Did I ruin my brass?

[Michael J. Spangler]

Long story short I had some black powder reloads that I pulled down. The cases were covered in powder so I decided to wash them off. I forgot about them.
Months later they're pretty much black and spotty. I popped out the primers and I'm wondering if there was any damage to the brass other than the discoloration which I'm guessing is from the sulfur.
Thanks for the advice!

[Bent Ramrod]

Unless they have green or blue-green deposits on them, they should be fine.

Enough of the above corrosion will actually eat tiny holes through the brass, and thin the spots that aren’t eaten through. Usually it’s caused by decomposed smokeless powder in old loads or storage in leather pouches or belts.

Brown or black stains are pretty much routine results of shooting and storage. Clean the stuff in your brass tumbler and it should be good as new.

[megasupermagnum]

Those who care a lot about keeping their brass nice know ways to do so. Many of us, myself included do as you do and do a simple rinse wash. All mine are spotty, and over time turn a dark brown. No failures yet, and I don't expect any.

FYI, washing even smokeless fired brass in vinegar can have the same effect without harm.

[Michael J. Spangler]

They have all kinds of colors on them.
Guess I should try to tumble a few and load some to see if they split.

[greenjoytj]

Maybe anneal them so they won’t split.

[lightman]

I doubt that its hurt. Polish it up and load it.

[Walks]

When I shot BP at the Start of My Cowboy Shooting days, I would drop the fired rounds into a big Mayonaise jar full of simple green. When I got home I would dump the brass out into a strainer in the sink. Then rinse in soapy HOT water, and again in boiling water.
I decapped at the range before dropping them into the mayo jar.
Cases always looked like old range junk, but cleaned up pretty well in untreated corncob media.

[mehavey]

Unless you have a lot of truly green crusty stuff, they're fine.
Tumble clean (may take awhile) and shoot.
No additional annealing req'd.

[sharps4590]

One of the privileges of shooting BP. Sort of a "badge of honor" as far as I'm concerned.

[Michael J. Spangler]

Thank you all.
I figured they would be ok but I needed some of the sage like wisdom of this forum to reassure me.

[KMac]

Tryred rrrr
R


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[mdi]

Kinda difficult to say without one in my hand. I would dry tumble a few (or polish lightly with steel wool) and inspect the surface closely. Even if the cases come out shiny, I would look for tiny pits/pock marks and with my old eyes I'd use my magnifying visor. If I found any I would discard the cases...

[dtknowles]

I doubt you hurt your brass. I have some brass I treasure for its patina. It is not bright and shiny, it is more of a mellow brown but it is not spotty, it is even.

Tim

[redneck1]

I had some 45-70 cases I did the same thing to , only differance was instead of multi colored cases they all came out a sort of silver black and looked really great .
I tried my best to duplicate it again and never had any luck .

But they looked fantastic until they got to cruddy and I had to run them threw the tumbler ... 15 minutes of tumbling they was all yellow again

[KMac]

Tryred rrrr
R


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Wow. I was using Tapatalk on my phone and was responding to this thread and I got that Virtual Hug thing come up in Tapatalk.
I thought I had just deleted my whole post when it came up but It somehow made its way into my post. Sorry, everyone.

[David2011]

The first time I shot black powder in my Ruger .45 Colt revolver I didn’t know what it did to the brass. I didn’t know that I should drop it into a soapy solution. It took 4 days of polishing nonstop to clean it.