Quote:
Originally Posted by hdwhit
The stories of embrittlement of brass in an ammonia-rich environment is called "season cracking" and has to do with the storage of brass-cased ammuniton above stables in wet weather in India during the late-19th and early-20th Centuries.
If you consult the MSDS on Brasso, you will see that the concentrration of ammonia is not the same as a 19th Century British stable during a summer during the Raj, nor is the time of exposure in any way comparable (i.e. minutes versus months).
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Brasso contains somewhere from 5% to 10% Ammonia. In the tumbler it would be like .0001 of volume. The brass that was cracking was caused by stress in production by pounding it to the thickness needed for production for clock works and ammo cases. Brass today is rolled to thickness with much less stress. The stress today in ammo comes from firing guns, with or without Brasso. With all the handling it takes to make and use reloads not much ammonia would be left and reloads don’t have a long life expectance anyway. I am not saying any one should use Brasso. The hardening and cracking in reloads will happen with use. And all the people said “Who cares?”