Homebrewer, I will be interestd in your future results, the cleaner like you mention did a real so-so job for me, that is why I am pursuing different cleaning solutions....I know using vinegar is freaking some folks out, but try a load with that and then rinse in baking soda water and see what you think...maybe just try it on 5 or 6 really gunky cases.

I'd have to side with Amamnn on the usefulness of ultrasonic cleaners for the general shooter. Farting about, dipping cases in water then baking soda, then rinsing again followed by a dry is a shit load of pissing about for what amounts to very little/nothing group wise on the range. I did find that it's a great way to clean up car parts and soften up stubborn old gaskets though...

I bet they will clean a fishing reel realy good.

Picked up some once-fired .308 at the Carson City range the day I got the cleaner. They were the second batch buzzed in the solution shown in the picture. I looked inside them yesterday to find that all the powder residue inside had been cleaned out. I think that's super cool! I'm now interested to see if a .223 case with its small mouth will clean out as well. I used 1/2-teaspoon of cleaner in a batch of still-primed .223 brass last night. They came out looking good but will still have to be decapped, under which we'll find hardened carbon residue.

Does anybody have a suggestion for getting tarnish off brass? I have maybe 150 that are clean but have a streaky, blackish tarnish on them. I'd like to use the ultrasonic cleaner to clean the tarnish off and give myself another good reason for having bought it. So far, I really like the thing. It cleans dirty brass in two 480-second cycles. I have no problem with the multiple rinsing required. I rinse them in a stainless pot big enough to boil a pound of spaghetti, pour them into a sieve between rinses, toss them to drain them the way a chef tosses sauteed onions or whathot, then into my food dehydrator they go for maybe two hours to dry them completely. The food dehydrator blows near-dry air at 160° Farenheit, so I know I'm getting them dry, dry, dry inside and out. Then comes the processing...

quote:

Posted 15 March 2010 04:49 Hide Post
Is this the same unit Hornady is selling but at a lower cost?

Looks the same except the color.

http://cgi.ebay.com/PRO-LARGE-...?hash=item335af3ea2d

Yes, that is the same one that Hornady is marketing, I have the same one listed in the auction. Same price on Amazon.com, it fits 60 30-06 cases easily.

I have tried the Iosso, Birchwood Casey Concentrate and Vinegar/detergent solution, the best result were from 1 oz of Simple Green and 1 qt of water.

This is how many .223 cases that can be cleaned in the large Harbor Freight cleaner. I have no idea how many this is. The trays are twelve inches in diameter. I use a 50-50 solution of vinegar and water, a half-teaspoon of the cleaning powder and a squirt of dishwashing liquid. I run the cases through about eight cycles alternating between 380 seconds and 480 seconds, because the directions say not to run consecutive 480-second cycles. Something about overheating the ultrasonic transducer, so I do what it says. The primer pockets come out spotless. I like that. Saves so much time over scraping them with the RCBS tool...

Homebrewer, looks like you are having good results with your Ultrasonic, has the last run you listed eliminated your 'tarnishy' brass and given you a decent shine? Also, just to confirm my math, you are ending up running them for a total of about 30 mins right?

My Sharpertek unit will let you run it for a long time, I don't know the max, but I am running mine for about 20 mins, and I have found, contrary to the thread on 6MM Benchrest that using the heater helps.(I start with hot water and my mix is just like yours, minus the borax looking powder that came with the unit)

I like you, really like getting all the carbon etc. out of the inside of the cases, and especially like the clean primer pockets!

thndr Chicken, you must either have a way more powerful Ultrasonic than me, or some supe special simple green, cause simple green doesn't do much more than plain water in mine! I have gone up to 50/50 simple green and water just to see, but it didn't help either. I am planning on ordering some Citranox, and looking for some Citric Acid...White vinegar works fine, but ther is the whole 'de-zincification' issue folks talk about, so I rinse em off with some water with Baking Soda in it, I don't run a cycle with the Baking soda in there....

I'm right now doing a test on just water, the powder and a squirt of dishsoap. I am up to my fourteenth or fifteenth cycle at 480 seconds and I am not satisfied. Most are clean, but there are a few .45ACP pockets that refuse to clean out. So I give 'em another blast. I got my best results with 50-50 water and vinegar, a half-teaspoon on the powder and a squirt of Dawn or whatever you have at hand. I run 'em through eight times just because I'm such a nasty man. They come out spotless. I really think the 2.5% vinegar concentration does the trick.

But vinegar is expensive. The gallon Great Value jug at Walmart is damned near four bucks. So I bought the really great value Heinz gallon at $2.50-- two of them. I use the solution until the water is so black and evil and murky, you'd almost expect the Creature from the Black Lagoon to come crawling out of it. Doesn't seem to bother it. I have found as long as the smell of vinegar is strong, the cases clean up nicely. I ran my fouler cases through it so many times the other day, the nickle plating on some of them ain't nickley anymore. They're a bit of a smoky gray now. I should post a picture. I doubt the extended cleaning has done anything to the brass...

Thanks homebrewer, I am seeing good results with the vinegar solution too, I don't put the powder in there actually, just a squirt of Dawn dishsoap. I haven't run it so long that it is really dirty, I did make the mistake of leaving the french fryer basket in the mix overnight, and it had a few rust spots on it after that

I am with you on the vinegar cost wise, I am interested to see how far a gallon of Citronox goes, and I'm still wondering about the 'damage' that the vinegar does to the brass....I am going to try to find the Citric acid still too.

I have to agree, it takes at least 6 times through at 6 minutes with the simple green I've been using. By the time the 5'th time around is finishing the solution is pretty warm and hitting the seventh and eighth time the solution is close to steaming. I've been doing about 50 35 Whelen cases at a time with no issue.

I'm thinking if we go 25% vinegar and 75% water, we can reduce our vinegar expense. The trade-off is more time in the buzzbucket. For me, that's no problem. I am doing other things. I do not run right back to it when it finishes. I get back in there when I feel like it or remember I have a batch going. I figger it's not gonna matter if they stay in the solution. They're brass-- what the hell diff does it make? Soaking them just softens up the crusty carbon crap in the primer pocket. I've left 'em in there overnight. Am I glad I bought it? Yes. I cleaned maybe 300-350 .45ACPs in it the other night. I ran it fifteen 480-second cycles with random-length cool-down periods for the transducer between the cycles. They came out delightfully spotless-- inside and out. It would take me ages to do that many pockets by hand because I do not have the patience to sit there and do it...

quote:

Originally posted by homebrewer:
I'm thinking if we go 25% vinegar and 75% water, we can reduce our vinegar expense. The trade-off is more time in the buzzbucket. For me, that's no problem. I am doing other things. I do not run right back to it when it finishes. I get back in there when I feel like it or remember I have a batch going. I figger it's not gonna matter if they stay in the solution. They're brass-- what the hell diff does it make? Soaking them just softens up the crusty carbon crap in the primer pocket. I've left 'em in there overnight. Am I glad I bought it? Yes. I cleaned maybe 300-350 .45ACPs in it the other night. I ran it fifteen 480-second cycles with random-length cool-down periods for the transducer between the cycles. They came out delightfully spotless-- inside and out. It would take me ages to do that many pockets by hand because I do not have the patience to sit there and do it...

That all makes a lot of sense Homebrewer...

Thndrchicken, I see what you are doing with the simple green, may try running em a little longer, but the vinegar mix works awful damn well.

Here's something else I'm looking at: I pour the solution out of the cleaner into a two-liter soda bottle, let it set for a few days, let all the carbon and other crud settle to the bottom of the bottle, then very gently decant the solution into another bottle. I have only done this once. The decanted solution comes out very clear with just a faint blue cast to it. Because pouring stirs up the sediment, I'm going to go get some small-bore vinyl tubing to siphon the solution from the "sittin' bottle" to something like a gallon milk jug or some other jug big enough to hold the total volume of solution I have generated. Keeping the stuff and just recharging it with a bit of vinegar stretches the economy of it. I took a picture of the two solutions I have (one settled, the other not so much) but resizing and posting pictures with Windows 7 Pro is a skill I have yet to master, so you'll have to take my word for it...

I've been using the same batch of simple green run through a coffee filter in a colander then into the storage container. Looks like a science experiment but it works as long as you don't pour too much at a time and overflow the filter. Even for the small if any amount of carbon left in the primer pocket is reduces my brass prep time by about 40% when not having to clean the primer pockets and only doing a final finish tumble that takes 1/2 as long a it would have otherwise.

Hey you guys great posts and discussion on your experiences. I'm very interested and very tempted to get a unit. Not sure I'm a 100% sold yet but it won't break the bank either if I get one.

Sounds like it's the right mix of the cleaning agent used and not so much the unit. Appears the 160 watt job from Harbor Freight is up to the task, thanks again for this info, Waidmannsheil, Dom.

A few comments about my HF ultrasonic cleaner:

HF's website lists it at $80. I googled up a "20% off any one item" coupon and went to their nearby retail store. They only wanted $60, minus the 20% netted my cost as $49 plus sales tax.

I used the Baney's best CLEAN & CHEAP formula. But I used the heating element, too.

5% white vinegar is $1.89/gallon where I shop. Then it's diluted 1 to 1 with tap water, so that brings it down to 2.5%. I can't see that acetic acid solution strength hurting my brass cases.

I loaded a mixed batch of both rifle and pistol cases. Also most were de-capped, but some were not.

I was prepared for a noisy environment like with my vibratory tumbler...but the ultrasonic was really very quiet.

I started on the MAX setting of 480 seconds...it's nice that it shuts itself off when done, except the heating element, which keeps heating the solution.

I turned it back on about every half inning of the baseball game I was watching on TV. I think it took 4 or 5 cycles to get completely clean. I used tongs to agitate the load of cases before each succeeding cleaning cycle to help the solution attack all areas of the brass.

I got some of those black streaks homebrewer spoke of. Here's how that happened: some 380acp cases ended up inside some 45acp cases. Also some 223Rem cases ended up partially inside 375 H&H cases.

The solution and cleaning action did a poor job of cleaning where they were trapped inside one another. The same for the primer pockets that still had primers inserted.

On the other hand, I was impressed with how clean inside the majority of the brass came out. But all the brass needed to be run through the polishing media of the tumbler to get it shiny...not long. Maybe 15 minutes.

I'm satisfied that this $50 investment will do exactly what I intended it to do. And that is to bulk clean the buildup of grunge from the the primer pockets of my pistol ammo, which gets loaded via progressive loader, thus the primer pockets really never get cleaned between loadings.

I think I'll run them through this HF ultrasonic cleaner every 10 reloadings.

zr2 says,

quote:

I used the Baney's best CLEAN & CHEAP formula.

What is this formula?

You know what I'd like to find? I'd like to find a powdered acetic acid that we could mix with water to make our solution. Does something like that actually exist?

quote:

Originally posted by homebrewer:

zr2 says,

quote:

I used the Baney's best CLEAN & CHEAP formula.

What is this formula?

You know what I'd like to find? I'd like to find a powdered acetic acid that we could mix with water to make our solution. Does something like that actually exist?

I searched Baney's. It's just 50-50 water and vinegar with dish soap and a bunch of extra steps that don't amount to much. I just buzz mine until they're clean, then rinse the hell out them in multiple baths of clear tapwater. I toss 'em from pot to sieve and back again, through several baths of water. Then they go onto my food dehydrator for drying...

You guys might want to try some Prolix.

They say you do not need an Ultrasonic machine, but it should not hurt.

I know when I visit Aleko at Heritage Arms, after we shoot a few handguns, we take the grips off and drop them in a tank of Prolix and leave them over night.

They come out pretty clean.

The Prolix dries leaving a dry lube behind, so you do not have to "clean off the cleaner".

I do not use it in a tank, yet, I just wet down the gun,let it set a few minutes, then use a tooth brush and a patch, to remove the loosened gunk.

quote:

Originally posted by N E 450 No2:

You guys might want to try some Prolix.

If it costs more than vinegar per gallon, it ain't gonna happen in my tank...

I would not use it for brass, just for guns.

It can be easily filtered, allowing you to use it for quite a while, especially if you patch out the barrel/cylinder before you dunk the gun.

Check out their web site, it is good stuff.

www.prolixlubricant.com

The basket type coffee machine filters do a pretty good job of filtering your cleaner and they're cheap. I found a flower pot with a hole in the bottom center and it was just right for holding the filter. I store the cleaner and oil in a small plastic 1-1/2 liter paint mixing can with a lid--cost next to nothing at
Tru-Valu and I just place the flowerpot/filter in the US cleaner and fill it up then raise the pot while adding cleaner--works fine and saves a lot of slop.

While I am using the machine almost exclusively for cleaning guns and not brass, I did find it to be a good way of cleaning brass that has been radically necked up and neck turned, since those processes involve a lot of oil and lube that I do not otherwise use. I also found out that the SharperTek cleaner is safe for the two gold filled engraved guns I cleaned in it. One was a factory fill and one I did myself with the Forster kit. I don't think I would try it on a gun that was filled using those crayon type fillers.

quote:

You know what I'd like to find? I'd like to find a powdered acetic acid that we could mix with water to make our solution. Does something like that actually exist?

If you can find some of the military bug juice packets, man when I was in the Navy they just plain kicked ass on brass deck drains. I would also suggested the lemon flavor, straight up acid and food color till you add the sugar.

Cleaning an assembled hand gun in an ultrasonic may not be the best thing to do. With the right cleaner/solvent they will remove all traces of lube, requiring complete disassembly to re-lube. When I want to get a century or two of grunge off I use the old style carb cleaner that comes in the cans with the strainer bucket, the stuff that really smells bad. I expect that this stuff in an ultrasonic would work wonders. In the good old days we used 1,1,1 trich in an ultrasonic to clean parts, but I never thought to try it on brass. I expect that would work also, but could bad for the operator if not used properly.
C.G.B.

Most, if not all those companies who sell ultrasonic gun cleaner also sell oils which are supposedly formulated for use in the ultrasonics and will oil those areas not readily accessible. Still, dunking the gun in cleaner or oil completely assembled is not the way to do it.

While I don't lie awake at night thinking about it, I have had the ultrasonic on my mind from time to time and have been wondering about ways to use it that will convince me that I have not wasted my money buying one. I don't own jewelry, so I am not going to use it to clean that. I do own a lot of bolts--and carriers--- and hmmmmm

If you don't care to disassemble your AR direct gas impingement bolt from the carrier or don't like disassembling any other bolt for that matter--the US cleaner can be of use--and in oiling it when you are done. I just cleaned 5 bolts 2 AR in the carriers, and 3 bolts from BR rifles and THEN disassembled them to take a look--seemed like a good job of cleaning to me............