Putting live ammo in a tumbler

[markfh]

In order to get good solid scientific information on some dangerous procedure that has no good reason to even be attempted, someone has to go ahead and do that, many times, under all possible conditions, for no good reason whatsoever.

Be my guest!

Lol... There are good reasons to do it if you've ever gotten some not-so-clean surplus that's been around the world a time or two and in warehouses that aren't all that sanitary.

Like I said, if you have no scientific evidence to support that tumbling harms the powder or changes the charateristics then you're just repeating old wives tales.

Scientific evidence should be easy to get if it's as dangerous as some think. It wouldn't take much testing and saying testing in "all possible conditions" is a red herring that can't be done in any scientific process.

I'm still waiting for some verifiable evidence that even one shell was detonated by tumbling.

 

[DCortez]

I'm still waiting for some verifiable evidence that even one shell was detonated by tumbling.

Call me crazy and uninformed, but I wouldn't do it. My spider senses may not be perfect, but they've kept me alive this long.

 

[Old Man of the Mountain]

Lol... There are good reasons to do it if you've ever gotten some not-so-clean surplus that's been around the world a time or two and in warehouses that aren't all that sanitary.

Like I said, if you have no scientific evidence to support that tumbling harms the powder or changes the charateristics then you're just repeating old wives tales.

Scientific evidence should be easy to get if it's as dangerous as some think. It wouldn't take much testing and saying testing in "all possible conditions" is a red herring that can't be done in any scientific process.

I'm still waiting for some verifiable evidence that even one shell was detonated by tumbling.

I don't know if one ever has either, but I don't want to find out here on my property.

Mr. Lee in his "Modern Reloading" was not very impressed with safety at ammo manufacturers, especially their handling of primers, and holes in ceilings that he alluded to. So if manufactures do tumble loaded cartridges, the folks that work there might know about the results of that, but I sure don't.

I have tumbled unloaded surplus military bullets that were dirty and corroded, but never loaded ammo.

My main concern would be having a primer go off when dropping a cartridge with the primer striking a bullet or other object when loading or unloading the tumbler.

If a primer somehow got detonated, then that could be bad for whoever is right there when it happened, with possible injury and possible loss of hearing.

I just sounds like a bad idea to me.

 

[rodnocker1]

tumbling ammo

A year or so ago, I bought (over the internet) 500 rounds of .300 Win Mag that was described as "new ammo", the only caveat being that there were "fingerprints" on the brass. I thought "No big deal, it's just some fingerprints and should come off easily". When I got the rounds, they looked terrible. I have 3 tumblers and I commenced to tumble the rounds (50 at a time in each tumbler) until the rounds came clean. Some of the rounds came clean very quickly. Others were tumbled over and over (some for up to 8 hours) until they came clean.

After the last batch was done cleaning, I found that some of the necks had cracks in them. I thought that someone might have tried to clean them up with Brasso and possibly made the cases brittle. So I talked to the man I got them from and he said that this was indeed "new" ammo although he had gotten it about 15 years ago.

I got to looking at my manuals and found that the specs on this ammo (I believe the OAL was 3.47" and the powder charge of IMR4350 was 69.4 grs) was over max. I decided to go ahead and pull every round and reload to spec OAL and less than max powder charge. When I pulled the bullets and dumped the powder, there was no difference in appearance between the 15 year old tumbled powder and brand new "virgin" powder ( I have 3 new cans of IMR4350 to compare with) and when I say no difference, I mean NO difference! The tumbled grains are the same size and texture as the new powder (with absolutely no dust).

Would I have a problem doing it again? Absolutely not, although it was awfully hard on my tumblers and I now use a shell holder chucked up in my drill, along with some "Mother's Mag Wheel Polish" for tarnished rounds/brass, simply because it's quicker.

Should you do it? Well, that's up to you.

Oh yeah, and with all of that tumbling of live rounds, not a single one went off, even with the Federal primers and Sierra 190 gr Match King bullets!

 

[40Arpent]

Thanks Mark and Rodney, for your additional insight...much appreciated!

 

[MadMo44Mag]

All I can say is I have been doing it for over 20 years with pistol ammo and never has there been a problem.
I never overload the tumbler and only tumble long enough to clean any lube and smudges off the rounds.
If vibration caused damage to powder how could they ship it in trucks????

 

[40Arpent]

Thanks MadMo, appreciate your insight as well.