Harbor Freight Tumbler vs Any Rotary Tumbler

[The_Vigilante]

Harbor Freight sells an 18-lb tumbler advertised for both dry and liquid tumbling-they claim a vibratory tumbler to be superior to a rotary tumbler. I stopped in Harbor Freight on Sunday and found it on sale for $119 and decided to buy it on a whim-thought I might use it for small jobs rather than use my rotary tumbler. So I brougt it home, unpacked it and found it to be typical of Harbor Freight mdse if you know what I mean. Very large and heavy. Perusing the instructions I found that the manufacturer did not recommend using stainless steel media as it was too heavy and would shorten the life of the bowl-now they tell me! I didn't let this stop me from using it. Put in around 4-lbs of media, 8-lbs of water, Dawn, Lemishine, and about 4-5 lbs of 10mm and .41 magnum cases. Set it for about 1.75 hours. The results were a little disappointing-about 50% of the cases didn't look any different than before I tumbled them. The other 50% were just a little bit better-the primer pockets on most of them were not clean in comparison with a rotary tumbler. Thinking that I didn't leave them in long enough I took about 2-lbs of the bad ones and ran them again for 2.5 hours. They did come out a lot cleaner but not as clean and shiny like my rotary cleaner. Just wondering is there is another media I could use not as heavy as the stainless steel?

[TreblePlink]

I use that same HF vibratory bowl with corncob or walnut and regularly do large quantities of brass. I probably take it to the extreme because I like really clean brass - I run first with the "dirty" media with Dillon polish added, then run with clean corncob. As the clean media becomes dirty it gets shifted into the "dirty" media. Works well.

[gabeechman]

I also have the HF unit, and it works well to do large amounts of dry tumbling. I tinkered with running it wet, but like you, I was less than impressed with what it was doing. I think you're best to stick with rotary tumbling if you're wanting to run it wet.

[ebg3]

I bought one of these about a year and a half ago and couldn't be happier with it. I use corncob media with polish and it does a great job, much better than the dry tumblers I've used in the past. It is heavy, the motor is huge, but it holds a bunch of brass and media. I've never tried to wet tumble so I can't comment on that.

EG