Saving old brass

[metricmonkeywrench]

Hopefully this does not turn into testimonials of unobtainium pins in a Mr Fusion cryogenic centrifuge, I am strictly small time working on less than 400 pieces of brass. 

I was given some old brass from a neighbor who has had it in a closet since his father passed. In the box was some  .38 wadcutter and 30-30 brass that i am hoping to salvage. The revolver brass was reported to be once fired and a couple boxes of the rifle brass had reloading tags from the 80's. Most of the brass was badly tarnished and a cycle thru the tumbler didn't do much. I ran them through a lemishine bath (not rich enough for a sonic yet) which cleaned off the majority of the tarnish on about half of the brass. On the remainder the cleaning left either brown stained fingerprints/splotches on the brass  or copper color blotches.. None of the brass is pitted or appears to be compromised so i believe it still may be usable ugly as it is.

Short of neverdul/brasso on each piece bringing back memories of boot camp setting on a footlocker,  does anyone have any thoughts on a way to batch clean the remainder of the staining? I can drop it back into the tumbler (Lyman treated corn) but doubt it may make much of a difference. 

 

[THREEDFLYER]

I just picked up the RCBS Ultrasonic cleaning devise which works amazingly. If anything will take off the crude, this thing would be your best option. Being a long time media tumbler guy.......I was skeptical but was pleasantly surprised!!

If you don't own one or want to invest in one, maybe one of your shooting buddies has one??

 

[feelinlucky]

It's not surprising that what you call a tumbler (Really a dry tumbler, the proper term is vibrator.) or a lemishine bath wouldn't touch serious tarnish. It's just not going to work for you.

IDK how well ultrasonic cleaning works, but there are other likely cheaper options.

Sorry to be an advocate for "unobtainium pins in a Mr Fusion cryogenic centrifuge," but a real wet tumbler with SS pins is the most cost effective way to really clean the brass.

 

[metricmonkeywrench]

Always got to be one (or two)

The lemishine a actually was pretty surprising and did a pretty good job for the most part on a lot of the brass. I should have taken a before picture.

Technically I have a Cabelas Model 400 Vibratory Case Tumbler...least that's what the label tells me.

 

[bigggbbruce]

I load tarnished brass and it works as good as shiny brass.

 

[BC38]

Think a good dose of Brasso added to your media in your vibratory case tumbler might do the trick?

BTW no need to turn this into a "Brasso contains ammonia" thread. That one has already been beat to death elsewhere - recently.

For heavily tarnished brass it seems like it might be worth a try....

 

[Collo Rosso]

Get it the best you can then load it, shoot it. Maybe it will look better the second time around!
Years ago I bought primed new R-P brass for 357 mag that evidently got damp as the cases had some heavy tarnish spots on them. Loaded and shot them as they were and worked fine. After tumble clean there were dark spots and stains still on the brass. I'm still reloading that brass.

 

[bigggbbruce]

BTW no need to turn this into a "Brasso contains ammonia" thread. That one has already been beat to death elsewhere - recently.

But it does and you shouldn't.

 

[jonnnyboy]

load, shoot, clean, load, shoot . . . until you either split it or lose it! No one's grading on the beauty of your brass, only on how well it shoots.

 

[max]

How long did you tumble it? Let it run for 24 hours or so and see how it looks.

 

[Alk8944]

Until 1970 or so, when Lyman introduced their vibratory case cleaner, (It was the first I saw.) no one worried much about polishing brass. But, as "max" said, let the polisher run longer. There is no such thing as a "cycle", run it as long as it takes to get the job done. I bought my Lyman 1200 about 1971-72, and it is still going with the original motor. It has run thousands of hours.

From over night to 24 hours may be necessary. Cases that don't come clean by this time get tossed!

Listen to bigggbbruce about Brasso! It, and any cleaner with ammonia in them will cause Nitrogen embrittlement of cartridge brass and lead to premature failure. Before I learned this the hard way I lost a few hundred .32 S&W Long cases which cracked in storage after being loaded! The stress of the neck tension caused the embrittled brass to crack without being fired.

 

[BC38]

Until 1970 or so, when Lyman introduced their vibratory case cleaner, (It was the first I saw.) no one worried much about polishing brass. But, as "max" said, let the polisher run longer. There is no such thing as a "cycle", run it as long as it takes to get the job done. I bought my Lyman 1200 about 1971-72, and it is still going with the original motor. It has run thousands of hours.

From over night to 24 hours may be necessary. Cases that don't come clean by this time get tossed!

Listen to bigggbbruce about Brasso! It, and any cleaner with ammonia in them will cause Nitrogen embrittlement of cartridge brass and lead to premature failure. Before I learned this the hard way I lost a few hundred .32 S&W Long cases which cracked in storage after being loaded! The stress of the neck tension caused the embrittled brass to crack without being fired.

Just curious, was that from ONE application of current formula Brasso - with only 1% ammonia?

 

[Alk8944]

Just curious, was that from ONE application of Brasso - with only 1% ammonia?

It was from hand-polishing with Brasso and thoroughly buffing them clean by hand ONE TIME! This was before I had the Lyman.

I don't see why you are trying to make such a big thing about this! There are other polishing additives such as Berry's, Flitz, Hornady, etc. that do just as good a job as Brasso, at about the same cost, without the risk. No one is out anything by avoiding Brasso, and stand nothing to gain by using it!

 

[BC38]

It was from hand-polishing with Brasso and thoroughly buffing them clean by hand ONE TIME! This was before I had the Lyman.

I don't see why you are trying to make such a big thing about this! There are other polishing additives such as Berry's, Flitz, Hornady, etc. that do just as good a job as Brasso, at about the same cost, without the risk. No one is out anything by avoiding Brasso, and stand nothing to gain by using it!

Dude! CHILL! I don't know why you get so bent so quickly and so often.

I was asking a frigging question OK? Nobody is "making a big thing about it" except you!

There has been a lot of conflicting info in a recent thread about this. Others have posted that they used Brasso in their tumblers repeatedly for YEARS with no issues. Apparently you had a different experience.

Some of us are trying to sort out the differing opinions on this subject. NEWS FLASH - yours isn't the only opinion that counts (contrary to what you seem to believe).

So calm down OK? If you can't handle anyone asking questions about your opinions, maybe you shouldn't be so quick to give them.

 

[hdwhit]

Alk8944 wrote:
Listen to bigggbbruce about Brasso! It, and any cleaner with ammonia in them will cause Nitrogen embrittlement of cartridge brass and lead to premature failure.

The ammonia concentration in Brasso is not sufficient to cause "season cracking". I have cases polished with Brasso in the 1980's that have been fired and reloaded many times since and they still have complete integrity and NONE have been lost to cracking.

 

[Mikeinkaty]

I just wet tumble my 357 brass in hot water with Limi Shine and liquid soap for a couple of hours. They come out clean inside and a medium shine outside. Primer pockets come out pretty clean; not perfectly clean but acceptable. They shoot just as good as new brass.

I had some range brass once (about 100 rounds) that was badly tarnished. After tumbling as above I put them on a tight fitting dowel rod and buffed them with my electric drill and 0000 steel wool. Now that got them as shiny as brand new. Haven't needed to do that since.

 

[hdwhit]

Short of neverdul/brasso on each piece bringing back memories of boot camp setting on a footlocker, does anyone have any thoughts on a way to batch clean the remainder of the staining?

Because of a neurological condition, I had to leave 500 rounds of brass in various stages of preparatation sit idle in ziploc bags for 20 years. When I recovered and returned to it, much of it was not only tarnished, but corroded.

Even corrosion that is confined to the surface layer of the case may be remediated. My approach was:

• Soak the brass in a weak acid solution; either Vinegar at the rate of 1/4 cup per quart of hot water or Lemishine at the rate of one teaspoon per quart of hot water, for about a half-hour agitating the mix every ten minutes.
• Rinse and dry the brass.
• Tumble in dry media overnight (i.e. at least 8 hours).
• Inspect the cases and return to service any cases that shown no cosmetic defect.
• For the remaining cases, cut paper towels or napkins into strips large enough to cover the whole length of the case.
• Saturate the strip in Vinegar.
• Wrap them tightly around the case and let sit overnight.
• The next morning, strip off the saturated paper and the cases will be pink and the corroded areas tan.
• Tumble in dry media overnight (i.e. at least 8 hours).
• Inspect the cases and return to service any cases that shown no cosmetic defect.
• For the remaining cases, polish thoroughly with a metal polish like Brasso. Ignore the people who tell you it will damage the brass. The concentration of ammonia in Brasso is much less than the concentration of ammonia that ammunition was exposed to when it was stored over a manure pit. Read about "season cracking" on Wikipedia and compare those conditions to a few minutes exposure to 1% ammonia in Brasso.
• I know there are people who have reported cracking or splits in Brasso polished brass, but without comprehensive records it is not possible to distinguish that from cracking that occurs as a result of work hardening.
• After polishing, discard any cases that still have any cosmetic defects as it must be considered that these are no longer confined to the surface of the brass.

 

[DumpStick]

When I started reloading, in the late 1980's, I had no vibratory cleaner. Come to think, I had no cleaning method of any kind, except to wipe off the brass with a rag prior to reloading, to keep the grit out of my dies.

Never had a problem. The brass got darker as the number of reloadings went up, but the rounds shot as well as any new. I would clean the primer pockets occasionally, more because I could do it with a primer pocket brush whilst sitting and watching the game on TV than for any other reason.

Do as you please with your free brass, but the cosmetics of reloaded rounds is just that - cosmetics.

 

[AveragEd]

I use a vibratory tumbler with a heavy dose of Flitz media polish added to it. Brass cases cleaned for eight hours or more come out requiring sunglasses - much shinier and smoother than even new brass.

I will however caution you with regard to older bottleneck rifle brass. I have three 20-round boxes of Remington 6mm REM cases that are once-fired factory loads from the 1970s or 1980s - they are in the old green Remington boxes. I also have some 100-round boxes of new late-production Remington 6mm REM cases and was recently going to use one of those older cases to replace one of the newer ones that was lost.

Just for grins, I decided to weigh the two cases to see if there could be any pressure problems with doing that and found the older cases weigh ten grains more than the newer ones. Could their thicker walls cause enough of an increase in pressure to be a concern? I didn't know but have relegated that old brass to my "collector-item" carton. You might want to check your older .30-30 WIN cases too.

Ed

 

[epj]

I find that walnut shell media works better than corn for cleaning. You can buy it at Walmart in the form of lizard litter. $6-7 for a good sized bag. I add a bit of Dillon rapid polish to the mix. I have cleaned some for 24 hours plus, without ill effect on the brass or the tumbler.