Saw this on arfcom but just got around to trying it. Hot water and some dishwasher stuff called "Lemishine". I got a small bottle (yell with a green lid). Its crystals. I used a small plastic bowl (1/2 qt. sized) filled with warm tap water and a couple of shakes of Lemishine. I grabbed a piece of 30.06 brass to stir up the crystals and then dumped a bunch of really tarnished .45 acp and .223 brass into it. Then I noticed the 30.06 brass was "two toned". The top half was shiny almost like new brass (just from stirring the water and lemishine). The bottom half was still sort of "old brass" colored.
My camera doesn't work worth beans but you can try it or read about it at arfcom.
Oh, you let it soak for awhile (time based of brass condition before and during), then dry out the brass.
I will say the badly tarnished brass had turned from the sort of "old pebble" color (range pickups) to a sort of pinkish/red color within a few minutes. I left it in there to see if longer time would in turn remove the pinkish red color. If not I'll run the brass through the polisher to see if that will remove the the new color.
On the 30.06 brass I used for a stirrer, it usually takes 5 or 6 hours in the polisher to shine the brass up like that 15 or 20 second stirring job did. My brass cleaning my become a 2 step process. A few minutes in the lemishine and water to remove tarnish and shine if up and a couple of hours in the polisher to remove dirt and burned on crud (if more time in the lemishine doesn't get rid of that stuff, too.
Thread is here (I am assuming this is the one):
Lemishine Question
(http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=6&f=42&t=303774)
And the pics are there. Looks interesting.
I'm game-
Where does one find this magical brass cleaning stuff?
WalMart was where I bought mine. Its in a plastic bottle about the size of 16 ounce bottle of water. Colors are yellow and green. Like I said, just stirring if up with an empty 30.06 case (about 5 or 10 seconds) gave me a two-tone case. One end tarnished the other looked like a new commercial hunting round case.
The arfcom guys recommend dumping the brass out, shaking it around to get as much water off/out of it as possible and then putting in on a cake pan in the oven at 200 degrees till its dry. So far I just shook mine out, set them on the table on the deck in the sun for a couple hours and then tossed them in the brass cleaner to let the walnut media soak up any last drops of water. That may not be the best way, but......
I'm going to do a batch of 30.06 brass tomorrow.
Gave this a try and my brass looks better than using the Casey's bottle. It was also not as rough on my hands when handling. I would do a dip, rinse, dry, tuble for 3 hrs with Caseys. The new process only takes me 1/2 hr to 1 hr.