Brass as old as me and just as tarnished. Cleaning question

I have some 38 spl brass with the headstamp the year I was born (29 years ago :roll: )
It's completely tarnished and the pitted corroded green pieces have been tossed out.

I did the hot wash with dish soap and a good rinse, then placed the brass in a white vinegar and salt bath for 2 days.
The vinegar solution turned brassy green and it took several washings to get clear rinse water.
I dried them in the oven for 15 mins at the warm setting ~170 degrees, then a day over the heating duct.
Now I'm going to tumble them in corn cob to see if they will brighten up completely

Ever worked with brass this old and tarnished?

What do you think of my cleaning methods so far?
Should I be worried about the 170' bake softening the brass??

Other can give you advice on case cleaning methods. [smilie=1:

That's not hot enough to cause a problem, nor to cure one if the brass has age-brittled. Load up a couple with a warmish load and see if you get any neck splits. If you do, anneal the rest of them. If you don't then you're good-to-go.

Had an old WWII -06 case come my way for show & tell with a spiral split through the neck and shoulder. Never seen the like of it before. If I get fired cases from that era and they are still intact, annealing generally salvages most of them, and they are older than your .38's. I don't know if the case wall thickness has any bearing on how much or how quickly they get brittle over time.

And if it isn't just a cabin fever project and you are really needing .38spec cases I've got several thousand extra ones that could find a new home. I don't have a target revolver any more or a levergun to go through them like I used to but I still have a huge stash of cases from when I lived near the club in Madison and the brass bucket would overflow with .38's and 9mm's. We are moving this summer and I would like to reduce superfluous inventory a bit first. That goes for everyone else, too. I have a lot of rifle brass collected that I don't have rifles for, too. (.243, .30-30, 7-08, .270 in dozens to hundreds, assorted oddballs rifle and handgun in small amounts, etc. Ask. It needs good homes.

I can't say enough good things about those Lee 6cav TL handgun moulds if you're going to start casting again. You are welcome to borrow and play with whatever moulds you are interested in. I've also got a good stash of smelted WW ingots. My apprentice wanted to learn how to do it but doesn't seem very interested in cranking out a tone of them. Oh well. He does like processing brass and loading ammo though, so I shouldn't complain. Come up and do an afternoon casting marathon and you can chose some moulds.

Some of this 38 brass was primed, so I thought I'd see if they were still good, even after the above mentioned soaking treatment.
About 20% still popped, amazing!!

yeah, I do need 38 brass.
This was a salvage operation from my scrap bucket out of need.

I'm looking to making up some low power cast loads to teach my FIL double action shooting.
What would be the harm if the necks split upon firing? I'd get 1 use right?

It's been so long I don't remember what I have for moulds. I did mothball them all with a coating of break-free.

An afternoon casting session would do me good to get back into it.

Do you need any brass? I have acquired some loaded 7.62X25 Tokarev and 375 H+H, if you're running low :wink:

If they're going to, they will often split after carbide sizing, as you are seating bullets, it suddenly gets easier to seat.

You know my "schedule". You've been here so you can find it. A few days notice is enough. Take your chances with the pet hair, my daughter is an indifferent vacuumer at best, but since I can't run one with my back the way it is I don't bitch. She gets the shoveling done, the firewood in, the garden worked, bakes pies at least once a week, and she stays away from drugs and drinking and either honor roll or high honor roll the last five quarters. She graduates in the spring. If she lets the vacuuming slide a bit, I can live with that. Dust bunnies aren't carnivorous. I don't get on her case about it unless we have company coming.

I will put together a care package of .38 brass and get it off to you. I've got a 5shot carry revolver and a .357 Contender. I don't need half a ton of .38spec cases. I save just the ones stamped +P for carry loads (jacketed or castGC, either or both HP's, they get loaded and stashed) and the .357mag cases for the big boomer with the 180gr .35 Ranch Dogs. Got more than enough of both now, so that still leaves a large amount (about a gallon, 300 at least, probably more, enough to half fill one of the flat medium flat rate boxes) of normal .38spec headstamp mixed commercial brass and nickel presumably once fired range brass I won't use and don't need. Inspect each carefully, it was sorted by a teen by headstamp only, not the case's condition. I tossed anything I didn't like the look of before stashing them, but I didn't really inspect them. I do that only when I am choosing among them which to load. I figure if you don't have to put a really heavy crimp for a hot load every time, you ought to get fifteen or twenty loadings out of them. I have to go down to the Post Orifice and get a flat rate box for them - I just have small ones, this will need a medium anyway.

What rifle brass do you use? There'll be room in the box for some.

PM me your current mailing address, not sure how old the rolodex card is.

I really should borrow one of the family's big S&W pre-lock firing-pin-in-the-goddam-hammer-where-it-belongs target revolvers from my brother's loving care and have some fun in this frigid weather at 50 and 75 yard gongs with it. I'll bring a few hundred rounds and after that I bet my shooting buddy will just have to have an excuse to get one of those Ruger GP revolvers he's been ruminating about for much longer than is healthy in my opinion and just needs to shit or get off the pot and buy the goddam thing before the prices go up again. Either 4" or 6" would do, he's a seasoned pistol shooter, does well at distance with my 10" Contender barrels too. He's never had a revolver of his own before, though he has shot mine and a number of others. I have to get him over to help cast for an afternoon too. When I can cast regularly, we go through thousands of .45ACP's and 9mm's in pistols and carbines every month.

I have three 6cav TL moulds, one for 158grFN .38 revolver bullets, one for 120gr RN 9mm's, and a new one for 230grRN .45's. A man could cast up quite a few of any or all of them in an afternoon, once he got each of the moulds figured out and adjusted pace for each accordingly to keep it within its optimal operating temperature range. You picked it up really quick at Paul's with 2cav moulds. If you're going to shoot a lot of them in a revolver or a levergun, you're going to need a lot of bullets. If you haven't used a 6cav yet it's time to give it a try.

Target and small game loads don't need gas checks and TL bullets don't need sizing, only lubing, so you only have to wait for the lube to dry before you can load them, and adding 2-3% mineral spirits to the Liquid Alox and blending it thoroughly before adding the mix to the bullets will accelerate its drying time considerably while still coating all the bullets properly with the lube. Well ventilated, they can dry overnight in the right conditions, certainly in two days unless the air is very warm and humid as opposed to as much as a week and sometimes more with the undiluted product right out of the bottle. Wait until you see the drying rack system I use, too.

I'm always scooping up odd lots of reloadable brass in 8mm Mauser, any 6.5 (Swede, Mannlicher, Jap or Carcano), 7.5 Swiss, 7.7Jap, 7.5Mauser. But I have more common and uncommon stuff in batches large to small to give to or exchange with those who can use it for what I can use. Ask away, you never know, there are too many to list.

Hi guys. One of the major reasons brass gets brittle is contaminants in the air. If they are sealed up in an air-tight container they last a lot longer. Kinda' like what acid rain does to stuff outdoors.

Roger that KD. Ammonia especially. With older brass you never know how or where it's been stored since whenever before and after it was fired. You develop a good eye for potential problems when you handle potential rifle brass to check for Berdan primers. Corrosion on the neck or shoulder and the rifle case goes into the recycling bucket immediately. Straightwall handgun case necks are most likely to split in belling or bullet seating, and if nickel may not show any obvious weakness on the outside of the case until it is overstressed whereupon it cracks and splits instead of deforming and rebounding around the die or the bullet.

Revolver cases that fire repeated max or near max loads requiring heavy crimp to prevent "auto-pull" from the recoil in a big wheel gun are a lot more prone to splitting after only a few loadings than are older and less abused cases.

You look over any range brass pretty well before you consider loading it, most of it is obviously only once fired and it is clean. But some of it is too dirty or too scratched and it looks like it's maybe been loaded more than once or smells like it was stored in someone's underwear if they shoot black powder and you toss it automatically. Like in the kitchen: when in doubt, throw it out.

These cases all looked pretty good during and after sorting when I put them into airtight storage. I gave a gallon ziplock full of them to another friend who is getting into loading a few months ago, almost a gallon jug full of them left for Clayt. I will have the kids count them into bags of 100 and we'll know how many cases are in the jug out of curiosity (it will help me to better estimate how many of what that I've still got), plus it's better to ship fired brass in small sealed bags inside larger sealed bags in case the cardboard package is breeched. (And then I'll still have another lifetime supply of it somewhere I haven't discovered yet in the rest of my brass stash. Under this, behind that. The box I've been tripping over. You know that.)

Vers, I'll send you an email with address.

You can't. My emails were all hacked and I cannot access them. The leak is internal. Message me either through here or FB.

FB, no way! I stay FAR AWAY from FB