It cleans off the cases to keep the dies from getting scratched. For pistol I don't worry about the primer pocket. For rifle I run through an ultrasonic befor priming. Cleans off lube, cleans pockets and no media in flash holes.

As far as importence of cleaning, it protects your dies and chamber. Benchrest shooters who pull the case out of the rifle sometimes reload that case rght then and there. My cases hit the ground, get sand, dust, gravel, sometimes even mud on them. It all goes through the tumbler. If the range pick up is to bad it may get prerinsed.

(Sidenote: not all brass on the range is worth picking up, some stays on the ground. Some of the brass I pick up goes into recycling if it has problems, some is used to set up dies or trimmers, most gets reloaded after evaluating it.)

(Another sidenote: the Lyman ultrasonic cleaner is the same one that HF sells only with the stainless steel basket in it. I just put my brass in the cleaner and stir it when I restart it.)

I use walnut shells, and tumble before decapping mainly because picking media out the flash holes is a PITA. I might clean the pocket after 3 or 4 firings.

If you don't want to mess with tumbling, try this. Get a tight mesh bag (or an old sock) put your brass in it and tie it shut.Put the bag in the washing machine with a dark load and run thru the full cycle. Shake the residual water out and let them air dry in the sun. It works, you'll be surprised how clean the brass gets!

I seldom have a case hit the ground. I tumble after I deprime as my reason for tumbling is to remove the sizing lube. Walnut from the pet store works great--it runs out like sand. Corn cob media will stick in the primer pocket everytime.

I use one of the Harbor Freight vibratory tumblers loaded with Cabela's brass cleaning media mixed with a couple of handfuls of the media that came with the tumbler. I use the Cabela's polishing media (white cream) when it seems to be needed. The bowl holds 200+ .38 Specials comfortably and I let it run about 4 hours (when I remember it is still running I turn it off). I've cleaned a couple thousand used brass without changing media. I know you don't really need to clean brass, and I didn't for a while, but I just wasn't satisfied with reloads that didn't look like new - my weakness. I don't deprime first but I'm only reloading .38 and 9 mm.