Dry tumbling primed brass?

[highxj]

This doesn't sound like a great idea to me, not particularly worried about detonation but degrading the primer in some other way. A friend gave me about 700 primed 223 cases that have been sitting around in his garage apparently, and are quite filthy and seem to have remnants of case lube on them. I'm not keen on the idea of cleaning them individually with a rag.... Thoughts?

[Guy Neill]

An hour or two should not present problems.

[iflyskyhigh]

Just pulled and tumbled a large lot of primed 10MM (wasn’t happy with the load). Tumbled for hours while I did something else. Reloaded and shot hundreds of them this past week during load development. Zero issues. Might take a little more work to get all of the media out of a bottle neck case that’s sealed at one end, but they will be fine. Or just pop the primers out and start over. Done that before too. 

Edited September 20, 2021 by iflyskyhigh

[highxj]

I measured a few of these, and I'd have to bump the shoulder back a few thou on them anyway. And a good number of them have a bit of corrosion on them... I'm not short on brass or primers, so these will be going in the trash. I appreciate your comments though guys, good info for another time. 

[Absocold]

They aren't going to go off from a small home use vibratory tumbler but I'd be worried about debris in the primer causing ignition issues. I would load them then tumble.

 

If all you have is a rotary tumbler I would just deprime and start over.