Tarnished Brass & Tumbleing

FROGO207 said:

Agreed the media will provide the best cleaning. That is all I do anymore. Then I tumble finished ammo in corn cob and NuFinish for 15 minutes if I am going to store it. Just don't tumble hollow point ammo u less you want to clean media out of hollow points.

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I never considered tumbling live rounds. What storage time frame do you use to determine if you tumble or not.

jonas66 said:

Re: h2o2 and baking soda: ok, I went and looked that up-- apparently that mix creates a weak sodium hydroxide solution- lye. No wonder it eats tarnish.
Not something I would do regularly- just tried once or twice with really nasty brass.

The acid I was thinking of is peracetic acid, which is created with a mix of h2o2 and vinegar.
Seems that is fairly toxic and a bad idea.

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Yeah its not a great idea I use it to make lead acetate really fast.

For those that are wondering about tumbling loaded ammo there is a thread or two here that IIRC had RC Model and Walkalong tumble a batch of loaded rounds and check for propellant breakdown visually and measure velocity over a month long time period. No changes noted! Search for it if you need to read the whole thing. It is interesting. My criteria of long term storage is for 6 months or longer. Also for ammo that will be getting hollow points I tumble the brass in NuFinish before loading it.

I’ve wet tumbled many batches of brasses tarnished like OP’s. Using a Thumlers model b. An ounce of auto wash and wax together with a 1/4 TSP of Lemi-Shine. For extremely tarnished brass, tumble time will be 3-4 hours. The brass will have a jewelry-like shine...

FROGO207 said:

For those that are wondering about tumbling loaded ammo there is a thread or two here that IIRC had RC Model and Walkalong tumble a batch of loaded rounds and check for propellant breakdown visually and measure velocity over a month long time period. No changes noted! Search for it if you need to read the whole thing. It is interesting. My criteria of long term storage is for 6 months or longer. Also for ammo that will be getting hollow points I tumble the brass in NuFinish before loading it.

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I would not "tumble loaded ammunition" putting them in a vibratory polish for a few minutes no big deal. I can see someone filling a cement mixer and having an issue.

When I first started wet tumbling I did like you and played around with it some. One of the things that I did was that I fished a bunch of brass out of the burn barrel at the range and cleaned it up. It took 4 2hour sessions (8hours) to make it look new. I changed the water every 2 hours. I did this just to see the results. Since this brass had been in a fire I crushed all of those cases when I got through playing.

lightman said:

When I first started wet tumbling I did like you and played around with it some. One of the things that I did was that I fished a bunch of brass out of the burn barrel at the range and cleaned it up. It took 4 2hour sessions (8hours) to make it look new. I changed the water every 2 hours. I did this just to see the results. Since this brass had been in a fire I crushed all of those cases when I got through playing.

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Those case mouths had to look like a roll crimp at the end...

I picked up some 9mm spring range brass, well ground into mud and sand and tarnished. First I melted holes using a hot nail in the bottom of a washer fluid jug. Then I filled the jug about half full and used my electric pressure washer to clean out the cases. Gets the brass jumping around pretty good on there. Then dried in the sun on plywood and placed in the Lyman vibra-tumbler with walnut rouge overnight. Walnut with rouge is a PIA by the way, never doing THAT again. Brass was shiny though.

jonas66 said:

Re: h2o2 and baking soda: ok, I went and looked that up-- apparently that mix creates a weak sodium hydroxide solution- lye. No wonder it eats tarnish.
Not something I would do regularly- just tried once or twice with really nasty brass.

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Sodium Hydroxide is NOT toxic. It is corrosive... but not toxic. Toxic means poisonous, and it is not that.

Removing the tarnish will require chemical action. A mild recipe is one cup or so of white vinegar, a tablespoon of salt, a tablespoon of dishwashing liquid all mixed in a half gallon to gallon of HOT water.

Other chemical cleaners use to be on the market... Check out this stuff I have from 30 bbn years ago. Contains sodium chromate and sulfuric acid... and yes, it is designed for cleaning cartridge cases! A little strong for today's standards.

I guess I'm middle of the road in what I consider acceptable brass. I dry tumble in walnut with nothing else added for 3 hours which produces brass that looks good enough to suit me. But I am a little fussy about what I start with. While I do often pick up range brass I find on the ground I only take relatively fresh stuff that's on top of the grass. I don't pick up any that's been stomped into the mud nor would I bother with any that's real tarnished from long time exposure to the elements.

I've tumbled brass that was outside for over 5 years and looked completely black. What I do is first tumble it without pins in hot water with citric acid and dawn for 3 hours. After completely rinsing that I put it in again with steel pins, hot water, citric acid and dawn and run it another 3 hours. I clean it off and dry it up in my brass dryer and then resize/deprime them. At this point I keep a careful eye out for ringers. Any brass that's been outside for an extended period of time has a chance for the primer to corrode and degrade such that it falls apart when you deprime. Once I'm done resizing and depriming these cases I then put it back in the tumbler for another 2 hours with steel pins, hot water, citric acid and dawn. When this batch comes out it's almost as good as new. I get so much indoor range brass now that I don't bother with this anymore, but I've done over 15K outdoor cases that ended up coming out almost perfect.

AJC1 said:

Tumbler with pins makes jewelry, not even close with anything else.

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I had three dry tumblers for years, never was really happy with the outcome.
I got a tumbler and the SS pins, I had .45 ACP head stamped 1917 that I shot in the early 80's they looked almost black. I had them until 2014 when I tumbled them with the SS pins and lemishine/water/Armor All wash and wax. They came out looking new.

Last week most of these were black. They are slightly copper colored.

Highland Lofts said:

I consider these all garbage,

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I agree.
In nature, ammonia occurs in soil from bacterial processes. It is also produced when plants, animals and animal wastes decay. Brass laying out in the weather for long periods, not good.

Ammonia will cause stress crossion cracking in cartridge brass. Vinegar should be avoided also, unless its deactivated.

Tumble for 3 hrs in corncob media with 4 tablespoons of Hoppes No 9.

I use 1oz of 100% lemon juice and dawn in my FART. I believe the juice is more acidic than the powder and cleans better too. I always run the full three hour cycle also.

Bill

jonas66 said:

Might work better in a wet tumbler for a few minutes? I use a wooden spoon in a bucket.)

Only thing is it will leave your brass with the oddest alien looking flat yellow I've ever seen.

Dry it, let it cure for a day or two, then run whatever your normal process is-- mine is the NRA hot water, dish soap, vinegar and salt-- just for a few minutes, that will remove the ugly flat yellow look and get it back to normal.

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Generally I vibrate tumble brass for a few hours in ground corn cob. If kind of grungy I'll do the same in crushed walnut shells first, then the corn cob. For really discolored brass I'll use a quart of warm water (that's only to let it mix up quickly), a quarter cup of vinegar, and a squirt of Dawn dish soap. I leave out the salt. A couple hours in a rotary tumbler and the brass looks like new. Then dump it in a bucket and place it under a faucet, run cold water into the bucket, stir with a wooden paint stirring stick every few minutes, drain, and depending on the time of year, either place them on a cookie sheet on top of the wood stove for a few minutes, or outside in the sun to dry.

You do have to insure the brass is rinsed well and dried carefully, but it looks like brand new cases. The comment has been made that brass need not look "new" and it really doesn't. The real and only reason to clean brass is to get dirt and the carbon off it so your dies don't get scratched and damaged during re-sizing. However we are programmed to think brass MUST look brand new each and every time. I've cleaned tarnished cases, but not made them look new. They re-loaded and shot just as well as factory ammunition. I'm sometimes amazed at the extra effort and unusual steps some people take to make their re-loads look like factory new.

I also wonder what tumbling of any kind does to gun powder when in the case. Seems to me that powder wasn't designed to be vibrated or tossed about like that as that can cause the grains of powder to be broken up. I might be wrong, but regardless the claims of some (which is anecdotal evidence and nothing more), in 45 years of reloading I've never seen any recommendation in print in any reloading manual or factory literature that suggests tumbling loaded ammunition is a good idea. And if examined critically, the handling of boxed and loaded ammunition isn't the same as running it in a vibratory tumbler for any length of time. But people will do what people do.