Citric acid brass cleaner

[Anonym]

My Lyman tumbler has a small bowl with a clear plastic lid. I've had excellent results using hot water and citric acid, and even just lemon juice, and tumbling for 15 minutes or so. Brass comes out bright and clean!

[JRR]

I use diet 7'nUp and a bit of laundry detergent. The 7 up's first ingredient is carbonated water and the 2nd is citric acid. Make sure it is "diet" so you get no sugar residue.
Jeff

[OnceFired]

You must go through a bunch of 2L bottles.

[flintlock62]

I was going to mention kool-aid, but you beat me to it! When I was a mess cook in the Navy, I had to clean the deep fat fryers. We used kool-aid, and the surfaces came out very shiny.

Good old koolaid (or any of the cheap varieties) work well too, not as fast as shown on the 50 bmg shell but works good overnight. I get it for .10 a pack, but I may have to look for citric acid now.

[243winxb]

Ethanol effect on cartridge brass. The ethanol in the mix is so diluted that i have to guess it will do no harm to cartridge brass?? Do i need to worry about this?? Photo is from gov. testing of different grades of gas containing ethanol.

The test fluids selected for this investigation were Fuel C, CE10a, CE17a, and CE25a. Fuel C was
selected as the control since it is representative of premium gasoline and is a standard test fluid widely
used for studying material compatibility to gasoline. CE10a represents an aggressive formulation of E10,
and as such, it can be viewed as a baseline test fuel since E10 is currently available in many, if not most,
fuel dispensers.

Dawn dish detergent contains as much as 7% Ethanol. Ethanol can cause stress crossion cracking.

[whisler]

If your estimate of ethanol content in Dawn is correct, calculate the % alcohol in a cleaning mix of a few drops of Dawn in several quarts of water and see what you get. Not enough Ethanol to worry about. Also check temperature and length of exposure in that test (28 days @ 60 deg. C) I sure don't soak my brass for 4 weeks.

[1bilmr59]

Sounds Good i might have to try one of the mixes thanks for the posts

[FloridaFlyBoy]

Nice post, starmetal, thanks. You can get about the same results with a spoonful of phosphoric acid in a gallon of warm water too. (Concentration and / or temperature is not at all critical.)

You can buy phosphoric at any chemical supply company, and at most neighborhood chemical companies. Failing that, just buy some 'Naval Jelly" rust remover at your local hardware. It's just a thickened phosphoric solution. It's more expensive that way, but hey, at a spoonful at a time, it won't break anyone's budget.

Phosphoric also has the advantage of very low toxicity: It's what gives most soda pop its tang. It is also much less reactive to organics (won't burn your skin) than most strong acids. Phosphoric is also used industrially to make metal surfaces corrosion resistant. Works for steel anyhow. Don't know about brass, but my cases in storage remain clean and untarnished year after year, so something good is going on.

A quick way to dry the clean cases is to pour off any excess water, and then pile them up on a beach towel. Grab both ends to make a hammoc, and pour them back and forth a few times. This won't dry the insides, but residual heat will help them dry inside more quickly. If you need them in a hurry, set your oven for 'warm', or about 120 degrees. When it's up to temperature, turn it off and put the cases in. They'll be dry in about half an hour.

I've used this for decades to keep my brass clean. Not shiny, but very obviously clean, just like you showed in your photo. Same basic technology, but different chemicals to do the job.

I use the water( 4 parts )/ white vinegar(1 part)/dawn(4 dropfuls)/salt ( dash) solution in a Hornady ultrasonic machine, and then take the extra step of media tumbling after drying, and most of the brass looks new.I suspect it's the water hardness that leaves water spots on the brass.The tumbling ( also with a few drops of Frankford Arsenal Brass Polish in it) removes the water spots making the brass look ( almost ) new

[EDG]

Stress corrosion cracking of what?

Ethanol effect on cartridge brass. The ethanol in the mix is so diluted that i have to guess it will do no harm to cartridge brass?? Do i need to worry about this?? Photo is from gov. testing of different grades of gas containing ethanol. Dawn dish detergent contains as much as 7% Ethanol. Ethanol can cause stress crossion cracking.

[FloridaFlyBoy]

Do you think the ethanol at 7% in one tablespoon of Dawn (estimated approx. 1 ml of ethanol ) exposed to the brass for less than 30 minutes, and thoroughly rinsed ( 3 x in fresh tap water)after ultrasonic cleaning, and then tumbled in corn cob media with Frankford Arsenal brass polish( after dryig), will have a great long term effect as to cause stress corrosion cracking and how long will it take to crack? and how many reloads will I get before it is noticeble?

Thanks.

[OnceFired]

Just found Lowes had Ball Citric Acid in 7.5oz bottles on clearance. Got the remaining 10 bottles for just $2.15 each - over 4.5 lbs for $21.50 That's the cheapest I have found it anywhere local - even WalMart is at $2.97 a pop. This should keep me going on my 5.56mm cleaning for quite some time.

Anyone found a local source for bulk?

Once Fired

[ffgray]

I've heard of this magic before, but I've never been able to find any citric acid. More details please.

I got a 40 lb bag of it from bulk apothecary on the internet, just google that. I use it for taxidermy, but I think they sell it in smaller packages also.

[douglasskid]

Ijust bought some citric acid, going to try it now!!!! THANKS

[mvintx]

Well I've signed on to this cleaning madness and had the wife pick up some Lemishine and citric acid at Walmart, but the citric acid she got is labeled Ball Fruit-Fresh. It lists it's ingredients as dextrose, ascorbic acid, citric acid and silicon dioxide. It costs about $5 and rather than open it, I ordered some citric acid from Duda Diesel on Amazon and I'll have the wife return the Fruit-Fresh.

I mixed 1/4 tsp Lemishine and 2 tsp Dawn in one gallon of our well water. The brass has been soaking for about 2 hours now and the insides of the cases are not clean at all but the primer pockets look pretty good. Maybe the amount of Lemishine should be increased to approximate the 3 tbs of citric acid? I'll try that and then the citric acid when it arrives in a few days.

[62chevy]

I use the Ball fruit fresh and it works just fine. You will need a sonic-cleaner to get the insides clean or cut a scotch bright to size. But the straight citric acid may work better and should be cheaper in bulk.

[mvintx]

I use the Ball fruit fresh and it works just fine. You will need a sonic-cleaner to get the insides clean or cut a scotch bright to size. But the straight citric acid may work better and should be cheaper in bulk.

I appreciate hearing that. It seems that most of the guys who posted the best results were using citric acid. I didn't remember reading that sonic cleaning was required to get the insides clean. I don't have one but my shooting buddy does - mabye he'll let me borrow it.

I've always used walnut for cleaning and I don't deprime the brass before doing so but I wanted to uniform the primer pockets on my latest batch of LC .308 cases as I've had a hard time seating primers, sooooooo I thought this would be a good opportunity to try the citrus cleaning method. I don't really care if the insides are clean - as long as they feed, fire and look good, I'm happy.

[AlaskanGuy]

I noticed when using citric acid to clean badly tarnished cases that it turned them a pinkish color... Who cares though, long as they are cleaned up....

[WallyM3]

That pinkish color is leached copper. If it comes off in tumbling, it's a trifling matter. If not, it could indicate a weak spot in the brass.

[mvintx]

My cases are not badly tarnished to begin with so perhaps I'm expecting too much from this cleaning process. They're tumbled clean before reloading and then tumbled again after reloading to remove case lube. But after firing they do get grimy, dirty, stepped on and driven over. Walnut does a pretty good job of cleaning them but I'm thinking this is a better process.

I'd be OK with pink.

[AlaskanGuy]

They are not pink in spots... The whole case is pinkish... They started out looking very dark brown.... Threw them in to see what would happen, and they came out pink and clean....