Brasso / ammonia in tumbler

Hi all. I wanted to hear your experiences with using Brasso to clean brass in a tumbler. An old timer who has been commercially reloading for decades taught me to do that, and it does make brass look great and knocks down some dust. I have read about ammonia damaging the brass, but I wonder if it is a real concern considering the brass doesn't last forever anyway.

I'm not trying to stir up a controversy, but I just want to hear about experiences to decide whether to continue using it. Can anyone share an experience where they have personally witnessed Brasso shortening the life of their brass or making it crack or something?

Thanks,
Greg

I usually give the tumbler a squirt of Brasso and Flitz per 200-250 casings. Mostly 9mm, .45 ACP, and .223/5.56. Never had any issues, besides finding a glob caked w/ media in a case or two....

I was concerned about ammonia and it's effect on brass, so I started adding a capful of Nu Finish car polish to walnut media. I'll add Nu Finish and run the tumbler for a couple of minutes before adding brass. I've been doing it for years with good results.

One way to cut down dust is to cut a small piece of a used dryer sheet and toss it in the tumbler. About 1/4 of a sheet or a little smaller does the trick.

On the other site I read this one thread where a guy had some damaged brass and the general consensus that the members came to was that ammonia 'off gassing' from his nearby cat box had been what caused the damage. (supposedly once fired brass that was splitting on 2nd firing with regularity)

I am NOT a scientist and do not play one on TV or the internet but...

I do not buy any of that crap regardless of what the 'post count' may have been on any of the fools that seemed to believe that the ammonia 'gasses' did the damage to his brass.

If you 'stored' your brass IN the cat box for YEARS or were using your brass instead of litter in the cat box? - I guess it would be possible for some of it to get messed up. No way I am going to believe that ammonia gasses are able to travel out of a cat box, wonder over to a box of brass and ruin it without there being many other obvious signs that something is seriously wrong getting the owners attention FIRST.

By 'obvious signs' I mean - If a guy was to venture into his reloading area and need a gas mask due to the cat piss smell / ammonia burning his eyes... He has other issues going on that need attention way more than the brass.



As far as Brasso weakening brass is concerned - Best way to avoid the possibility is to not use it. With good media in a dry tumbler it is not needed anyway. With a wet tumbler it would definitely not be needed or useful for having brass that looked 'better than new' again.

If I can keep up with a number of firings I will report back. I guess if I get 8-10 firings out of 5.56 brass I could say it is not a problem. I'm new to 5.56 though. My experience is with 308 and pistols.

BTW I'm referring to a dry tumbler with corn cob media.

I’ve tried Brasso and never noticed any ill effects. I find that modern tumbling media changed regularly is the easiest method for me.

I've put a brass polishing liquid that was sold in the reloading section of my LGS just for this purpose. I will say it works better at making the smooth spots shinier, but it did not repair deeply blemished spots. It certainly does not speed up the tumbling process.

Go easy on the amount at first because I had my walnut media get really sticky from using too much goop. In some cases it actually caked up inside and I had to use a toothpick to scrape it out.

As long as you don't leave the brass sitting in the media, you're fine. I left some pistol brass in my cob media years ago, and it kinda pitted the brass surface. The moisture/polish started to attack the brass.

Incidental contact with polish in regular tumbling won't hurt a thing.

I have used Dillons polish a couple of times but lately the walnut blasting media from Harbor Freight has done an incredible job of cleaning so I leave it out. +1 on NOT leaving the brass to sit in the media without tumbling.