Old brass score! Concerns?

[Patrick L]

My brother recently gave me a large box of old brass. Apparently his late father-in-law (I never met the man; he passed suddenly when my brother and his wife were just dating) was a reloader. There is a smattering of obscure calibers like .32 Win Spl, .32-40, .38-40, in very small amounts. The good part is that there is just shy of 500 pieces of .30-06 brass, about 150 - 175 commercial, and about 325 Match FA military, dates ranging from 57 - 61. Most of this brass is packed in original 20 round cardboard boxes, sorted by headstamp. A nice bonus is that some of these commercial boxes are in nice shape. They look like the Winchester-Western, Remington, and Super X boxes from the 50s and 60s that I have seen pictures of. When I get a chance I will post pictures of the boxes, they are that pretty.

My question is, I would like to use the .30-06 brass for light cast bullet loads. Are there any concerns (brittleness, corrosive primer residue, etc.) that I need to be aware of? I thought I read somewhere that brass gets brittle with age. Is this safe to use?

[MT Gianni]

Brass work hardens with age. I marked my 308 brass for low pressure cast loads with a dot of pink nail-polish. I think they should be OK as is but I would keep them identifiable and watch them.

[lwknight]

I can't help with identifying the primers. As fas as the brass, since you have no idea how much it has been used.
My suggestion is:
Visually inspect each one for any cracks and measure the OAL to trim as needed.
Also the case mouths and shoulders should be annealed, since you don't know about them.
You should be just fine.

[Tazman1602]

Hey Patrick,

Let me know when you get pics of the boxes themselves, there *may* be some monetary value.

Art


My brother recently gave me a large box of old brass. Apparently his late father-in-law (I never met the man; he passed suddenly when my brother and his wife were just dating) was a reloader. There is a smattering of obscure calibers like .32 Win Spl, .32-40, .38-40, in very small amounts. The good part is that there is just shy of 500 pieces of .30-06 brass, about 150 - 175 commercial, and about 325 Match FA military, dates ranging from 57 - 61. Most of this brass is packed in original 20 round cardboard boxes, sorted by headstamp. A nice bonus is that some of these commercial boxes are in nice shape. They look like the Winchester-Western, Remington, and Super X boxes from the 50s and 60s that I have seen pictures of. When I get a chance I will post pictures of the boxes, they are that pretty.

My question is, I would like to use the .30-06 brass for light cast bullet loads. Are there any concerns (brittleness, corrosive primer residue, etc.) that I need to be aware of? I thought I read somewhere that brass gets brittle with age. Is this safe to use?

[Patrick L]

How does one anneal brass? IIRC, don't you stand the case up in about an inch of water, heat the neck with a propane torch till she glows, and then let it cool? I've never had the need to do this, so I've never paid much attention when people discussed it.

Tazman, I'm sure they might be worth something to a collector, but I wouldn't be looking to sell them. They're too cool to part with!

[JSnover]

How does one anneal brass? IIRC, don't you stand the case up in about an inch of water, heat the neck with a propane torch till she glows, and then let it cool?

Knock the case over, so the water quenches it.

[bob208]

the in the water works. but the way i do it when you have your lead hot. hold the first half of the case in the lead till the lead does not stick. then drop them into a bucket of water. make sure they are deprimed.

[Patrick L]

Knock them over? Really?

I thought when you heated something and quenched it it hardens it, and letting it cool slowly keeps it soft. I'm not arguing, its just the way I always thought that worked, at least with steel.

[Patrick L]

Sanpped a few pics. Here are the commercial boxes. There are more, I just put as many as I could fit in the shot
http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb157/patrickl_01/Misc/GunStuff004.jpg

Here's a shot of some ends
http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb157/patrickl_01/Misc/GunStuff005.jpg

And here's a shot of some of the military boxes
http://i204.photobucket.com/albums/bb157/patrickl_01/Misc/GunStuff003.jpg

As I said earlier, NONE OF THIS IS FOR SALE. I just was inquiring about whether I could still load brass this old.

[NavyEngineer]

The FA military brass wouldn't have been loaded with corrosive primers - the military stopped using corrosive primers a few years before that (1952, if I recall correctly).

[woody1]

Patrick, nice old boxes. You'll have no problem reloading these cases UNLESS they're wore out already from being reloaded. I doubt it based on the condition of the boxes but you're on your own there. I am still loading cases of that vintage having started when they made boxes like those.
As far as quickly quenching the brass, yes that's what you do. You HAVE to keep the heat from traveling too low on the case and making it unsafe (too soft) to contain the pressure. The heat softens it. Brass workhardens, it does NOT harden by quickly quenching it. Regards, Woody



Knock them over? Really?

I thought when you heated something and quenched it it hardens it, and letting it cool slowly keeps it soft. I'm not arguing, its just the way I always thought that worked, at least with steel.

[kywoodwrkr]

the in the water works. but the way i do it when you have your lead hot. hold the first half of the case in the lead till the lead does not stick. then drop them into a bucket of water. make sure they are deprimed.

Look at this phase diagram for brass and go up at the 30% mark on the lower scale.
http://www.copper.org/publications/newsletters/innovations/2000/01/images/phase_diagram.jpg
You'll see a recrystallization zone. Approx 525-600 C degress or 977-1112.
Your lead will run about maybe lets say 375 C 707 F. This puts you above the stress relieveing zone.
Read up on brass recrystallization versus stress relief to get a good handle on this process.
http://www2.bakersfieldcollege.edu/mrozell/documents/Engr%20B45/brass%20hardness.pdf
Water cooling will not harden the brass like it would steel.
Water has no actual benefit except to keep base from becoming a heat sink and from burning your heat sensors(fingers8-)).
You can see from the diagram that some stress relief occurs starting at about 480 F.
FWIW
Dave

[GrizzLeeBear]

Water cooling will not harden the brass like it would steel.
Water has no actual benefit except to keep base from becoming a heat sink and from burning your heat sensors(fingers8-)).

Exactly. Its the heat that does the annealing, the water "quenching" is just to stop the flow of heat so it does not soften the head of the case. You only want to anneal the neck/shoulder area of the case.
I anneal brass with a propone torch in a darkened room. I set the torch on the floor next to a small bucket of water. Hold the case in a gloved hand and put the neck in the flame, I aim for the neck/shoulder junction, and spin the case in your fingers. After 15 - 20 seconds, when the case just starts to show redish color drop it in the bucket. You do NOT want to get the case "glowing", its too hot then. Thats why you do it in a darkened room, so you can see when the case starts to change color.

[MtGun44]

"Work hardening" is from working, like resizing, anything that deforms the metal
permanently as opposed to elastically where it would spring back to it's original
shape and dimensions. Elastic deformation doesn't harden the brass, but plastic
(permanent) deformation does 'work' the brass and harden it. All metals work
harden, some to an astonishing degree. Do not ever drill a 300 series stainless steel
with a dull drill bit or you will regret the lesson in work hardening.

We had an excellent demonstration of this in materials lab. We had a huge powered
roller which was designed to progressively thin down metal by running it between polished
geared rollers. We took a bar of about 1" thick by 1" wide by 5" long brass and annealed
it to maximum softness (or minimum hardness) and tested it on a Brinell hardness indenter.

We then rolled it about 0.040 thinner and checked the hardness again - quite a bit harder,
I forget the value (this was in 1974 !). Reset the rollers about 0.040 tighter and roll it again,
you could hear the machine 'grunt' this time as the harder brass was thinned more. Again,
it was harder on the Brinell indenter. One more cycle thru the machine, harder still.

On the 4th cycle the bar came out of the roller in chunks, fractured because it became so hard
that it was brittle and couldn't deform smoothly anymore. A most impressive lab demonstration,
and it served it's learning purpose because I remember it very well and what
it meant, now these 35 years later.

I don't know if brass age hardens over time, but it is not the correct terminology to call it 'work hardening'.

I know it is a small point, but we have many readers who are learing and this is a pretty
elite group of folks so we need to be technically accurate whenever we can.

Bill

[Oldtimer]

I also, as GRIZZ says, use a propane torch and a darkened room, but I use a cordless drill with a Lee case trimmer shell holder chucked up in it. I think the process works better with the case spinning. Heat is applied evenly, with no chance of one area possibly getting softer than another. As it is spinning, I lay a finger on the bottom of the case, to make sure it is not getting too hot, then I dip in a bucket of water to stop the heat. You are looking for a color change on the case neck, not red hot. Again, your finger on the lower end of the case wont let you get it too hot. Works really well. Bob

[blackthorn]

If you leave the spent primers in when you dip the case neck into the lead no lead will stick to the inside of the neck.

[bob208]

i deprime so ther is no water in the case. but to each his own.

as far as the lecture about using melted lead. a torch will get the cases too hot also in fact a torch will melt lead.

[lwknight]

If you lead dip the brass. Its best to use pure lead cause it will not stick. Also tarnished brass will not get tinned up easily so anneal then before tumbling.

[1874Sharps]

Patrick,

Glad you came into a nice treasure trove. If you plan to use the old 38-40 and 32-20 brass, you might want to look inside the mouth and see if the brass is balloon head or the more modern web head type. The balloon head is not nearly as strong as the web head. Still it can be reloaded, but it is best to keep the pressure down if smokeless is used, otherwise a head separation can occur (I had this happen on 45 Colt brass).

[gnoahhh]

I bought a large stash of FA-57 Match ammo that gave beautiful accuracy in a National Match 03 Springfield many years ago. The brass is still going strong after many loadings. I wish I had another foot locker full. The last couple of boxes of unfired stuff will remain that way- too valuable now to blast away!

[Tazman1602]

LOL Patrick.........I've got too many .22 boxes now and a few of these too. They are nice. One way to kinda sorta date a box of shells is to look for the child warning on the box. Manufacturers weren't required to put one on until 1962, after that they had to have the child warning on them.

The Western 30-06 Lubaloy is nice, the Kleanbore '06 is probably 50's vintage, and I can't remember off hand the red and yellow WW-Super Speeds age range.

I always have to grab those old shell boxes when I go to a gun show but only if they're giving them away and if they're in good shape these days.

I've got .22 boxes full of the original contents back to the 1920's, I started collecting them around 30 years ago and the collection just plain grew until about 5 years ago when prices skyrocketed. I've got one box, don't remember what it is now but I've got it in my records that I paid $25 for about ten years ago and I just saw one go for over $200. I used to deal a lot in these but shipping has just killed that.

NICE BOXES!!

Art


Sanpped a few pics. Here are the commercial boxes. There are more, I just put as many as I could fit in the shot


Here's a shot of some ends


And here's a shot of some of the military boxes


As I said earlier, NONE OF THIS IS FOR SALE. I just was inquiring about whether I could still load brass this old.