OzFclass

I have just taken delivery of a (seemingly) decent Ultrasonic machine that cost me $250 delivered off Ebay. Holds 6 litres and seems tro have all the bells and whistles.......180W of Ultrasonic power and 300W of heating power.
I have read hours of posts re "recipes" and techniques. I have been slowly and carefully through Ian's great post back in June 2008

I just dont get why you would want to to run the cases through the Ultrasonic cleaner BEFORE full length sizing ?

Wouldnt it work to (a) remove primers, then (b) apply lube , then (c) FLS ....and THEN clean all of the cases with the Ultrasonic machine ?? It seems to me that you should then have perfectly cleaned, sized cases that are ready to load.


Why would you need to "re-size" after ultrasonic cleaner (as many reloaders do apparently) ? What am i missing here ?

Mark Fairbairn very kindly annealed 400 cases for me just before he flew to the USA, and not having ever done it (annealing) before , i didnt realise that cases had to be squeaky clean. So Mark put them through the ultrasonic cleaner, approx 100 at a time. He didnt use the basket, and we used a mixture of glass beakers, and disposable plastic beer glasses.
We just filled each plastic glass with cases, neck down/primer pocket up, added the magic recipe (vinegar and Shower Power as a concentrate, then mixed 50/50 with water) and placed them straight into the cleaner without any basket, just about 4" of heated water. It seemed to work a treat ! Took about 30 minutes per load, but they came out squeaky clean.
We thoroughly rinsed then, dried them on towels and then went on with the annealing process via the fancy Bench Source machine that he has.

So i went ahead and bought what looks like a decent ultrasonic machine and started reading. Hence the question above.......why cant i just clean the cases as the last step before drying and then reloading ?

Thanks for all and any input.
Tony

G'day Tony,

I de-prime and then U/S clean because I like the idea of no carbon deposits on the neck or shoulders prior to sizing, to get the best concentricity.
Then I anneal followed by case sizing.

I want the case to be clean prior to annealing because oxidised cases give different colour pattern when annealed and it makes it a little harder to see the consistency in the colour change.

I want the case annealed, therefore the neck and shoulder softer prior to work hardening via neck sizing and shoulder bumping.

If the brass still feels lubey after a wipe with brake cleaner on a rag I'll give them another quick hit in the U/S cleaner to finish.

I use Birchwood Casey case cleaner with a splash of dish washing liquid. IMO It works out much cheaper than vinegar and doesn't stink the joint out.

Above said, its just one of many ways to skin a cat.

Quote;
I just dont get why you would want to to run the cases through the Ultrasonic cleaner BEFORE full length sizing ?

I'll go with DenisA re: carbon deposits.
I would not even neck size a fired case without at least putting it through the tumbler.
Also the crud/carbon from dirty cases do not do your resizing dies much good so ultimately will affect the integrity of your resizing.
If you want the primer pockets ultrasonically cleaned, just get a decapping die that will not touch/affect the brass.

Just my 2 cents worth.

Thanks for the input so far.
As I don't have an annealer myself yet, I hadn't intended annealing every reload.....More likely every second or third was what I had in mind, using borrowed equipment (hurry home, Mark !)
I use a Neil Jones Decapping Tool, and also have a Sinclair Universal Decapping die which I haven't used yet, coz the Jones tool is so handy and easy to use.
Wouldn't cleaning the neck with fine steel wool remove the carbon totally , or certainly enough to not cause Concentricity issues.
I am looking at this Fraser guy running 12th in the US FClass Nationals in his "Master" section, in a field of about 80 very good shooters, and he doesn't do any cleaning, ever......so one has to assume that his zero case cleaning routine doesn't have too major an impact on on Concentricity &/or long range accuracy. Yes ? No ?
I hear what you are saying, and I guess doing 50 or so cases at a time it shouldn't take too long to clean them a second time.
So are you saying that in my situation ..... No annealer of my own, no tumbler yet, and intent on "minimum bump FLS" every time, I should
1) Knock the spent primer out
2)Trim and chamfer if req'd (I don't need to at this stage)
2)Ultrasonic clean
3)Lube
4) FLS
5)Ultrasonic clean again, inc neutralizing if req'd
6)re prime, charge with powder and seat projectile
7)shoot 60-10

I have certainly read plenty of very positive comments regarding the Birchwood Casey case cleaner, and will go and get some ASAP. The lack of odor that Dennis referred to sure has to be a plus. Hopefully most gun shops here in Qld carry it ?
Do you two both use glass beakers ? The plastic beer glasses that Mark F used seemed to work every bit as well as his glass beakers.
Do you always use the basket, as per IanP's 2008 post suggestion ?
Does the Birchwood Casey cleaner have to be neutralized ?
One last one....would the ideal situation be to use a tumbler, maybe a Thumlers Tumbler with the stainless media, for the cleaning cycle after the FLS ? Or would that be overkill and maybe a conventional cheaper tumbler with normal dry media would be perfectly adequate to just remove lube and hopefully polish the case a bit ?

Tumble, bump shoulder, resize neck, nylon brush inside the neck then blowout with compressed air then charge and load for me. Theres so much more I think we can learn in terms of wind reading that clean/unclean cases really shouldnt have to matter that much. Alan has proven its not always needed I think thats fairly definitive. I believe the nationals would have been the first queens in a long time he didnt take it out...

ecomeat

Weren't you getting close to single digit figures with your SD's and quite good ES's within chronograph tolerances anyway? I clean cases to look after my dies and assist with finding visual faults.

The 6 litre ultrasonic cleaner sounds like a cracker and beats the little Aldi job I use that will only get about 30 x 308W cases in at a time. I've settled on using a couple of shakes of McKenzie's Citric Acid powder. I add a drop of dishwashing liquid to assist in binding up any grit and getting it to settle on the bottom of the tank. To move things along I'll also use near boiling water to fill the tank with the plastic basket supplied and run for about 32min.

I'll also use methylated spirits to start on the carbon and use walnut shell media for drying. It doesn't take much to remove the resizing lube but you might end up cleaning again if you trim and chamfer to ensure all the swarf chips are out.

G'day Tony,

I just fill the U/S cleaner tank with hot water, add 2 cap fulls of Birchwood Casey and a good squirt of dish washing liquid. The solution last for a couple of hundred cases before it looses its effectiveness. I put the cases in a wire basket and sit that in the solution with no beakers, though I can see the benefits to using beakers or plastic glasses.
I rinse them out under the tap afterwards. No neutralising is needed.

I couldn't honestly say whether cleaning the cases so well makes a difference to my score and wouldn't try to convince any one that it does. What I can say though is that its one of many variables that I can control and keep consistant. It doesn't take too much more time either. As previously mentioned, it makes inspecting cases easier and looks after reloading dies too.

Noosa Shooters keeps it. I can get some for next time I see you if you can't source it locally Tony.