Green/Blue color on cases and my question

[ballman6711]

I have about 500 .223 cases in a plastic jar that I don't recall where they came from. Had to be a friend that gave them to me, because the jar is something that I would never buy.

Anyway, I tumbled some of them, maybe half, and they look great. I went to tumble some more of them and saw the green/blue discoloration on one. I took a handful and looked at them, and about a quarter of them have this corrosion. I haven't tumbled the rest, and have the original batch separated from the rest of my .223 brass. I can't find any discoloration or corrosion on any of the tumbled cases.

My question is should I clean, load and shoot them, and then leave them lay, or should I just go ahead and scrap the whole lot. Or maybe go through and pick out the ones with corrosion and save the rest. My first concern is that if I pick out the "good" ones, there may be corrosion already started that I don't or can't see. My second concern is that if I leave them at the range, someone else might pick them up to load, and end up having a bad problem.

What do you all think?

chris

 

[Walkalong]

Pics would help, for now pick out all of the corroded one, they may be toast.

 

[ballman6711]

Hadn't thought of pics, a lot of other things on my mind at the moment.

I'll get a few pics and get them up shortly. Thanks.

chris

 

[ballman6711]

Well I took a few pics, and the camera makes them look a lot worse than they do with my old Mark 4 eyeball, but I'm colorblind so maybe that's part of it. Anyway, here's some pics:

This is the brass I cleaned (ziploc is gallon sized)

and some that I found in the tub

 

[ballman6711]

The last pic is a live round that I found in the tub. Origin unknown, and won't get shot but will get pulled down.

chris

 

[Soonerpesek]

Can you tell if the green discoloration is just in the neck......?...( where the airspace between the powder and projectile was )..........
Give 'em a quick swipe with a neck brush and see if that cleans them up.....?

 

[sparkyv]

They look fine to me. Just tumble clean that patina off, give 'em a good inspection and load 'em up!

 

[Walkalong]

That's looks like it's from powder going bad inside the case. Corrosion from Nitric Acid. Could be something else.

 

[film495]

for .223 brass I don't think I would bother with them

 

[ballman6711]

Here are a couple pics of one case I looked at this morning. I used a strong light and could really see the verdigris.



Sorry for the poor pics yesterday, my GF was having surgery and I don't think my head was quite in the game. And no, I didn't do any reloading.

Back to the brass, I suppose I could inspect every case with a strong light, but as I said earlier I have about 500 or so in this batch, plus the mystery round. I have some time to kill this morning so I may go ahead and pull that one down to see how everything looks.

chris

 

[lightman]

I keep a dental pick on my bench and would probably scratch on the corroded area to see if its eaten into the brass or not. If not I would tumble them and load them. 223 brass is fairly plentiful, if you have plenty you might not want to go to much trouble. I keep a bucket in the garage for junk brass and usually manage to fill it up about once a year to sell as scrap.