Saving old brass

[feelinlucky]

Lemishine is predominately citric acid. Acid is corrosive. Acid also exposes bare metal.

If you clean brass with Lemishine or citric acid, you have to be sure to rinse every trace of it off your brass, and keep it in an inert enviroment, or coat it with some kind of preservative. If you don't, your nice clean shiny brass will almost immediately begin to tarnish or corrode again.

 

[SMSgt]

Clean the dirt and grit off the cases and load them. Forget about the gloss.

 

[LoboGunLeather]

Over the years I have acquired both a tumbler and a vibratory, and still use both for various needs.

In years past (when money was tight) I developed an inexpensive but effective method for cleaning tarnished brass:

1. Cut wooden dowel rods of a diameter larger than case mouth opening.
2. Make a lengthwise cut at one end about 1" long using a fine toothed wood saw.
3. Turn the cut end of the dowel in a drill while applying coarse sandpaper to reduce the dowel rod diameter to a point where it can be flexed at the cut end to enter the case mouth, thus retaining it by friction grip.
4. While turning the case on the dowel at low speed use 0000 steel wool to clean the cartridge case. Takes about 30 seconds per case.

Have used this with WW2 brass (.30-06 and .45 ACP), restoring it to nice clean condition. Have used that same brass through multiple loadings (the .30-06 is usually retired after 6 full-charge loads; the .45 ACP remains in use even now after 20-plus loads).

Older brass (1960 or earlier) will usually have a history of mercuric primers, so the cases should be thoroughly cleaned prior to reuse. I use hot water with dish soap, soaking overnight followed by two hot water rinses to remove corrosive residue.

 

[Houlton]

Try Lizard Litter in your tumbler. $3 at the pet store. Just don't use it on bottle neck cases.

 

[m657]

re: " usable ugly"
therein describes a not uncommon finding with a small percentage of my own brass.

Being motivated both by genuine interest in understanding the difference between 'cosmetically challenged' and 'fatally flawed' as well as simple economic advantage, in my ongoing brass reuse/reload/recovery project, I have come to an operational decision that works well for my purposes.

1) any obvious structural flaws in my brass-prep inspection process, is deposited in my 'junk brass' container headed to the metal recycling facility;

2) most 'cosmetic flaws' are just that, and far more typically are well defined as "usable ugly";

3) Virtually ALL (say 90%+) of actual stress cracks in (handgun) brass develop either in the resizing/bullet seating phase, with the rest (10% maybe) during actual firing in the gun.

Whatever initiates the actual physical crack is not readily observable in
my inspection process. Given 2 otherwise identical cases, one suddenly demonstrates a linear crack while the other 999 in the batch don't. Those cases stepped on while on the ground are by experience, doomed sooner than later so they go in the junk brass can anyway.

Once I quit over flaring the case mouth, by far the most cracks seem to originate mid-body.

I estimate my brass loss to such as *cracks* at less than 1% per week over the last several decades.

I've had a few brass corroded enough I didn't process them.
Nickle brass seems considerably more prone to cracks than brass brass.

My handgun brass is far more often subjected to the lower half of the reload recipe than the upper half.

Hope this interests other reloaders.

Cheers for the New Year.

 

[mikld]

Wow, case cleaning is prolly the single most talked about but least important aspect of case prep/reloading. Simple metal working; if a particular tumbling media isn't working, try a more aggressive media. Crushed walnut shells are a more aggressive cleaning media than corn cob litter and regular tumbling media is available that will clean nearly every tarnish or discoloration of brass 5 lbs. Medium Ceramic Abrasive Polishing Tumbler Media 5 lb. Rust-Cutting Resin Abrasive Tumbler Media The resin media is easier on the brass and both will leave an even, clean matt finish. You can also mix the resin or ceramic with corn cob and get clean and shiny brass...

BTW don't mention that Brasso is not a good idea to clean brass cartridges...

 

[radio11]

Shoot them when nobody's looking. Reload. Repeat.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[jag312]

If I was concerned about shiny brass, I wouldn't be loading black powder cartridges for my .45-70 Trapdoors. Shiny brass, ugly brass; thay all work the same.

 

[metricmonkeywrench]

Guess I should have done this up front... here's what the stages looked like. The 9mm is pretty much what all of the brass looked like across the board. The next three were after tumbling the whole lot and I sorted by head stamp. The third group is after the lemishine bath and where I have my issue the third piece shows the fingerprint up by the case mouth. The last set are the ones that cleaned up well and went back into the tumbler and are now ready to load.

 

[Vigo]

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

Me too. I shoot it until it develops a problem (usually a mouth split many loadings in) and recycle once that happens. Revolver brass can last a long time.

I shoot a lot of black powder as well, so tarnished brass is something that doesn't bother me.

 

[ctangus]

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.

You sure got that right!

 

[Fishslayer]

Toss a capful of Simoniz Nu Finish in your media, let it run a half hour before adding brass, add brass. Run for a few hours.

The red blotches probably means you left the brass in the Lemi Shine a tad too long. The citric acid that cleans so well also can leach either the tin or the copper out. I can never remember which one.

 

[bigedp51]

metricmonkeywrench

A Lee case trimmer base and spinning the case with a drill using 0000 steel wool will scrub the cases bright and clean.

Its winter and too cold to shoot in many places, stay inside and use the method above until your fingers get sore and start to bleed.

After your fingers heal and your able type then order a stainless steel media wet tumbler.

 

[metricmonkeywrench]

Sigh… My question was quite simple (I thought) and as usual around here despite pleas otherwise this post has dissolved into an opinion piece that diverted away from the original question (bleeding fingers and brasso…didn't anticipate that coming) and reached an inevitable end.

Thank you to those that responded with applicable beneficial pointers and suggestions addressing my original question. As suggested along the way I re-ran the brass through the tumbler for about 6hrs and the brass finished off really well, so I didn't have to go as far as the steel wool route. There are still a few spots and some tarnishing left on a couple of the pieces, but overall I believe it is all still serviceable.

To the others- Those continued opinions on what equipment I must have were promptly ignored, I will not apologize or make any excuses for not immediately jumping up and dropping $200+ for a piece of equipment that I do not need to clean up a handfull of brass.

I tried to state tongue in cheek at the get go, I will not dispute the abilities of SS media (or sonic) but running a cost benefit analysis due to my low shooting volume (~1200 a year pistol) and single stage press I am able to spend more time to produce reloads that meet MY standards of quality and consistency and will instead put my $200 towards bullets, primers and powder. My entire working brass inventory including 9mm is probably less than 5000 pieces and only 2000 or so are loaded at any given time. My lowly tumbler (vibrator or whatever) and corn cob media have suited me for several years now and will probably continue to do so into the immediate future until such time that it is necessary to make a change.

 

[Targets Guy]

As a non-loader I find this very interesting. I may stay a non-loader but what I heard was as long as the brass is clean it doesn't need to shine.

That was encouraging.

 

[Qc Pistolero]

As long as there is no grit inbedded in the brass,you won't scratch the gun's chamber(s).You should see some of the brass I shoot in my guns.It is not the shining that makes the case efficient;it is its elasticity when it enpands and then shrinks back down to near original dimensions that makes it work.After all,the shine is only beautifull but serves no other purpose.Like I keep telling my wife:I might not be the handsomest guy around but I'm darn efficient!
Qc

 

[NJM15]

Just to look pretty?

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. 

I tumble my brass they come out nice and shiny nicer than new im the only one that see them usually but I reloaded some after resizing and prep no tumble and they shot just fine, of course I examined them , flash hole etc.

 

[franzas]

Brass is highly resistant to atmospheric corrosion. There is a reason it was widely used on ships before stainless steel came along.

I've loaded and shot plenty of black tarnished brass I've found in the field I shoot at, with no adverse effects. The reason being pretty much the only way to "hurt" brass is by work hardening, i.e. shooting and resizing, not corrosion or tarnishing.

Load it and don't look back.