GF8, the tone of your opening post was a little along the lines of inviting the more experienced to suck eggs, but doesn't seem intended to cause offence, which is probably why Tac took it the wrong way a bit.

Having said that, it's clear Tha you have taken a long time to research the subject in depth before doing any reloading, so that's a nice change from the usual I've bought a lee anniversary kit, now what do I do?' brigade...

So in effect with a few helpful pointers from the experienced hands on the forum, you'll be well on your way. I'm not really one of them, but I've been doing it long enough to know what Im doing and I read about the subject a hell of a lot because you can never know everything

So, in a very small nutshell, if you tumble your cases in a dry system with walnut/corn cob media, then don't bother to de cap them first - the inside of the case isn't actually cleaned anyway, so that makes little difference and only the outside gets a polish. If it still bothers you, buy a cheap lee universal decapping die which does the job and is a sacrificial item. I'd say almost 100% of reloaders decap after tumbling just because it is a pain to poke out the media from the flash holes, and the primer pocket doesn't really get any cleaning from dry tumbling.

If you want insides cleaned too, then buy an ultrasonic bath cleaner and some James SeaClean (online, maplins, e bay etc.). Decap with the sacrificial lee tool then chuck em in the U/S bath, towel off when clean (to prevent water stains outside) and then put them in the oven at 100c for 15 minutes on a wire rack. You could also experiment with citric acid and a few drops of fairy liquid - also does a great job, cheaply, but make sure to do a bicarb rinse to neutralize the acids before drying.

If you really want to spend a chunk of money for extremely clean cases with no effort on your part, then go for wet stainless tumbling. Follow the towling off and oven drying afterwards.


Hope that's helpful