"POPPERS" I need the collective wisdom of the members

[GRUMPA]

I'm getting my brass from a supplier that's telling me that:

"Everything now days goes through poppers. No one can buy once fired military brass that has not been through a popper. They don't always state the fact but it is required." <Copied from E-Mail.


I know there's more than a few folks that buy from those .gov auctions and would like to hear from them on this matter as well as anyone with first hand knowledge of it...

Inquiring minds would like to know.

[Love Life]

I think he is full of bull. The auctions state if brass has been popper fired, and I have a buddy who is still gobbling up auctions.

[dbosman]

Your supplier's price is going up, eh?

If the auction didn't state the brass had been through a popper, and it had, the company with the contract to run the auctions would get sued. Heated brass is scrap brass. At ~2.00/lb. for scrap and $9.00/lb. for re-loadable, a dumper with 16,000 lbs. would make a substantial false declaration suit.

Here is the link, check the descriptions your self.
http://www.govliquidation.com/auction/search?cmd=results&words=brass&EqlExpression=%28%28P_Event_Id%3E=8000%29%20and%20 %28P_Event_Id%3C=8999%29%29

Ok, so this month's auction are for aluminum 40s. ;-)
Try again next month.

[Love Life]

Also, Grumpa, You can email the .gov auction people and they will tell you if it has been run through a popper. 16,000 of popper fired (unstated) hitting the market would cause an ungodly amount of lawsuits.

Another Vendor Sponsor here says the poppered fired brass is almost black with scaling. I'd find a better supplier, or if all brass is being popper fired, I need to increase my prices!!!

[41 mag fan]

Dumb question but whats popper fired mean?

[fecmech]

What is "popper fired"?

[GRUMPA]

A "POPPER" is something kinda like an 1800deg oven that some lots of brass get run through, kinda fuzzy on it myself but I think it's main purpose is to render live rounds useless by setting them off.

I'm sure others will chime in on it, just check back.

[Love Life]

Exactly Grumpa. It is a machine that the brass runs through and heats it to 1800 degrees. It's purpose is to render live primers or powder inert in cartridge cases.

[dbosman]

Popper furnace might be a better term.
It guarantees there are no live rounds, or powder residue, in a load of expended brass. In the 1.25 ton load my son and I are processing we found two live 9mm rounds. One military base runs all their brass through a popper. Others might.
The rumor mill periodically (for at least the last five years) proposes that this is a way to keep brass for reloading out of civilian hands.

http://www.google.com/patents/US7204182

An apparatus for destroying the volatility of propellant and primers associated with small arms ammunition which become inadvertently commingled with a supply of spent casings prior to material deformation and reclamation. The apparatus preferably includes three major sections or components and they are: a material infeed section, a heating section, and a material extraction section. The preferred infeed section includes a hopper placed in conjunction with an incline conveyor and a distally positioned dump chute. The heating section has a material receptacle in the form of a material receiving chute, a heater disposed adjacent to the interior of a longitudinal spirally internally veined rotating drum which communicates with the third section, which is a material extraction or expulsion section also in the form of an incline conveyor and a chute. The heater section includes a heater station which enables a supply of propane or LP gas to be connected thereto and ignited to fire heat the internal chamber of the rotating drum. The heating enables the propellant and primers associated with small arms ammunition casings or live rounds thereof which inadvertently become commingled with spent shell casings prior to the destruction and the material the reclamation process to be rendered inert.

[Jim]

Help me understand. Engineeringtoolbox.com has a list of melting points for various types of brass. 1800* F is higher than the melting points of the three types they have listed. If a 'popper' heats the brass to that temperature, why doesn't the brass melt?

Another question: How it it the brass we get shows the darkened area around the neck and shoulder where it's been anealed, but the rest of the case is still tempered? Seems like 1800* would aneal the entire case.

How does this thing work?

[GRUMPA]

Jim, It just "MAY" melt brass "IF" it were in there long enough. I have no way of knowing how long they keep it in the machine but right now I wish I knew. The darkened area you mention is from 'DIRECTED" heat that's meant to soften the brass to a point to prevent neck splits which is also called annealing. Annealing on it's own is beneficial to bottle necked cases and I do an awful lot of them for people.

And from what I've read it can and will render the case very useless and only good for scrap.

[km101]

If it is ALL being run through a "popper" we need to contact our congressmen and senators and try to get this stopped. They are ruining a valuable commodity and lowering the value by about 80% and spending good tax dollars to do it! Many commercial reloaders and other small businesses (like Grumpa) depend on this brass to operate. It is criminal to ruin it in this manner when it could be reused in it's original state.

And the "safety" aspect is BS. People have been buying milsurp brass for years without problems! This is just another way to hurt the gun owners and reloaders! This needs to be stopped!

[Jim]

..... The darkened area you mention is from 'DIRECTED" heat that's meant to soften the brass to a point to prevent neck splits which is also called annealing. Annealing on it's own is beneficial to bottle necked cases and I do an awful lot of them for people.

Very familiar with annealing, been doing it for years.

And from what I've read it can and will render the case very useless and only good for scrap.

That's what I was gettin' at.

[Phoenix]

He is full of bull. Brass that goes through the popper is discolored and mostly black. I have physically seen over 100 pallets of perfectly good brass that the purchase agreement specifically says it has not been popped. YOu can definately see the difference. The 20mm normally gets popped. Sometimes 50bmg too. My previous suppliers was getting a full truck load every 4-8 days. He wouldnt buy it if it was popped.

[Phoenix]

The furnace temp is 1800 degrees. the brass never reaches much beyond 900-1100 degrees. This still anneals brass almost instantly. Loading popped brass puts all the stress on the action because the entire case expands to fill the chamber. I am not saying you couldn't fire it ONCE! but if you have any kind of weakness in your action you will find out the hard/bad way. Popped brass is not considered safe to reload, and is considered scrap only (for liability reasons) If the brokers are selling popped brass as reloadable they wont be around long. They will be sued into oblivion in a matter of months. I have seen pallets of popped brass it is not pretty. Black/grey scaly not sure you could ever get it polished enough to pass off as usable brass. Any popped brass in the mix gets scrapped.

[Phoenix]

The supplier I used to buy from has a term contract to buy 2 million pounds of once fired untouched brass from DRMO. Not sure how he got that contract but I have seen it. And I have physically seen the brass. He ends up with one bin of scrap for every 2-3 truckloads of brass. Allot of the scrap is 22lr, 50BMG, 20mm.

[DukeInFlorida]

Perhaps, Matt, your supplier got a random batch which was, for some reason, popped.

Here's a current auction:
http://www.govliquidation.com/auction/view?auctionId=6479211&convertTo=USD

The brass in the pictures does NOT look black and scaly. And, there's no mention of it being popped. The ony popped brass I have ever seen from gov't auction lot was some blanks in the mix. But, they still managed to miss a few of those.

I know funds are tight, but maybe it's time to start buying your own auctions.

[GRUMPA]

Well let me tell you all this: It isn't black, and when I got them they were just dirty with no real way to tell by visual inspection. A pair of pliers works real well identifying which ones have been popped. Most have no necks, or damaged necks in some way but the end result is now I have a bunch of scrap I don't even want to do anything with and the hunt is on for replacements.

And like most everyone yes the almighty $ is scarce and it's becoming a faint memory as far as what it actually looks like.....

[Phoenix]

I should have taken pictures the last time we had this discussion. What I saw was very discolored. There is no way it cant be discolored at all, it is part of the annealing process for the brass to change color at least some. and popped brass is definitely annealed. The only thing I can think of is they have refined the process to prevent high levels of oxidation.

[frkelly74]

Maybe it has been tumbled in an attempt to deceive the buyer. I have found a couple of LC empties in my scrounging that are missing the primers and the pockets are very loose. They appear to have been reloaded in that there is no crimp in the primer pocket. Kind of scarey.

[Love Life]

I would say you got rooked and the guy cleaned the popped brass, or the guy he bought it from cleaned the popped brass. The brass I have cooked (playing with annealing for swaging) had a whole boat load of scaling on it so there was no doubt it had been cooked.

We have some shady people playing in the reloading market right now.

It could also very well be the guy who sold it is not quite smart.

We have many mouth breathers playing in the reloading market right now as well.