I have a cement mixer which I put shell castings an add some sand and run it for come out all nice and cleaned
A Cement mixer works great!!
I had an issue with a local bank, about 5 years ago. It was a Friday afternoon, and they counted $849.20 in clad coins of nickels, dimes, and quarters that I'd found metal detecting over a 4-1/2 year period. Now, to completely understand this nightmare, all the coins had been soaked and shaken in a dishwashing liquid soap and water mixture, inside a clean plastic instant coffee jar. Then rinsed and let air dry. After drying they weren't completely clean, and over the years, inside the heavy Zip-Loc baggies, a fine dust could be seen on the baggie... The fine dust would get on the sensor of the bank's new electronic coin counter machine they had purchased and set in the center of the bank for its customers to use, and would stop the machine....
To solve the problem the clad silver coins were counted on the bank's old manual coin counter, but the head
Cashier refused to take them...REFUSED To Take Them!!! .... Why? It wasn't because they were lightly dusty!!! Her quote: "...Because they're DARK, they're NULL COINS, and
MY Customers don't want DARK coins...." and she shoved the canvas bag of coin back across the "Customer Service Counter"....
With that amount of money, a Coin Star machine would have cost me almost $90.....it was out of the question. So, I went to Home Depot, and bought 50lbs of sandbox sand, some hail screen, and a large Rubber Maid plastic tub. The dry sand in the cement mixer did start to clean, but the iron in the sand caused the coins to turn yellowish. I added water, but it didn't make much difference. Then, I added a half-cup of "CHEER" laundry powder and let the mixer run for 2 hours. The soap was the magic and kept the dirt and iron off the coins. I dumped the coins out of the mixer and rinsed them with clear water as they laid on the hail screen supported by the plastic tub. Then, I spread them out on kingsize sheets to let them dry over night.... Just don't let the coins touch each other as they dry or the contact surfaces will turn dark again. Pulling all the sheet corners together, the dry coins easily emptied into a big Orange Home Depot 5-gallon bucket. The following Monday morning, I took the "SHINEY" coins back to the bank. When finished counting on the lobby's electronic coin counter, one of the bank tellers took the paper reciept and asked, "Do you want to deposit this?" I took my paper cash with me....
Add a bit of water and Cheer with your sand on the next batch of empty brass shells in your cement mixer, I'll bet it will cut the cleaning time in half.
Bill