Zilla Desert Blend Substrate, Glass-Friendly Alternative to Sand, Made with 100% English Walnut Shells, Ideal for Desert Reptiles, 25 Quarts

Great Ammo Brass Cleaning Media with a Dash of NuFinish Car Wax
What can I say, great. I have tried other media and they made dust or left everything stained with red crap they impregnated in the media, I assume to make it polish well. These expensive ammo specific walnut media and corn cob media did not work as well as the Zilla with a squirt of NuFinish car wax. One expensive purpose made media was the perfect size for packing up the primer pocket of EVERY 9mm shell. I had to spend a good amount of time clearing the media out the pockets in EVERY SHELL. Zilla does not block anything. Another purpose made media for ammo polishing had some read stuff impregnated. The red crap got on everything, a mess and made dust…. No DUST with Zilla and a bit of NuFinish. I use a plastic cooking spoon with slots to fish the brass out and leave the media in the VibratorWhat can I say, great. I have tried other media and they made dust or left everything stained with red crap they impregnated in the media, I assume to make it polish well. These expensive ammo specific walnut media and corn cob media did not work as well as the Zilla with a squirt of NuFinish car wax. One expensive purpose made media was the perfect size for packing up the primer pocket of EVERY 9mm shell. I had to spend a good amount of time clearing the media out the pockets in EVERY SHELL. Zilla does not block anything. Another purpose made media for ammo polishing had some read stuff impregnated. The red crap got on everything, a mess and made dust…. No DUST with Zilla and a bit of NuFinish. I use a plastic cooking spoon with slots to fish the brass out and leave the media in the vibrator.The Zilla crushed walnut with NuFinish is perfect. No dust, no plugging up of the case primer pocket or port and does a great job making it shinny. For me cleaning and polishing I will use this. I like the KISS method, Keep It Stupid Simple. I primarily use ULTRA SONIC cleaning, and the polish is to just finish it off. I thought I’d never get a polisher, but I finally broke down and bought one. Strictly speaking you don’t need it because ultrasonic is great. However the shells are a little dull and have some uneven splotches. I bought a Frankford Arsenals Vibrator at the same time I bought the Zilla walnut on Amazon, so free shipping. I run it for about 2 hours on about 100-150 9mm cases. They come out shiny. Enough said, last a long time. Cheers

Excellent product
I bought this as a cheaper replacement for sand, and it’s a wonderful product. In fact, for my purposes, it works out much better than sand. I could buy sand at a home improvement shop and get much more for less money, but I just don’t need 50 pounds of sand, especially considering that sand probably would be damp, need drying out before use, be too large to keep in my home, and when dry, it would probably produce considerable dust as well. This product, intended for use with small reptilian pets, is already clean, dry and dust free, so that’s a major plus over a large quantity of sand. The amount of product is perfect as well — any hobbyist (I bought mine to use as ‘earth’ on bases for wargaming miniatures and other diorama and terrain projects) can keep this amount near their work area (unlike a 50+ pound bag of sand), and unless I’m mistaken, it’s the same thing some companies sell as ‘railroad ballast,’ although this was cheaper by far. It’s sold as five dry quarts and I’d guess its weight at about ten pounds, and it comes in a plastic bag about 1 foot tall, 7 inches wide and 4 or 5 inches thick (depending on how it’s settled). It’s pretty much an exact match for the Woodland Scenics medium ballast product (maybe right in between their fine and medium sizes), but the WS 32oz shaker jars at Amazon sell for ablout twice the price of this, and this bag contains as much product as four or five of those. Five times as much for half the price, and the same thing to boot? I am definitely a happy customer! I’m sure it’s perfect for our little wriggling and burrowing pets too, since that’s its intended purpose, but it’s also perfect for my hobbying. After all, it’s the same thing I’ve used for years with great success, and I couldn’t be happier to get so much at such a great price (six bucks and change, which is about the same as the price as the quite small bags of brown ballast from WS, much less the large shaker bottles). For wargaming hobbyists needing something like sand for basing miniatures, this is a huge bargain. This one bag probably would cover an entire 4′ x 8′ sheet of plywood (the size of the wargaming tabletops on which I enter battle) with considerable leftovers, or if used just for bases, almost certainly last me the rest of my hobbying life. 😉 As is the case with the normal brown ballast from WS, white glue and acrylic paints (as well as washes from Vallejo, Citadel and Army Painter) work great, although some may like the color exactly as is. I’m really glad to have discovered this, and I highly recommend it for tabletop wargaming and military miniatures hobbyists.

Works Ok as Brass Tumbling Media
Ok, so I use it for an off-purpose. I use it as tumbling media for polishing my pistol and rifle brass. It works just ok on its own. If you actually want to fully clean and polish your brass using this as media in a vibratory tumbler, then you will need to add some Lucas Oil Gun Metal Polish. 2 tablespoonfuls of this stuff added to this media will give you nice and clean brass. It will not clean out the primer holes and is just ok on the inside of the brass. But the outside is impressively clean after a 2 to 5 hours of tumbling. This crushed English walnut material is inexpensive and does a great job.

Works for my cross stitch
I use it for stabilizing the base of stuffed embroidery/ cross stitch.

good value and good quality

Nice size pieces, easy to paint, picks up colour well. Cost efficient and no dust, evenly ground. Will work very well for building scenery. A good choice for track ballast. I would recommend this for hobbyists. Nice material to work with.

Je préfère ça au sable !!!