Anyone tried using a portable cement mixer as a large scale tumbler? I am looking for a way to do a large amount of surplus brass without a lot of time or cost. Ideas?

It has been done but not by me.

Harbor Freight Tools has a small concrete mixer. It's frequently on sale for about $110. Ir ahould do fine and at fairly low cost too.

I suspect that you might get a lot of bent case mouths using a cement mixer with its steel walls and steel paddles. If bent mouths don't bother you, then I don't see why it wouldn't work.

I've read of someone using the cement mixer. He removed the paddles.

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I've read of someone using the cement mixer. He removed the paddles.

Yeah. That and using a good load of media. That problem's esaily "fixed"!

get your media at the petstore .. or so i heard.. and a bottle of wright's silver polish or brasso

I have not seen it but I have read post of folks that visited ammo plants that said they used cement mixers to polish their brass.
With plenty of media, I don't think the fins would bang up the cases.

I certainly dont want to bang up the cases any more than they already are. Resizing on a large scale takes enough time as it is. Maybe it isnt pratical at the home level and the traditional methods are as good as it gets. I just cant believe with as many home mechanics/engineers there are out there someone hasnt come up with a better way.

Back when Police Depts. loaded their practice ammo, many of them used portable cement mixers to clean their brass.

Buy your walnut hulls, or corn cob media, from a company that sells supplies to sand blasting companies. you can get it in 50 lb bags.

I have used a cement mixer for years. I found one with a plastic mixing bowl. I removed the paddles and changed the pullys to slow it down.

I bought walnut blasting media by the 40lb bag. I add about a cup of mineral spirits per load.

I can tumble about 10,000 45 acps at a time and about 2500 308s, 3000 223s.

Made some wood box/screens to seperate the brass from the media.

Longshot

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Made some wood box/screens to seperate the brass from the media.

That would surely work. I use a cheaap standard "office" type waste basket made of espanded wire, looks like coarse netting, from a Dollar Store. Think it was about $2.

I really don't think cases would be battered much, if any at all, in a small steel concrete mixer if there is enough media. The blasting type media is cheap, fine grit, easily found.

Adding inexpensive auto polish, NuFinish is inexpensive and it works great. Adding a few ounces of mineral spirits from time to time will also help.

What is the purpose of adding the mineral spirits? I have been reloading for years and have never heard of adding mineral spirits? What does this do/add to the media?
ema39

The best machine I ever used was a hardware store paint mixer. the inside of the 1 gal. can was covered in a thin rubber sheet. 20-30 minutes produced the same results as 2-3 hrs in a vibrator.

Rich

What about the larger Dillon tumbler?

I have read a few times not to use Brasso. I think people says that it contains ammonia and will weaken your brass over time.

Mac

Bob, the large dillon is great. I have one. The problem is I am processing about 7000 kilos of brass in 4 calibers. It is all military surplus and needs some tlc. I being basically lazy and impatient want to do it in a larger faster easier method. I also dont want to spend a lot of money as it is just a hobby that got out of control and not a buisness. Although I do sell some to friends and family to offset some of my cost.

Mckay, I have heard the same thing about brasso but dont have an answer. I dont know if it is really true or not. It may shorten the brass life but by how much I dont know. since I usually stop reloads on a particular lot of brass after 10 times it might not be an issue anyway. I use flitz or dillon polisher most of the time. Hopefully someone with more knowledge will jump in aand give us an answer as I would like to know as well. The 10 is an arbitrary limit i set and has no real act behind it.

Longshot, I too am curious about the mineral oil. could you explain? I am also interested in how and why you changed the gearing. Could you give us some insight into what you did?

Years ago I bought some walnut hulls, 50 lb bag, that was very "dusty".

I waited until a windy day, got up on the roof of the house, and "poured" the media into a clean trash can several times and let the wind blow the dust away.

I learned after that to get some "dustless" media.

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Originally posted by Mike Smith:
The problem is I am processing about 7000 kilos of brass . . . it is just a hobby that got out of control.

Nah. Anyone here would be glad to tell your wife that this is a perfectly normal part of the home hobby reloading process.

Mike,

That's "mineral spirits", not "mineral oil".

I'm sure it helps, but I prefer to stick to the physical rather than chemical to clean brass. Any abrasive type auto polish will do what the commercial media enhancers do.

As to the pet store media, all I've ever seen is ground too course for proper brass tumbling, but maybe some pet stores have a finer grade (the too-course corn cob I found makes excellent filler for lightweight "sand" bags to be used in walk-around varminting

HF&T sells 25lb boxes of walnut in two different "grinds" that is very affordable when you can catch it on sale.

Hell, if it's military brass anyway, just put it in the cement mixer and have at it. A few dented mouths won't degrade its value.

I've heard the "no Brasso" thing myself. But then I've read post from folks that have used it for years w/o a problem. The idea of Brasso weakening cases "over time" is pretty ambiguous. You would also have your normal wear and tear or enlarged primer pockets, thickening necks, etc. Would they come into play before the Brasso effect would make the cases useless? Does anyone have any hard data on how long it takes Brasso to weaken cases?