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The wife has bought a 1950's push bike to do up and is after something to help clean all the smaller parts, this is a really good excuse to invest in a system to clean my brass and the bike bits

So what are the pro's and cons of cleaning brass with a sonic cleaner and what's the best thing to put in the cleaner (apart from water )

Would she be able to put things like the brakes and smaller parts in a case tumbler to clean the rust and muck off or would it just cause my brass cleaning problems

Cheers

Rob

This topic is one that often crops up and there are as many opinions as people sign01

personally I bought a 2.5 ltr cleaner from ebay it came from Holland and cost about £60 Delivered and i use two table spoons of citric acid powder in around 1 litre warm water and do 50*308 cases at a time.

Alan

My advice would be to buy one that's bigger and more powerful than you think you need. The first one I got for brass cleaning was a model a lot of reloaders seem to use and although it did the job OK, it took much longer than I had patience for and didn't have the capacity to clean more than 40 or so cases at a time.

So I then had a look around and found there are much better U/S cleaners around, with multiple transducers, drain taps, adjustable heaters, variable timer etc. and got one which has turned out to do a much better job of cleaning in a shorter time and could be used to clean much larger items if I need it to.

It's similar to this one:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Brand-New-3L- ... 27ce2ee46b

As for what to put in it, I use Citranox for brass, which is a highly concentrated citrus-based cleaner (eco-friendly). A large bottle lasts for ages but ti's not the easiest cleaner to get hold of. There are plenty of other ultrasonic cleaning solutions on the market, but ideally you should match the cleaner with the type of cleaning you're doing. Some are better at removing grease, others carbon, some shouldn't be used on certain metals etc. etc.

Hope that gives you a bit of a head start.

Get the proper brass cleaners from the reloading supply companies no grief with neutralising cleans in no time and does a great job inside and out primer pockets as well. Or get a ball mill with stainless that everyone was raving about last year.

Thanks for all the advice, have gone for a tumbler due to the fact my other half's bike forum weren't overly impressed with the sonic ones for bike bits. They also sat walnut shells are great at cleaning chromed bike parts.

Wonder what other gun equipment I can treat myself to and make it out it's for her as well :shakeshout:

forbie wrote:Get the proper brass cleaners from the reloading supply companies no grief with neutralising cleans in no time and does a great job inside and out primer pockets as well. Or get a ball mill with stainless that everyone was raving about last year.

What's a ball mill?

Maybe the wrong name ball mills seem to be for the larger stuff Basically a rotary tumbler used with small stainless steel media (small pins) I think spud 69 sells them other options are http://www.ukge.co.uk/uk/barrelling.asp Plenty of previous posts about them. More expensive to start with but the media lasts a very long time apparently.

hobbesy wrote:

forbie wrote:.

What's a ball mill?

Us "bangers" refer to that as a "Stainless Steel Tumbler"

More efficient, if only much wetter, than the typically dry vibrating tumblers that are the normal kit for most shooters!

1967spud does indeed sell them and i have 20 here atm ready to ship

Hi SPUD

Go the tumbler yesterday and it's not been turned off all day, loving it. Thanks very much for sending it out quickly