Citric acid brass cleaner

[WallyM3]

It doesn't harm brass. Steel on the other hand......

Particularly if there are dissimilar metals in the bath.

[jonp]

I heat the water to boiling on the stove and pour it in a giant glass bowl i bought fir a couple of bucks at a swap meet. Add a tablespoon or two of powdered citric acid you can buy at walmart, a shot of dawn and mix well. Toss in brass and swirl. Swirl every 10 min or so then rinse well in hot water. Put in the stove at 220 for 20 min and its clean. If you want it even cleaner you can tumble it with nufinish and mineral spirits. After the first citric bath i go straight to tumbling.
ive tried vinegar, salt and a few other recipes butbthe citric seemed to work best for me

[jonp]

This is awesome, wife had some on hand for canning, soap making, etc; borrowed a few teaspoons and put it to work on some .45LC brass that was pretty fugly. works like a champ!!

Gonna buy a whole bunch to keep by the reloading bench, good stuff.

i bought some 45colt range brass from someone on here last year. Some looked like they had been outside a couple of years and although sound were really bad. Did the citric bath then tumbled and they look almost new.

Im wondering about the dryer sheets though. Ive used both walnut and corn and never noticed that much dust. Is it for something else?

[Unclenick]

For those not familiar with it, the old Frankford Arsenal formula in the NRA book, Handloading, edited by Wm. C. Davis, is 5% citric acid in water by weight. That's a reusable solution that will last a long time. I got good, prompt service ordering it direct from this vendor, who's also one of the eBay vendors linked to earlier.

Pure lemon juice is also about 5% citric acid by weight. But considering that you can buy 10 lb of anhydrous citric acid for less than $25, postage paid, lemon juice is a dramatically more expensive way to get the same thing, plus sticky sugars coloring and lemon scent. 7 ounces of citric acid powder added to a full gallon of room temperature water gives you the 5% arsenal solution. If you add a smaller quantity to your cleaning solution to make it disposable, the product is stretched.

Lemishine is also a lot more expensive than citric acid pruchased in 10 lb quantity. As a previous poster said last year, Lemishine does nothing for brass that plain citric acid does not.

Citric acid is also used to passivate stainless steel that has been degreased. It is also used to lower the pH of shampoos and other detergents, which don't have their surfactant qualities affected adversely by this. It's why a squirt of Dawn or other dishwashing liquid in the mix still works to remove grease and oil and to suspend dirt and carbon.

[donald duck]

My wife just purchased a small bottle of Citric Acid in powder or small granules for less than $5.00 at Natural grocers here in colorado springs.

[MostlyLeverGuns]

Lifetime supply ? ? $20 for 5lbs. on Amazon.com

[fiberoptik]

You might give an old clorox bottle a try. The plastics in that are much heavier.

Vinegar bottles are thickest!

[dougader]

A guy from church gave me 40 old 30-06 cases so I deprimed them and threw them into the old jug of citric acid/dawn that has been sitting there for about a year. The water was cold, and I just dropped the cases in there, capped the bottle and shook them up for a bit. I let them rest for a couple hours and then rinsed them off and dried them on an old cookie sheet in the oven for 10 minutes. They look great.

So, the solution does last and it really doesn't need to be hot to work well in my experience.

[WallyM3]

I've never heated the water and generally not gone over 1/2 hour even with the dirtiest brass.

The odd think that happens here is that things start growing in the solution. It's a clear, gelatinous, globular colony of some jelly-fish-consistency life form. Happens every time after about a couple of weeks.

Still works...but at a point, it becomes objectionable to work with.

[boho]

I use a few drops of dishwashing soap and a teaspoon of food grade citric acid in a heated ultrasonic cleaner and it gets brass super clean inside and out. Even cleans out primer pockets!

[62chevy]

I've never heated the water and generally not gone over 1/2 hour even with the dirtiest brass.

The odd think that happens here is that things start growing in the solution. It's a clear, gelatinous, globular colony of some jelly-fish-consistency life form. Happens every time after about a couple of weeks.

Still works...but at a point, it becomes objectionable to work with.

Same problem here so it gets dumped every time. The stuff just plugs a coffee filter so that option is out.

[WallyM3]

If left to "colonize" long enough, it'll plug my drain!

Have any idea what it (they) is (are)?

Or how to prevent it?

[62chevy]

If left to "colonize" long enough, it'll plug my drain!

Have any idea what it (they) is (are)?

Or how to prevent it?

Not a clue I just dump it every time its made and used then flush the drain out.

[Grump]

Same problem here, when temps the the shop get above 65-70° F or so.

I'm pretty sure it's an airborne mold. Some of those spore life forms can be pretty...durable. Saw a mushroom stem this morning, maybe 5/8" diameter and a good three inches tall, poking up from the dried mud clod it displaced. Out in the dirt beyond the sod laid in early April, it gets watered every other day and I *though* the uncovered dirt was getting totally dry in between waterings.

If left to "colonize" long enough, it'll plug my drain!

Have any idea what it (they) is (are)?

Or how to prevent it?

[WallyM3]

I'm thinking of trying distilled water just once (this is a covered vessel) to see if it makes any difference. If not, I'll just change the solution occasionally. Seems to work fine even amidst the...whatever it is.

[HangFireW8]

Hot water just speeds up the drying process. That and a 100w desk lamp!

[WallyM3]

I've got a furnace that has a flat top. It can fit 3 colanders full of brass and dries them in about 12 hours; shorter when it's running a lot in winter. Even if not dry, I tumble them wet with the lids off (Dillon 2000 series tumblers) and the moisture evaporates pretty quickly.

[RogerDat]

I gave this a try on about 500 cases. Original recipe. 2 teaspoons to about a quart of hot water. Everything came out nice and clean. Some of this was mil-surplus 303 british cases that where tarnished when I shot them several years ago. The rest had been sitting in a bag on the shelf for 10 years.

inside the cases are clean enough I can look in and tell if the 303 cases are boxer or berdan primed. I don't think it is worth storing the liquid in my case since I can mix up many batches from the little $4 jar. Don't need another jug of something sitting on the shelf taking up space. Or possibly leaking or getting spilled.

[62chevy]

Walmart stopped caring citric acid so this time bought Lime-shine but don't think it works as good as citric acid does.

[square butte]

Our local Walmart is still carrying citric acid. Just bought some 3 days ago in the canning supply dept.