Lemi Shine For Brass Cleaning? Does It Work?

So it’s time to clean your brass again.

You haven’t exactly been happy with what you have been getting.

Have you tried Lemi Shine for brass cleaning?

Lemi Shine is a soap and detergent booster you still need something in there to clean.

Some of the other methods we have used is lemon juice with soap or some other specific powders that were supposed to get the brass clean. This method usually does better or equally as good for less cost.

Whether or not you’re using a rotary wet tumbler or if you want to use a vibration tumbler we got some ideas for you. So lets get your Frankford Arsenal running, or whatever other one you like…

We have compiled and sorted through lots of the different recipes and lots of different forms and here’s the process for cleaning your brass with Lemi shine.

How much lemon shine to clean brass?

This seems to be the most controversial topic

Some people say 2-3 tablespoons, some people say a 9 mm brass, some people say 1/8 teaspoon.

It really is all over the place. We recommend you start low and move up.

Obviously, Lemi shine is pretty strong so too much could mess up your brass.

What to use with the Lemi Shine Booster?

Some people using dishwashing soap, some people are using car wash with wax like Armor All.

Wet Tumbler – Cleaning Instructions

First off we need to know how much water you’re putting in your Tumblr not till we’re going to decide how much Let Me Shine we’re going to use we’ll start off West 1/8 teaspoon per gallon.

Also, how is your water? Clean running water will give you better results.

The more you use you clean your brass will get faster. So you need to decide how much time you have to clean your brass. Also the more you use the more expensive it is and wasteful. Since we all like the beautiful world around us will use as little as possible to still get the results that we want.

so it’s get your Tumblr open put your media in, fill it with how much water you want to use and for every gallon of water put in 1/8 teaspoon add lemi shine and 2-3 drops of Dawn dish soap.

so we’ll get it all in and let it tumble. using this much lemi shine per gallon we will start at a tumbling time of 1 hour.

Once you get it all done check if the brass is as clean as you would like it.

Strain out the brass and use your media separator and make sure any of the primer pocket or any other little nooks and crannies are clean.

Dry off the brass with a towel as much as you can before finally putting it in a dehydrator.

Once you’re done with the brass Go Brit and see if it is what you’re looking for

From here if you want it cleaner we would move up 1/8 teaspoon at a time.

We have sound using this method that we haven’t seen any color loss and that in general it works better then most of the other cleaning methods out there.

We have not tried it but we have heard that this same method works pretty well in an Ultrasonic Cleaner.

Vibrating dry tumbler methods

Now we’re not going to use the lemishine in the dry Tumblr but we will use it as a pre-soak for all of our brows what this will do is it’ll get most of the stuff off of the cases before you put it into your dry media.

This way you’re driving me you’ll last longer you’ll get the opportunity to do more shining instead of cleaning And in general will leave you with really nice-looking brass.

Since this method we’re not actually tumbling in the lemi shine we’re going to use a little more.

We’re going to start off with one teaspoon I’ve Lemi Shine for every gallon of water and we’re going to soak a half hour at a time until we feel we are mostly clean. We also find that using hot water helps break down the stuff on the brass better than cold water.

Dry out your cases and then use your vibratory tumbler as you normally would.

Doing it this method will just make everything last longer.

And then we also mine works really well using a little bit of car wax like NuFinish in your media at the end to get really shiny brass.

Something we really want to point out here is that you really need to dry off your cases. If you don’t dry them off your media might just stick onto and cake onto your brass, you do not want a walnut media cake on your brass.

We really want to point that out since some people the idea of wet soaking may be new to you if you’re used to doing a dry vibratory tumble.

Final Thoughts on Cleaning Brass

Something to keep in mind is what you are choosing to clean. Using some of these methods will get some of the dirtiest corroded pieces of brass looking good.

But…

Should you be using corroded metal in a firearm?

You could and it probably will not have any problems but corosion does weaken the brass. The last thing that you would want is the brass breaking apart when you were using it.

Another thing, do not use any cleaner that has ammonia in it since that is also known to weaken brass by changing some of the chemical makeup and making it brittle.

Last thing real quick. We know that dry tumblers are cheaper in the short run but you might want to change to an ultrasonic or a we tumbler since the waste can more easily be thrown away and you will not have lead filled dust floating around like you do with vibratory tumblers.

Quick question, have you used raw uncooked rice in you vibrating dry media tumbler? We have read a couple of recommendations for it but have not tried ourselves yet.

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