Case Cleaning - Crushed Walnut media in primer pockets

[SEABEE]

Ok after you stop laughing at this post, has anyone else had issues with using crushed walnut media to clean your brass and the walnut particles getting stuck in the primer pockets? I am beyond irritated at the moment ... I just bought 500 LC head stamped 556 once fired brass, converted them all to 300 Blackout this weekend the old fashion way ... then tossed them in the vibratory cleaner with the walnut media this afternoon and ... UGGGHHHH ... walnut particles stuck in the primer pockets ... anyone else done this and if so what did you do to get the walnut particles out of the primer pockets?

[golfindia]

I leave the pieces in the holes. Never made a difference.

[Boolit_Head]

I've sifted them out and put the brass back in the tumbler alone. After a few minutes most of the walnut was knocked loose. Noisy but effective.

[dellet]

No laughing here.

An .080” piece of drill rod pushed into a wood dowel for a handle and sharpened to a point on the other end works very well to not only pick out the pocket, but will also fit through the primer hole to push out the tiny pieces that get caught in there.

[bangbangping]

Life's too short to pick walnut from primer holes. Try some lizard bedding from a pet shop. Same walnut, but ground finer. Cheaper to boot.

[rebel]

I poke it and uniform the flash hole in one step. Flash hole uniformity sounds stupid, but it really makes a difference in groups, reliability and groups - did I say groups?

I leave the pieces in the holes. Never made a difference.

Or you can do this for a wonderful smokey flavor

[gds]

Read this.

https://www.theboxotruth.com/educationa ... -accuracy/

[Omega]

I stopped using the vibratory tumblers now that I wet tumble in SS pins. But when I did, I would have that problem, so would tumble first, then deprime/size and manually clean the primer hole. The only problem I had was forgetting to put the nu finish in before the brass..I would get gobs of it in the case, had to clean it out with a pick. Really should look into the SS wet tumble, you should see the dirty water after I tumbled with walnut media and nu finish, I'll post a few more pics up later but here are some cleaned ones.
300Blk Wet Tumbled

Walnut and Nu Finish on the left Wet tumbled on the right, except the center ones are reversed.

This is how dirty the water gets after wet tumbling brass I had already run for an hour in the walnut media

Brass shavings from 300Blk which I formed, reloaded and fired, then wet tumbled.

[Sig220]

I have a couple boxes of walnut media that I never opened from 10 years ago.

SS media and wet tumbling is the way I go now.

[Mike7.62]

I keep the spent primers in place when tumbling, and do my brass prep-sizing, de-priming etc.-after tumbling. Since I usually use a flash hole uniformer during brass prep, the primer pockets are clean when I re-prime the case. If you don't uniform your primer pockets, an RCBS primer pocket cleaning tool will get rid of the crud in the pocket very quickly.

In any case, if you tumble with spent primers in, or after de-priming, you're going to have to spend some time cleaning out the primer pocket no matter if what you're cleaning is walnut/corncob tumbling media or primer crud, so choose whichever works best for your process.

The wet tumbling with SS pin media sounds like the cat's *** for brass cleaning. I'll have to look into it.