Our Grand Leader put out a request for help. He needed some primers. The problem is that a few years ago the feds changed the shipping rules on HAZMAT.
Primers qualify as HAZMAT. In order to ship HAZMAT you must take your package to a “HUB”, UPS or FedEx and do all the right paperwork. This paperwork includes your license to ship HAZMAT. What? You don’t have one of those?
That’s right, us normals can’t ship primers any more.
Anyway, I contacted our Grand Leader and after talking about what he needs I discovered that he was in need of some .45ACP to reload. Since primers are HAZMAT I couldn’t just ship him a $10 tray. Instead I have to put the primers in cases and ship the primed cases. Which are not considered HAZMAT.
Since I have some spare (sort of) .45 ACP I went to the wall of shame, I.e. Dirty cases, and pulled down some .45 ACP. It was ugly as sin.
So I decided to clean the brass again before priming and shipping. And I wanted SHINY brass, like new.
These and a bunch of other brass went into my ball mill for processing.
I use stainless steel pins as media. The first tumble is for 45 minutes with media and Dawn liquid dish soap. Be careful not to use to much Dawn as it does suds up.
About 5 to 10 minutes into the first tumble the drive belt broke. The replacement material arrived today. It is a little painful as you have to make your own belts from the material. It took 3 or 4 tries before I got it exactly right.
So 3 or 4 days after I put the brass into the water the tumble started and ran to completion.
The water in the drum is then poured out. I pour it into a bowl to catch any media or brass that might escape. Everything is rinsed two or three times and then just enough water to cover the brass and media is added.
One small squirt of Dawn and about a table spoon of LemiShine. Then the brass tumbles for another 45 minutes.
This is what went in:
This is what came out after priming:
Here are the cases ready for our Grand Leader:
All that remains is to pack them and ship them which will happen tomorrow.
I USED to send a 1 liter bottle of plating solution to an testing company to make sure it was correct for plating. Then one day I went to do it and was told “ wheres your hazmat shipper license??”… like I ship F’in rail cars full of shiite…. Throw THAT process out… welcome to gubmint “regulatory “ roadblocks…. Bare primer “bad” primed cases ? Ok! Go figure..