Load this brass or not?

I think the main problem is why it’s discolored. A little surface corrosion is no problem but I’ve had some with powder degradation that were heavily pitted on the inside. That’s bad. It’s the in between ones that are tough because it always seems to happen to hard to find brass like 257 Roberts and never to .223 or .308.

Looks compromised to me, and I've got plenty brass, so NO to the reload.

I'd load it for plinking.

Toss. If laying outside for awhile-

Ammonia occurs naturally in the environment. ... But most ammonia is produced by bacteria in water and soil as an end product of plant and animal waste decomposition.

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Ammonia weakens brass.

Range brass of unknow history is not to my liking.

Yes, load it. It's been out long enough to corrode a bit, but other than needing a bit of extra lube, they've never given me a problem.

How does the primer pocket and interior look? What cartridges are they?

If the inside looks at all questionable, then scrap it. Also, if a high pressure round I would let it go unless I had no other option and thought the zombies were coming next week. Good insides and set for a plinking load, I would load it. Couple of variables there to consider.

How did you tumble that? I've wet tumbled with steel pins and citric acid way worse looking cases than that and they come out looking almost like new.

Same here, I wet tumbled brass 90% of the guys would of thrown away and it came out looking like new.

The pink color indicates to me that copper/zinc is leaching from the brass and thus making it weaker. If I was not hard up for brass, I would not use it. JMTCs.

i would toss it: https://bulletin.accurateshooter.co...t-store-brass-and-ammo-near-ammonia-solvents/

luck,

murf

Toss them...!

buck460XVR said:

The pink color indicates to me that copper/zinc is leaching from the brass and thus making it weaker. If I was not hard up for brass, I would not use it. JMTCs.

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Yep, chemical degradation; pink indicates copper/zinc loss. The main concern for me would be how much has the "leaching" weakened the brass? If I had plenty of the same caliber brass I might toss it, or I'd probably tumble dry with auto wax and store it. Never know when/if it may be needed in the future.

Toss it.
Not worth the risk.

Some of that looks like finger and palm prints...

Im not expert enough to say yay or nay on the brass though

If you don't use it send it to me and I will reload it and give a report on it until it craps out.
If I don't have a gun in that caliber I will buy a gun that shoots it.

When in doubt, toss it out. Brass is plentiful and I'm limited to only two eyes and 10 fingers.

These are what bad brass looks like. These had powder that had degraded somewhere between 1935 when they were loaded and 2012 when I pulled the bullets and disposed of the bad powder. I cut them open (but don't have pictures) and they were badly pitted and fragile on the inside.

Yours look like surface corrosion mostly, and I have some like that I picked up somewhere. When I cut one open there wasn't any clear evidence of internal corrosion. I'd guess they came in contact with something (maybe a cleaning solvent rag?). Reading some reloading manuals and my great grandfather's notes from the 1930s, they didn't use tumblers and just washed brass in diluted ammonia when it was too dirty to just wipe dry.

Then again, they also had to worry about mercuric primed ammo (Peters was the usual culprit). Those still got reloaded but with light loads over pistol powder.

The case in my picture went into my "art project" brass bag, or get used for bullet seating dummy rounds. The ones that look like yours are in a "maybe I'll use them in light loads someday" bag.

I would toss those, the problem looks deeper than just on the surface since you already polished them a lot. They have truely started to degrade.

I would put them away for last chance if nothing else practice rounds. As stated that is zinc leaching out and making things brittle. You could take the worse one and section it to see if the corrosion is all the way through. If so they are scrap.

theotherwaldo said:

Toss it.
Not worth the risk.

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+1000.

It always amazes me... we talk, particularly here in the reloading forum... about safety, high pressure issues, smart powder choices, and not blowing stuff up, but we will risk something like a case blowout to save a few bucks on questionable brass, or recovering questionable powder from mystery meat cartridge pulls.

If that was .38SPC brass... sure, run it til it quits.... but in a high power rifle cartridge? No way. I HAVE had case heads blow out on me... and wound up scrapping 2000 7.62mm cases because of it. Having a magazine blow it's guts out onto your feet, and having that gassy breeze blow through your hair is not something I look forward to.