Re-using old brass for black powder reloading

[mrcvs]

I seem to have read once, somewhere, that you can use old brass that was loaded with smokeless powder and load it with black powder, and, of course, you can reload brass that contained black powder with black powder again, but you cannot load a round with smokeless powder once it has contained black powder. Is this true? If so, why?

[JSnover]

Not true.

[Don McDowell]

Not so when talking about modern brass, I would not recommend using any brass from pre world war 2 for any reloading, due to the affects of the corrosive priming in use at the time.

[elk hunter]

Most of the old original Black Powder rounds were loaded with primers that contained fulminate of mercury. The mercury would attack the brass and weaken it. The Black Powder fouling would hold some of the mercury and was washed out when the brass was cleaned, it helped lessen the effect of the mercury, but eventually the brass would get brittle and break. I tried to use old Black Powder brass back in the 60's when brass for the old calibers was hard to find, most of it split or cracked and the head came off the first time it was fired. I spent a lot of time digging the remainder of a case out of a chamber or sometimes a reloading die.

[Baja_Traveler]

Aside from the primer issue, there are the old balloon head cases to watch out for. Other than that the legend is total B.S.

[mrcvs]

Okay...an old wives' tale!:grin:

With regards to reloading it. Brittle brass is just plain brittle due to age...

[country gent]

Another issue with the old original cases is age hardening and history, How many times its been loaded and How. Brass thats been abused in some way or another may show some interesting stress that many years later.

[Red River Rick]

I think you should find better reading material...................

RRR

[JSnover]

Ok, in the late 80s or mid 90s in Shooters Digest or Shooters Bible I ran across an article in which the writer had recovered three 45-70 cases from a fort near the site of the battle at Little Big Horn (fort Ellis, Abraham, or Pease). One had been crushed, another crushed and split, the third was dented but not destroyed. He straightened it out and was able to reload it. The corrosive primer didn't destroy it and age didn't embrittle it. BUT… it had probably only been fired once. I say probably because one of the recovered cases contained an unfired primer, partially seated. I don't have the book any more so I'm doing this from memory.
All brass will become brittle if fired often enough, regardless of the pressure, powder, or age. You can reduce this through minimal sizing but it will eventually become an issue. I've been reloading 45-70 brass with both smokeless and black for about 5 years. I know some of the cases have been loaded with both, using boolits weighing 350-500 grains, over charges of 55-70 grains. So far none of them have cracked.

[Don McDowell]

One of the books written by an Old Dead Guy in 1880 reports that the Creedmoor shooters of the time seldom used a case more than twice if they expected to shoot a decent score. After the second shot the case became brittle and would not shoot accurately and many times would simply separate.

[JSnover]

That doesn't sound normal at all. Makes me wonder if some cases were much thinner or the alloy was different back then.

[Don McDowell]

I'm sure the cases are different now than they were then. We also know the primers are different.
In the early Winchester reloading pamphlets they discouraged reloading smokeless powder as there was something either in the priming or the powder that would destroy the cases if left over night. They said to reload with smokeless powder the cases had to be continually loaded and shot, and there was nothing that could be done to prevent the case damage.

[JSnover]

Wow. That provides more questions than answers but thanks anyway. Interesting…

[JSnover]

Okay, from wikipedia:
"Brass is susceptible to stress corrosion cracking, especially from ammonia or substances containing or releasing ammonia. The problem is sometimes known as season cracking after it was first discovered in brass cartridge cases used for rifle ammunition during the 1920s in the Indian Army. The problem was caused by high residual stresses from cold forming of the cases during manufacture, together with chemical attack from traces of ammonia in the atmosphere. The cartridges were stored in stables and the ammonia concentration rose during the hot summer months, thus initiating brittle cracks. The problem was resolved by annealing the cases, and storing the cartridges elsewhere."

That explanation satisfies me. Winchester was probably being over cautious and trying to protect their share of the ammunition market. Some brass did fail and it would only have to happen one time for a competitive shooter to say "never again."
At that time smokeless was still new, relative to black, so case failures could easily be explained by switching propellants. Larger myths have been built on smaller foundations.
Age, work-hardening, and chemistry are factors but I don't believe good brass will be ruined by loading with black or switching to smokeless, assuming it is properly cleaned and not over-worked.

[Don McDowell]

No Winchester was not being over cautious and the information I provided came from before the turn of the century. Early smokeless powder was problematic, as was the priming. Roberts tells us in his Schuetzen rifle book, that duplexing started because the primers of the blackpowder era would not reliably ignite the smokeless. So they primed their cases and put a charge of black UNDER the smokeless. It's also a reason to get the giggles when you read what the purpose of screening powder was, and it had nothing to do with blackpowder. Like many things today, the "experts" have it just about backwards...
Winchester said they did not recommend reloading with smokeless as there was nothing they could find to do to the cases fired with smokeless that would prevent the destruction of the brass if left even over night.
The Creedmoor shooters of old, were dead serious about accuracy, Creedmoor shooting was the national pastime, even the New York Times provided correspondants and blow by blow accounts of the matches including all the ones the American team attended over seas. The top shooters did not use the brass more than twice because of accuracy issues, along with the possibility of a ruptured case that would cause a shot to go off center. Those guys were not satisfied to keep their nail keg bullet on a 8x11 piece of paper at 50 yds and think they were doing something. It was a deadly serious business that had international implications. Call it American exceptionalism if you want...
It's all out there for fairly easy discovery, yet folks continue to charge right on ahead....