Brass processing suggestion

[Seismic Sam]

The idea I am about to mention isn't mine, but somebody on this board posted that if you take your tumbled cases and boil them in a pot with a capful of lemon juice, it improves the shine and brightness of the case.

I have tried this and founds that it works as advertised. Due to our early Spring and an increasing membership at OGC, a lot of weekend shooters are coming out and most of these people don't reload. In the last couple of weeks, I have gone out to the range on a Monday or Tuesday, and have found a mind boggling amount of brass on the ground. Seeing as Obammy is still President, and the dear old GOP has fielded a stable of sick cats who do nothing but fight with each other rather than ripping Obammy a new one, the chances for replacing the anti-Semitic Kenyan Socialist and Muslim lover with somebody who is proud to be an American aren't looking to good. So I continue to pick brass for calibers I reload.

So I come back home with a big bunch of 9mm brass (mostly recently fired, but not all of it...) and wash it in the sink with MY collander (noobs: Using your wife's cooking stuff to wash shells is about a smart as loking down the barrel of your gun to see if it's loaded!!) to get all the sand and dirt and crud out of the cases. I then put the brass in a pot, cover it at least an inch deep with water, add two healthy squirts of lemon juice from one of the big bottles you get in the grocery store, and boil the cases for 5 - 10 minutes while occasinaly stirring the brass around with a SS slotted spoon. I then rinse the brass in water, and leave it in a pan in my oven which has a gas pilot light. When you come back the next morning, the brass is all dry.

The change in appearance is fairly spectacular, and I'm planning to do this from now on with all my range pick-ups before I even sort the stuff. The one area where this is superior to tumbling is in the inside of the case, and while the outside can be nice and shiny after tumbling, the cleaning of the inside of the case is not as good because you don't get much abrasive action from a few grams of walnut shells rolling around the inside of a 9mm case. With some of my tumbled cases, I have boiled them in water and lemon juice and have found a visible improvement on the inside of the case.

So here's a picture of this weekend's 9mm brass (had to make 2 trips to pick it all up!) and as you can see, it looks pretty much load-ready as is with no tumbling. On the inside of some cases you see they're completely clean, and some still have a little crud around the primer hole, but in general it's pretty good.

This method has several advantages, with the first being you get almost all of the crud out of your case as soon as you bring it home, so you're getting rid of the maximum amout of crud at the beginning of your reloading process. In addition, you may not have to spend as much time using your tumbler and getting it dirty with unwashed cases. (Dryer sheets help clean up dust and dirt in a tumbler like magic!)

So here's a couple of pictures of my range pickings, which have only been washed and boiled with water and lemon juice. Looks pretty good, doesn't it, including the inside of the cases...

[yuppiejr]

Interesting, do you mind sharing what the water source was (soft/hard tap water, distilled etc..)?

I have found a shortcut in the drying process after doing an ultrasonic cleaning is to simply drop the wet brass into a CLEAN media separator and turn the crank to spin out most of the water before I lay it out on terrycloth covered pans under a conveniently located furnace vent in the same room to finish drying. Inspiration came from watching my wife dry lettuce in some contraption she picked up in the "Made for TV" endcap at Target a while back. I use the Dillon small media separator ($42 at Gunstop) but I'm sure the same concept would work with the RCBS, Franklin Arsenel, etc.. models. I'd been using a colendar type media separator (a shallow bucket with holes in it that fits in the top 4" of a 5 gallon bucket) to do the same thing but found the 360 degree agitation and centrifigal forces in the media separator got more water out of the cases, particularly the flash holes.

Thanks for sharing this info, going to try it next time I clean a batch of brass from the range.

[recoilguy]

Interesting concept. I may give it a try. I like making shinny bullets!

RCG

[870TC]

Lemon Juice = Citric Acid, sometimes called sour salt. It's in a whole bunch of foods and drinks we consume, alot of people use Kool-Aid or Lemonade powder. It works very well.

Here's what I have done:
For really stained/dirty brass: Couple tablespoons of citric acid (powder/granules) in hot water (tap is fine) with the brass for a couple minutes , agitate by hand, then rinse and dry, then tumble as normal.
If you can't find Citric acid/Sour salt then use a cup or two of any kind of Vinegar with a hand full of table salt mixed in, agitate by hand, rinse and dry, then tumble as normal.

[MKearn]

I saw a video with Larry Potterfield and he recommended using white vinegar. So, that is what I use. I soak my casings in white vinegar for 20 minutes. Drain off the liquid and filter it using coffee filters back into the bottle. Works like a charm.

[Seismic Sam]

My water supply is from a well, and the water is softened.

[Dutch]

I've used vinegar for blackpowder 45lc cases. It works well, but it sizzled and I don't know if there's possible effects on case life.

[Kskybroom]

...Fruit Fresh::::

[Snakeman721]

Um......not to get too off topic here, but isn't any brass that hits the ground at OGC and NOT claimed by the owner become the property of OGC? Isn't that what the yellow boxes on the walls are for...to put fired brass in?? Collecting other peoples brass kinda sounds like stealing, if you ask me.

[plblark]

You heard wrong. If its on the ground and you collect it it's yours. Otherwise the ranges would be covered in brass. People are supposed to pick their own and put it in the boxes if they don't reload. Many don't. During public hours the ROs sweep brass and put it in the boxes.

[Snakeman721]

You heard wrong. If its on the ground and you collect it it's yours. Otherwise the ranges would be covered in brass. People are supposed to pick their own and put it in the boxes if they don't reload. Many don't. During public hours the ROs sweep brass and put it in the boxes.

Oh, ok. I just thought you should put the brass in the boxes as OGC is always looking for ways to make more money to avoid passing additional operating costs on to the membership.

[MisterOblivious]

"Brass Bright Dips" are awesome if you don't mind tracking down an industrial chemical designed to do this sort of thing.

[BemidjiDweller]

What a coincidence, I just did the same thing to all my 9mm brass this afternoon. Mine didn't get as shiny as yours, probably combination of hard cabin water and a shorter time boiling. Did you have your stove top on high or medium boil?

Please excuse those misspellings and jumbled words, I'm posting from my phone and it is not working out so well.

Edit: Fixed the mistakes and deleted the double post, sorry bout that.

[FJ540]

I like my brass like my women, dirty. (ok, so I just don't care about how the brass looks)



Just loaded them the second time today. I washed the sizing lube off, and that was it.

I'll clean them when I need to anneal the throats, but only because I want to see the color change.

[EJSG19]

Don't forget, some form of cleaning is mainly for a safety issue.

Clean brass is easier to detect damage to the case, therefore preventing damage to your face.