Brass, Barrels, and Bureaucracy #2

The past week started off being hotter than the dickens. We reached 95+ degrees both Monday and Tuesday. The heat wave broke for us on Tuesday and when it broke it went in the complete opposite direction. Temperatures dropped into the high 60’s / low 70’s during the day and would dip down to the low 50’s in the evening.  A full week later and this must be the coolest week of July 4^th that I can remember.

Personally, I love the cool weather, I very much wish this was about the norm for summers. I really need to track down somewhere I can let off a few rounds. I have new loads to test and rifles to sight in. The weather is about as perfect as you can ask for now.

Website Updates

I have been working on cleaning up the website. We wanted to guide it back to focus on reloading, shooting, and gunsmithing. What didn’t fit in the that rubric I am working on moving to an archival page. Frequent visitors are going to see changes over the next few weeks

We also built a new page for short and sweet articles offering tips, tricks and advice for handloaders called “The Handloaders Corner”.  Many of the articles that Marc has been writing are posting there. I have a few in the work as well.

Speaking of articles, Marc’s new article went live, see below:

Trust But Verify

Time at the Bench

Tumbler Woes

My tumbler finally gave up the ghost. I mentioned before I could hear it starting to bog down. At the time I thought perhaps it was a bearing beginning to seize. Well in comical fashion I ran it for a bit to “charge” my media and it suddenly stalled.  It did not recover.

The comedy of it was not that the tumbler stalled, it was why I was charging the media. I hate listening to the tumbler “growl” so I picked up a programmable switch. I scheduled the time I wanted it to run from 2am to 4am. I figured that no one would be awake. When I put brass in the tumbler, I’d schedule the run on an app on my phone. This has worked pretty darn well. It keeps me from over tumbling, which breaks down the media without adding additional shine or cleanliness, and I don’t have to listen to it.

Well, the last couple of batches didn’t get as clean or as shiny as I would like. So, I figured the media was breaking down. It seemed kind of fast to me, the media was not that old. So, I started looking into what I could do to squeeze some extra life out of it. It was during this that the tumbler stalled out and I thought perhaps it was stalling out at night. I mentioned it to my wife, who is a night owl. Turns out, there is someone awake at 2am, and that someone was startled not once but twice, two days in a row, when the tumbler suddenly kicked on. Long story short, my media is fine…but the tumbler is not so I tore into it hoping it was an easy fix.

The bearing on the left, is good, the one on the right, not so much. The bearing isn’t seized but it doesn’t rotate freely as the shield has been beaten into the races. The issue is in the housing; a raised lip beat the snot out of the shield. Given that I have had this tumbler for 10+ years, it’s probably due to a new set of bearings. A package of ten was about $6 on Amazon.  Took me about an hour to get everything replaced and cleaned up.

I ran it for a bit, and it would drop RPM’s and then pick back up again. The next day it went back to the “Turn on, jerk then buzz”. At this point I believe the motor is just done. It is a shaded pole motor, and I could replace it. I bought the tumbler back when it was a kit that Cabela’s sold. It’s a Berry’s 400 with Cabela’s branding.  I might drop an email to Berry’s see if they can sell me a motor, (and a new lid mine is cracked to high heaven), and if not, I may look to upgrade. I do like the Thumler’s Tumblers but they seem to be out of stock everywhere and are price at the high end of my budget. We will see.

Close Quarters Reloading

It’s been several years since I have been able to get my microscope and camera all set up. That happened yesterday, so you’ll be seeing close up shots of all sorts of things.

The two pictures above were taken with the set up. The top case is the same in both photos, while the bottom case on the left-hand photo was deburred using a traditional case deburring tool, which I hate. The photo on the right is a case which was deburred with a counter sink blade shown in the photo below.

This blade is very sharp but works very well. Takes a very minimal effort to knock the burr off and leaves a nice edge break behind. For me the best part is there is no “Squeal” which I find grating. Below are images magnified by 300x to really show the edge of the case mouth.  The image on the left was done with the counter sink blade, while the image on the right was done with a traditional OD deburr tool.

Is there a practical difference? Not really. That more or less what I was curious about. I do like the ergonomics of the deburring tools used in more traditional machine shops, so I am going to continue to experiment with them. I have plenty of brass that needs a trim.

Industry and Legislative News

Hearing Protection Act (HPA) & Stop Harassing Owners of Rifles and Tools (SHORT) Act

This has been a whirlwind of news lately.  Far too much to cover in detail in this short section. I’ll give you the summary and if you want more I have gone into greater detail in this write-up.

HPA and SHORT Changes (June 30, 2025)

Bottomline, both the HPA and the SHORT Act remain in President’s Trumps Big Beautiful Bill as of 6/30/2025. However the wording has changed, it was determined that the Senate could not pass a bill that removed items from the National Firearms Act (NFA) by the Senate parliamentarian. However, it could zero out the $200 tax stamp for suppressors, SBR’s, SBS’s, and “Any other weapons” AOW from the NFA.

At this point it is completely speculative on how the ATF will handle the paperwork. Since no tax is being paid, you really can’t call it a “Tax” Stamp. A registration stamp? Regardless, the ATF could also change the Code of Federal Regulations and make it far easier to obtain NFA items not requiring a Tax Stamp. There is no congressional mandate for people to be fingerprinted, or a requirement for notification to a Chief Law Enforcement Officer.  This is all the machinations of a bureaucracy looking to make the process painful.  We can hope that with the current administration, proper pressure can be applied to the ATF to change the rules and lessen the burden.

I doubt we will see the NFA registry completely disappear through any action of congress. There are not 60 votes in the senate to get the legislation passed. However, with the tax removed, there is a fair constitutional argument that the vestigial remains of the NFA no longer are constitutional as it no longer falls under the congressional powers of taxation. That will take years to work its way through the courts and may become moot the next time the Democrats have both the Congress and the Presidency. You can rest assured that they will try to put that tax right back in place, and it’s not going to be $200

New Guns and Gear

Magpul UCS

Magpul recently announced the release of the UCS Stock. It is designed to attach rifles that have a 1913 Picatinny rail on the rear of the receiver. This could be an MP5 or G33, some AK variants, the popular CZ Scorpion, or an MSR rifle with a modified bolt that allows folding stocks. Of course it comes in the 3 most popular colors, black, tan, and olive green, my descriptions not theirs.  

I like most of what Magpull offers. I’ve had sights, stocks, magazines, grips and all sorts of stuff from them. I haven’t ever been disappointed. It’s reliable and tough.  I could see this going on that new SBR I might build if a certain tax get’s zeroed out.

That is all we have this week.

Jay & Marc

The Ballistic Assistant is a website dedicated to the art of handloading and shooting. We aim to share tips on reloading and shooting, inform others on what’s going on in the firearms community, and provide our opinion and thoughts on firearms related news and events. If you like what you read, we only ask that you subscribe and share with a friend or two.

If you have questions, comments, or ideas, we’d love to hear from you.

Jay – jay@theballisticassistant.com

Marc –Marc@theballisticassistant.com