Of course, this is the most expensive cleaning method (up front cost)

$200 Good rock tumbler

$40 5lbs Steel media/balls/stick OR Southern Shine Media (Stainless steel bits & pieces) for ~$27 5lbs

$20 Lemi Shine/Dawn/Shinebright

However, the steel pins and balls last pretty much forever, and the tumbler is very reliable electric motor.  So you don't need to buy more corn/walnut, or whatever media all the time.  So in the long run, this is probably cheaper.

But this website isn't about what is cheapest really, its about what is the best.  We think this is the best.

However, for the money Southern Shine Media is the "best" value we have found and it does the job with very similar to same result as the steel pins, in perhaps slightly less tumbler time.  We learned this after tumbling about 10 batches with and without it.  It cleans slightly faster we think, but its hard to say precisely how much because each brass is different level of dirty somewhat.

Here is where to find Southern Shine Media:

https://www.facebook.com/southernshinetumblers

rachelgale54@gmail.com

Tell her Natoreloading sent you.  We paid full price for our 5 lbs, it was not free, and Southern Shine Media does not pay us or give us anything, we have no relationship with them. Its simply the best value we found for tumbler media.

That is 2x fired Lapua Brass..cleaned using the perfect method:

The used, cleaned brass is brighter and has more consistent surface texture than brand new..

Brand new brass is the bottom piece only..you can see the annealing line..

The lighting is different than without, but as you can see from deep inside the cases of the 9MM, its spotless.  The top piece of brass was shot more than 5x, and had quite a few nicks in it.  It cleaned up better than I thought.

https://www.facebook.com/southernshinetumblers/

look at that Nickel plated case in middle left side..you can see ITS CRACKED at the top...a hair split from shooting 1400+ FPS, 124 Grain 9MM Major test trials. 

Is it possible to clean brass brighter and cleaner than this?  It is possible, but we have to say it would be incredibly diminishing returns.  This has to be as near close to as good as it gets for the money and time invested. 

After you tumble your brass, you put it in seperator...and then you lay out your brass in a small bucket and dry it using a combination of paper towel and a hair dryer.  It takes about 5 minutes only. 

Again, lighting is brighter.  The shine is not brighter than the steel pins + ball bearings alone, its about the same.  Its hard to tell which one is cleaner or brighter, its very similar.  Perhaps, under magnifying glass, the Southern Shine Media pieces came out with a "smoother" look, while the steel pins and ball bearings alone came out with a slight "bead blasted shine, or ball peened look thats really shiny"

https://www.facebook.com/southernshinetumblers/

Lighting here is much brighter...but the brass is not.  You can buy this at Dollar Tree for $1.  We used 20-1 Water solution.  Of course, we added in teaspoon of lemishine too.

It cleaned the brass just fine, but its not as shiny as the above 2 recipes for cleaning.

We used the same mix of Southern Shine Media, 2.0 MM Ball bearings, and Stainless Steel pins.   

The Dawn/ShineBright/Lemishine combo so far is unbeatable in how shiny and polished look the brass has.  But we just wanted to show LA Totally Awesome cleaner since its so inexpensive and cleans pretty much everything except leather and a few other things...