cleaning Sierra bullets that were soaked in something!!

[gadabout]

The box was so slimy I had to wash my hands repeatedly while handling these. They were a nice soft tip jacketed boat tail 140g I want to say 6.5 Grendel or something like that. The bullets were covered with a grey film like on brass that has been left outside for a year or so.  I wanted to get a rotary tumbler but thought what the hey I would try my vibrator to see if it would do anything. Low and behold it did a very good job for about half so far. The cleaned bullets look brand new, and I think another few hours and I will have them all done and like new. Boy who a thought!! Craig

[sqlbullet]

Good recovery.  This is how I am told factory makers clean post loading.

[gadabout]

All done except for about 20 or so that still have crud on them but I scraped it off with my thumbnail and so steel wool or the like will finish them nicely!! I have returned them already to my friend the owner of the bullets. He got a bunch of this stuff from a friend getting out of the reloading game. Why can't I find a guy like that   Craig

[Redneck]

I used to hang out with a couple of guys that shot at a lot of rifle bench rest matches. They both said to use lacquer thinner to clean bullets, they said you'll be amazed at the amount of crud that comes off even factory 1st line bullets. I did what they suggested, and WOW were they right. I took two metal cans, one that fit inside the other and drilled many holes in the bottom of the smaller can. Put a couple of inches of lacquer thinner in the bigger can, put the bullets in the smaller can and dunk it the larger and shake/slosh it around for a few minutes then take it out and spread the bullets on a paper towel to dry. When I did this the bottom of the larger can had a lot of tiny shiney shards of jacket material and tiny pieces of some kind of black crud on the bottom of the can.