Is this brass safe?

[Rando]

(Cross posted at THR, apologies to readers of both forums)

Normally I wouldn't even ask that kind of question, I'd just ditch whatever I wasn't sure of. The only reason I'm doing so is that this is the way the ammo came from the factory and it fired just fine the first time. (My brother shot them all during a recent day at the range with me. I probably wouldn't have shot them the first time, I'm kind of a chicken that way.) This is .357 mag, many of them have discolored rings or spots. I picked some of the worst offenders from the bunch. They're completely smooth, not rough or corroded. Anyone have any experience with anything like these?

I'm leaning towards better safe than sorry for the price of 50 rounds of brass vs the cost of my 686 + new fingers.



http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h181/RandoX/DSCF0067.jpg

[felix]

That brass appears to have not been mixed correctly. Where you see red, the copper is there but no zinc. Yes, this brass might be considered dangerous. Now, here is the bad part. The rings are very suspicious, indicating the zinc was somehow leached out. Water baths can do this, but why in a circle? Grease malfunction during manufacture? Who knows. I would scrap it, and don't allow it to get back into the reloading arena for anyone not in the know. Mash the cases. ... felix

[357maximum]

Not being a chicken by any stretch, I too would make sure no-one could use it,I would say something went wrong with the manufacturing, and Felixs' idea sounds like an idea better than any I could come up with....smoosh it and scrap it. Cheap insurance.

[Tom Myers]

For what it's worth, I had some brass start to look like that a while back. I finally figured out that it was coming from something that had contaminated my plastic ammunition box. The trips to the matches in the car caused the ammunition to vibrate against the plastic divider rims and whatever was on the plastic was causing the discoloration on the brass. One trip through the Thumblers tumbler for the brass and a trip through SWMBOs dishwasher for the plastic boxes and the problem was solved.

Tom Myers

[felix]

Tom is correct also. If you can wash it off by any means at your disposal, and do so quickly to keep the zinc component intact, then you have the cause of the problem. That would mean the brass is good. I have had that happen as well as indicated by the smart looking rings. But also look at the specific case in your picture not having a distinct ring. Case rubbing would only have clear rings of some sort. It would be nice to know the history of those cases while in your ownership. ... felix

[UweJ]

I too would scrap em just to be on the safe side,and make sure no one else can get them.

[Rando]

The rounds sat in my gun safe for around 6 years, reasonably cool & dry. They're Winchester white box with the styrofoam tray. I bought several (15-20) boxes of assorted brands and calibers at a going-out-of-business hardware store. This was one from that buy. I had quite a bit of .38 and .357 so it took me a while to get around to this particular batch. I don't know if it's the only WWB I got from there, but I don't have any more now. At any rate, it's definitely the only one I had where the brass looked like this.

The rounds looked like that before they were shot (according to my brother). In the picture above, they had just spent 12 hours in a tumbler. That didn't change the way that the discoloration looks, but did shine up the rest of the brass.

[357maximum]

I had some brand new old stock remington factory loads still in the box back from when remington used the green and red cardboard box with cardboard dividers that had brass that looked just like the ones in the right side of the pic. I know what they did when i fired one of them, and I personally would step cautiously like I am walking on thin glass at high elevation in this current situation. I retrieved two halves from the chamber, the rest got torn down, and recycled for scrap, the powder made a dandy fertilizer for the roses. Personally 50 rounds of brass outvalue ZERO of my irons, or my digits and face for that matter.

[Rando]

Personally 50 rounds of brass outvalue ZERO of my irons, or my digits and face for that matter.

That's my mindset too. The weird thing is that not all of the brass is discolored. I made sure to sequester it away from my main stash. It will probably go under the hammer tonight. I saw 500 rounds of once-fired .357 at the show last weekend for $30. That makes this 50 rounds worth... $3.00.

[MT Gianni]

In an unrelated cause I got a discoloration on brass when it got wet in a hunting pack. The rounds sized with Lee case lube were discolored and those with carbide sizers [no lube] were not. I make sure that I remove all case lube as best as possible before carring now. Gianni.

[schutzen]

I would not shoot them, but I would not scrap them so soon. If you have the original packaging, I would call the manufacturer. At the very least, you will give them a chance to insure this is not a manufacturing process flaw and at the best they might replace them. I believe they would prefer to find a process flaw from an experienced shooter's call than from an in-experienced shooter's accident.

[uscra112]

Exposure to barrel-cleaning chemicals, even mild ones like Hoppes #9, will do exactly this to brass in only a few days. An amount so small as to go unnoticed will take a few weeks. Just having a little residue of Hoppes or Sweets on your fingers is plenty.

I've actually seen this go from start to finish. I once had left a few miscellaneous cases in a place on my bench where the spatter from cleaning patches exiting the bore sprinkled a few tiny drops on them. A couple of weeks later I noticed that they had tiny green spots. Wipe the green off, and this exact brown color is what is left. Dang! (Well, not really, they weren't going to be used anyway.)

But hey - dissolving copper is what that stuff is supposed to do, yes?

I did once clean this off with fine abrasive paper. It was not severe, and was found on a few of my antique, low-pressure .25-20SS cases, which weren't easy to come by at the time. I still have those cases, but (not for this reason), I no longer use them. But I won't recommend you clean it off. Like hydrogen embrittlement in hardened steels, the offending molecules could still be present in the matrix, even if you can't see the surface result anymore. And those .357 cases are easy to replace.

Obviously, the lesson is to make sure brass and/or loaded rounds are squeaky clean when put away, and not stored in anything that has the least chance of having any traces of ammonia, or salts, or acids. (Even paper products today are offenders - the modern paper process uses wood pulp instead of cotton, and the product must be bleached to make it white. Often the process doesn't remove all the bleaching chemicals. Newspaper is especially bad.) There's old wisdom about rounds carried in leather cartridge belts. Use 'em up regularly. The tanning acid residue in leather will corrode brass just dandy.

[floodgate]

A couple of years back. Linstrum provided an answer regarding some split cases I had that may be relevant here. These "coppery" spots MAY be the result of an electrolytic process called "de-zincification" that occurs in the presence of iron (such as staple residues in recycled cardboard, or steel charging clips) AND moisture. The 35% +/- of zinc in cartridge brass, when lost by this process, leaves a weakened copper matrix that can blow out or break; 357 Max's separated cases sound like a clear case of this - I don't know if the same thing could have happened in Tom Myers' plastic boxes. But that coppery color - especially if it does not polish out - is a clear warning sign to me.

Linstrum, correct me if I have misinterpreted your info.

floodgate

[Lloyd Smale]

another thought. Did he happen to have them in a leather ammo belt. The acids in leather will do the same thing to brass cases. Thats why alot of police depts like nickled cases back when they carried revolvers. That would sure explain the nice rings all in the same place on the cases. What i do with range brass is tumble it over night and anything that is still stained gets tossed.

[joeb33050]

For what it's worth, I had some brass start to look like that a while back. I finally figured out that it was coming from something that had contaminated my plastic ammunition box. The trips to the matches in the car caused the ammunition to vibrate against the plastic divider rims and whatever was on the plastic was causing the discoloration on the brass. One trip through the Thumblers tumbler for the brass and a trip through SWMBOs dishwasher for the plastic boxes and the problem was solved.

Tom Myers

I had exactly the same thing happen with new 30/06 cases in a green MTM 100 round box. Wrote to MTM, they said that it happens, rarely, and sent me some boxes and a hat. Now I wash every new plastic ammo box in soapy water, rinse and dry and put them outside in the sun and wind for a few days.
I do NOT know if your brass is safe to use, I threw mine out.
joe brennan

[Linstrum]

Hi, Floodgate, you are quite right about the cause. I looked at the photograph and the telltale pattern for plug dezincification is there, the cartridge on the far right is the most typical of what plug dezincification looks like.

Hi, Rando, I’ve had quite a bit of experience with the condition affecting your brass and yours appears pretty advanced and no doubt has holes and weak spots.

To distinguish plug dezincification from regular old ordinary corrosion from contact with sweat, dampness, leather, or good old fashioned dirt, the characteristics that you need to look for are a banded or ringed pattern that looks like different colored strips, layers, or a bullseye ring pattern. When the plug dezincification reactions are active there is always a patch of bright shiny new-looking copper present that has a strikingly beautiful appearance. Quite often in the center of the bright copper patch there will be a darkened area with porous gray spots that occasionally may also show a tiny bit of green and blue from secondary copper compounds being present. In more advanced cases of plug dezincification holes will develop. When the brass dries out and the reaction stops, the dezincified area will turn dark just like in your photo, but the telltale bands and rings will still be there. Other common corrosion processes can also look like that, but they usually won’t have the copper plating area with a porous dark grayish central region, banded, or bullseye characteristics peculiar to plug dezincified of brass unless by coincidence the object that the brass was in contact with also has a banded or striped pattern, like being in contact with the edge of some plywood. If that is the case the markings will simply be a transfer print from the other surface.

Two conditions must be present for plug dezincification to take place, which are the brass must be in a damp place and it must be in contact with iron. Actually, other metals will also cause plug dezincification, but iron is the metal most commonly encountered out in the real world that will cause it. The way plug dezincification works is that cartridge brass is made up of two electrically conductive metallic elements, copper and zinc. Copper is a very inert element compared to zinc, and iron happens to fall about half way between the two in its reactivity. With the iron in contact with the brass a pretty substantial electrical current starts if the brass and iron also happen to be damp. Weak electrical currents are always present when two dissimilar metals touch and that is how thermocouples work, but when a chemical reaction can also take place the current is very strong, which is basically how batteries work. They brass and iron don’t need to be soaking wet, just damp foggy air is good enough for the plug dezincification to take place. The reactions that happen are rather complex and not well understood, but the over-all picture is that the oxygen in the air dissolves into the moisture on the metal and the zinc reacts with it making what is called a Werner Coordination Complex Ion that contains zinc ions, water, and hydroxide ions. The oxygen and zinc contribute part of the energy that makes the electric current flow, which then begins to attack the iron that is in contact with them, rusting it as well as adding more energy to the reaction and electric current flow. In essence, a type of battery is formed. The final steps are that the voltage is high enough to cause the copper to also react with oxygen and several other of the reaction products presence. The copper and zinc ions migrate away by electrophoresis (caused by the electrical current that is flowing) from the point of contact with the iron, which produces the dark and light color bands and bullseye rings with the porous spots and holes at their center or origin that are typical when electrophoresis takes place. The last event in the rather complex set of reactions is that because of the electric current flowing back into the metal as it makes a complete electrical circuit, the zinc is removed from the brass leaving a spongy porous mass and copper salts that formed are reduced by the electric current and the copper is electroplated out onto the surface of the brass at the farthest reaches of the plug dezincification reaction zone.

The first time I ran across the plug dezincification was when I had some .30-06 ammo stored in Garand en bloc clips out in my garden shed where they got a bit damp during foggy weather. Like I mentioned above, it doesn’t take much moisture to make the reaction go between oxygen, iron, and the copper and zinc contained in the brass. Besides contact with iron en bloc clips and other such iron parts, the reaction can also be caused by the steel rivets used in leather ammo pouches and belts, fine iron filings shaved from staples and paper clips that contaminate cardboard made from recycled paper stocks. Bits of shredded aluminum foil contained in recycled paper used for making cardboard ammo boxes will also cause brass cartridges to corrode in a similar way as iron material. Recycled plastic often contains aluminum flake and powder and that may cause brass to corrode in plastic boxes, which is pretty unusual normally.

I hope that helps, good luck!