cleaning cases with vinegar and hydrogen peroxide?

[luna butte]

ive been soaking my cases in water n vinegar or water n citric acid but they always seem to get an orange or pink hue to them after a few minutes of soaking.

so i started googling vinegar and "other random common household liquids" to clean brass with and after stumbling upon a concoction of vinegar and hydrogen peroxide i got a few cool sounding hits so i tried it on about 10 .270 cases and they came out really clean after only 5 minutes.

however after somemore research via the internet i am beginning to doubt whether or not the now cleaned cases are going to have a shortened case life.

have any of you guys ever heard one way or another about using this mix?

[firefly1957]

I think you can find a sticky or a thread on this, The reason for the "PINK" color is the acid leeches the zinc out of the brass and it weakens the case. I do not know if it will hurt the case as this is at the surface some people think it causes deeper damage with the brass structure.

I have used muratic acid to make 22 cases look that copper when I use them as bullet jackets and it seems they work the same as without removing zinc from surface.

[C.F.Plinker]

When I first got started I used a mixture of Vinegar, Salt, and Dawn in a dishpan of water. Let the grass soak about 15 minutes, swish it around, rinse a couple of times, and put out on newspaper to dry for a couple of days. I never saw any discoloration of the brass using this formula.

[popper]

Ammonia will turn them pink, I suppose adding the HP will do the same. Vinegar is OK.

[Freischütz]

Vinegar and hydrogen peroxide is effective for cleaning leading from barrels. It will be interesting to see its effect on cartridge cases.

[luna butte]

Vinegar and hydrogen peroxide is effective for cleaning leading from barrels. It will be interesting to see its effect on cartridge cases.

yes it does. and i got the idea from a homebrew website where they were saying that the hydrogen peroxide and vinegar mixture would "delead" any brass fittings used in the brewing of beer. though they also warned not to let the brass sit for to long in the mixture or the copper contained in the brass would also be dissolved or attacked in some way. i was careful to remove my cases after only 5 minutes and they appear to not have been harmed but i don't know whether or not i shortened there useful life.

[MtGun44]

Bad news, don't do it. Use citric acid solution, it reverses the corrosion, does NOT remove
brass. Buy Lemishine in grocery near dishwasher soaps.

Bill

[Alan in Vermont]

Will the Lemishine take off the really heavy, almost brown, patina from old cases? I've got a bunch of 6.5 Rem Mag brass that is many years old and is a uniform brown. Probably doesn't hurt anything but it looks bad. Many hours in the vibratory tumbler left the case a very shiny brown but didn't seem to have any appreciable affect on removing any of it. Twisting them in my hands with a tuft of steel wool works but is very time consuming.

[BeeMan]

Hydrogen peroxide and acid mixtures are used as an etching agent to remove copper when making printed circuit boards. I'm not sure what it would do to the zinc in the brass alloy, but etching away un-oxidized copper can't be good for case strength or life.

Citric acid is a known entity and works well.

One more thing - if memory serves correctly, dissolving copper or lead with acid / peroxide mixtures creates soluble metal compounds. Dispose of the waste carefully as soluble heavy metal salts are highly toxic. Soluble heavy metals are an entirely different level of risk from handling metallic lead as part of our hobby. It's best to react the waste and convert to an insoluble form.

[BeeMan]

Citric acid thread here:

http://www.castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=83572

[MtGun44]

Lemishine reverses the extremely heavy brown corrosion layer. It will leave a pinkish hue
because the corrrosion process preferentially removes the zinc, leaving a copper oxide
dark layer. When the citric acid reverses the oxidation process, you have a copper rich
layer - which is pinkish. It will polish off in first good tumbling. Unless there is a deep
hole, this surface tarnish type of corrosion is not harmful.

Bill