Lonestar Tumbler Review

[nuclearheli 40]

In response to another thread about building a case tumbler I was asked what tumbler I was using as seen in the video below. I didn't want to hijack another thread so I started this one to give my objective review of the Lonestar Tumbler.

 

 

That's a "Lonestar Tumbler". You can find it at casetumbling.com. For anyone interested here is my unbiased review.  I bought this gadget, paid full price so I have no particular reason to favor this company or it's products.

 

The tumbler, as advertised, is capable of cleaning thousands of cases in very short periods of time. I have tumbled over 2,000 rounds of 40's and more 9's in 1 to 1.5 hours with results better than any other tumbler I have ever used. It is built like a tank, very high quality device. It is obviously professionally manufactured, far from a prototype. And it has performed exactly as their website and video's state.

 

That being said I have some other comments any potential buyer should know. First, if you are not tumbling thousands of cases of all different calibers this probably isn't the device for you. There are smaller tumber's, like the one made by cedhk.com that are probably better suited to the casual user. The best way to get your money's worth out of this tumbler is to load 20 pounds of media, and up to 20 pounds of cases into the tumbler for processing. For smaller processing it's a bit more difficult to manage. That's not really a criticism in my opinion because rather than handling a smaller tumbler "many" times to clean the same amount of brass, you can do one or two large loads. 

 

Yes, it is heavy to manipulate. I have found the large mouth container nice to work with because it is large and has a large opening, but it's heavy to work with when you have a full load of water, brass and media. I had to develop my technique to work with it easily. Now after I am finished tumbling I pour the entire contents into a 5 gallon bucket and work with the bucket rather than the container. 

 

I did modify my unit slightly to make it easier to work with. First, the bucket attaches to the rotating arm using bolts that go through the container. Therefore the inside bolt head seals against the bottom of the container with a rubber washer. I found that the washer's fail very quickly and it's not clear from the documentation how tight to make the bolts to maintain the washer integrity. I'm guessing this is a typical problem because they give you spare washers. I simply purchased a few washers from my local supplier (McMaster Carr) which are rubber washers permanently bound to stainless steel washers. Now I crank down on those bolts and have not had a single failure since.

 

The second modification was I purchased three stainless steel thumb screw nuts to replace the three nuts you must take on and off each time you load the tumbler. (Watch their videos for an example). Instead of using their stamped metal wrench I now just tighten up the thumbscrews, much easier.

 

So remember, if you are going to fill this thing to capacity you are going to wrestle with it, but you will be cleaning brass very infrequently making it much nicer to use for large cleaning jobs. The shorter tumbling time and high capacity is no false claim. I literally cleaned over 15,000 9mm cases in a single day while doing other things in my shop. 

 

Tumbling that much brass in a large container like that one is a bit noisy. And I believe I saw on one of their videos they add a small amount of wax to the solution. DO NOT do this. Just use the soap and that Lemon shit. The wax trick that I saw on YouTube makes a horrible mess out of your brass and rather than shining them, it puts a dull wax layer on them.