A solution to a problem most of you will never have.....

[oldguitars]

Maybe I'm wrong but I suspect the issue I ran into with bullet storage may be a rare one. Most people have more common sense...something I've noted over the years.
So I'm re-organizing (read can't find anything under the clutter) my reloading bench and going through stuff I have and stuff I've forgotten I have. I've got way too many 150 gn .30 caliber bullets
and way too few 168's but that's not important, what I found is a bad way to store these things.

I had used a glass jar for a hundred or more 150 grain flat base bullets, basically M2 tips. I think I stored them 3 years ago or so?? I guess I had not cleaned out the jar properly or left a little moisture in it and found this when I was cleaning out the cabinets..

So I had some choices, just use them as is, ugly but probably not a real problem at 100 yards, or
clean them up. I felt bad about loading up such lousy looking rounds so decided to see what could be done to remove this copper oxidation. I tried a few things but found one that was pretty effective.

1. get a large bowl when you wife is not looking and some flower and vinegar. Mix up a paste, first putting some flower into the bowl and then enough vinegar to make a paste.. just about any thickness will do, then add a bit of salt. Seems to help. Stir it up well and dump in the bullets. Enough so that all of the are covered in the paste.


2. Stir a bit and leave things set. I found that with the amount of oxidation I had and hour to 1 1/2 hours was enough. The trick is just enough to remove the color but no more. Vinegar is incredibly acidic and will remove rust on tools if left long enough, then it starts to remove the metal under the rust so treat it with respect.

3. Once your are satisfied the oxidation is gone pick them out of the bowl with tweezers or pliers
and wash them off in a bowl of water, then drop them in a clean bowl of water to stop the acid reaction.


4. I set that bowl in the sink and let the water rinse things out really well and then proceeded to
the last step. I wanted to remove the slightly rough surface left by this process (not bad, just enough to feel a bit of a surface texture that was not ideal). I used Never Dull metal polish while
watching something really dull on TV that my wife wanted to watch so it helped pass the time while I cleaned these things up. Never Dull is amazing stuff and it restored the polish to the copper really well. I have found I'm really good at menial labor so this was right in my skill set.
The results were satisfactory and the lesson learned.


So probably not something most of you will ever need but I thought I'd post it here for those of us
who struggle with the basics in life and learn everything the hard way. If you find any errors or
problems with this process please post them, this idea seemed logical but maybe I'm crossing some kind of line here, let me know if you have a better solution, I'm all thumbs... ears.

Best
Bruce

 

[ReloaderFred]

Citric acid will do the same thing. I use it to remove tarnish and after annealing brass for swaging into bullets.

Hope this helps.

Fred

 

[hdwhit]

oldguitars wrote:
1. get a large bowl when you wife is not looking and some flower and vinegar. Mix up a paste, first putting some flower into the bowl and then enough vinegar to make a paste.. just about any thickness will do, then add a bit of salt.

I would strongly recommend against using salt. Yes, the salt does create an electro-chemical gradient that will speed up the acid's action, but it is very difficult to completely remove the salt residue which will greatly accelerate future corrosion. It can also transfer from the bullets to the case necks and accelerate the deterioration of the brass.

Also, since the active ingredient appears to be the acetic acid in the vinegar, what purpose does the flour serve?

 

[oldguitars]

Good point Fred, I've used it on brass as well, LemiShine is also really effective but for copper I found this oxidation to be really resistant to anything but
pretty caustic agents....thanks for the comment.

Bruce

 

[oldguitars]

The flour is probably not necessary, it's used mostly for surfaces that are hard to immerse in vinegar, I just thought it might help, probably a waste of flour.
As far as the salt, these bullets will be loaded and shot the same day, decreasing the amount of time the treated bullet has to affect the brass with any remaining salt that might be on the bullets. I can't imagine there would be much salt impregnation considering the amount of time each bullet received after a long rinse in water.....and the serious polishing they each received.
Also the concentration of salt I used in the solution is small, the retention of salt in the copper surface would depend on the porosity of the copper, and the exposure of the copper to the acid was brief enough and post treatment thorough enough to reduce my concerns about salt. But they will still be loaded and used promptly to mitigate the salt concerns....

 

[Schwing]

I am demonstrating my ignorance here but does it matter beyond aesthetics?

 

[oldguitars]

Probably not. As I mentioned, one option was to forget the look the copper oxide produced and just shoot them. Any normal person would have
probably gone that route. I thought this might be of interest but I realize this process is rooted in my compulsive nature and of little practical value....

 

[41 Mag]

I found a half dozen boxes of similar pulled milsurp bullets that my pop had stashed away years ago. Most still had the tar on them as well as a good greenish tint from being in a humid environment.

I threw them into my tumbler like I would a batch of brass and let it run one Saturday afternoon while I was pouring up some bullets. Might have been two to three hours but they shined up like new. With the added Nufinish I put in they also got a nice thin wax coating on them as well while they blended in the wet polish for me.

I did that years ago with a couple of boxes of Nosler Partitions that had gotten wet during one of our floods. What works well for a FMJ doesn't work so well with a soft lead point bullet.

 

[oldguitars]

This whole thing did make me wish I'd gone with a tumbler instead of an ultrasonic cleaner. I've just had a lot of experience with ultrasonic cleaners
at work so it made sense. I've been through a couple of the "stainless steel" Chinese made ones, they work for a while but will eventually rust. They do a good job but in this case it might have been better to use a tumber. May have to think about getting one.

 

[hdwhit]

oldguitars wrote:
...decreasing the amount of time the treated bullet has to affect the brass with any remaining salt that might be on the bullets.

Sodium Chloride is a highly polar molecule. It doesn't need to impregnate the copper jacket to cling to the jacket and it's adherence is not dependent upon exposure time. And once the salt is on the surface of the jacket it is available to transfer to the neck of the brass case. And from there, it can accelerate corrosion of the case or be driven into the bore of the rifle or the gas action if a semi-automatic.

 

[oldguitars]

Agreed that salt is a highly polar molecule, but water is also polar. It's slightly positive on one end and slightly negative on the other. It has the power
to break some of the ionic bonds in the sodium chloride. The polarity of the two is nearly mirrored. I think by letting the jackets soak in water for
some time and then producing a very highly polished surface, I'll take the chance that I'm not going to destroy any cases, but I certainly will check for
corrosion. With all the corrosion from the combustive process a rifle goes through each discharge, there are plenty of ways my rifle will see wear
and be affected by these violent chemical reactions. 75 or so of these cleaned up 150 gr. bullets will go through my barrel a few rounds at a time over
at least a year or two (I don't get a lot of range time). I think I can live with that risk. Better yet, take better care of my bullet storage in the first place....

 

[stoky]

Way cool headstamp from the Denver Ordinance Plant (Remington), back in the day, there oldguitars.

 

[oldguitars]

Great article! Have not seen that one. I try to get as many headstamps recorded as I can, way to many to make much of a dent but it's
a great little slice of history. Interesting how Lake City contracts just keep rolling in, many other plants are long gone.

 

[hdwhit]

Salt is far more polar than water.

Anyone can achieve the same results you achieved with salt and vinegar in two hours in four hours (or less) without salt.

My point is and has been that the salt is nothing more than an accelerant that is both unnecessary and potentially corrosive.

As you can read elsewhere on this forum, I have the unique experience of having been disabled by a neurological disease that took me suddenly away from my reloading bench for 21 years with brass and bullets in various phases of the reloading process! Imagine the corrosion I had to deal with when I returned to brass and bullets stored in a garage in Texas for those 21 years (700% LONGER time than your bullets were stored). Yet, I achieved results equivalent to yours using vinegar or Lemi-shine (i.e. citric acid) WITHOUT the need to add salt.

All it required was a little patience.

 

[hdwhit]

oldguitars wrote:
With all the corrosion from the combustive process a rifle goes through each discharge, there are plenty of ways my rifle will see wear
and be affected by these violent chemical reactions.

Modern components, due to their heat and speed of combustion may be EROSIVE of the barrel, but they are not CORROSIVE.

When you add salt, you are adding a CORROSIVE element to the cartridge that was not present before.

 

[HEAVY METAL 1]

You asked for feedback... "1. get a large bowl when your wife is not looking." Don't ever invite me to eat at your house!

 

[ArchAngelCD]

On the rare occasion I had bullets that looked that bad a I did was tumble them in walnut media for a few hours and they cleaned right up.

 

[Sal Mann]

Tumble them in a commercial tumbler