Tar Heel
04-01-2014, 01:37 PM
Users of PMC 38 Special ammunition or PMC 38 Special brass of recent manufacture should be aware that today I noticed some serious corrosion on scrounged PMC 38 Special brass.
After conducting a CCH course whereby four students used factory fresh PMC 38 Special ammunition, I went back to the range a week later to collect the fired brass and reload it. Included in my scrounging was 38 Special brass with WIN, Winchester, WW, IMI, R-P, and a spattering of military style head stamps as well as the targeted PMC head stamp.
All of the brass had been on the range during the rainstorms that week and some of the brass may have been there for longer than one week. Some of the brass looked the part and anyone who has scrounged brass knows what it looks like after a month or so lying on the range. Some like the PMC brass looked relatively good and shiny.
I cleaned all the brass in ground corn cob like always and most of it polished up just fine. Some had discoloration which normally means it is simply discolored. The PMC brass looked just fine. After a month in the shed, I went out to load the remaining brass which included the PMC brass.
The primers in the majority of the PMC brass would NOT eject down the ram and necessitated removing the shell holder to grip the primer flash with hemostats and rip it out. Upon inspection, it was apparent that the primers had severely corroded in their primer pockets and the majority of the primer was still in the primer pocket. Further inspection showed most of these cases also had white residue on the inside of the case where the propellant and firing residue has embedded itself into the brass.
ALL of the other cases with different head stamps deprimed normally and exhibited NO corrosion like the PMC cases do.
These cases are useless since one can’t manually remove primer parts with hemostats and there is no way to get the primer cup out of the primer pocket once the primer ‘cap’ gets removed from the primer.
I wanted to give you all a heads up about this PMC brass since the brass itself may be compromised. I can only conclude that PMC is using either a different propellant due to the lack of availability of their more common and preferred propellant and/or they may actually be using CORROSIVE priming compounds in the current ammunition. The residue seen reminds me of the corrosive priming compound residues we used to see decades ago.
Could this be a Cowboy Action Load using BP and the resultant corrosion?
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After conducting a CCH course whereby four students used factory fresh PMC 38 Special ammunition, I went back to the range a week later to collect the fired brass and reload it. Included in my scrounging was 38 Special brass with WIN, Winchester, WW, IMI, R-P, and a spattering of military style head stamps as well as the targeted PMC head stamp.
All of the brass had been on the range during the rainstorms that week and some of the brass may have been there for longer than one week. Some of the brass looked the part and anyone who has scrounged brass knows what it looks like after a month or so lying on the range. Some like the PMC brass looked relatively good and shiny.
I cleaned all the brass in ground corn cob like always and most of it polished up just fine. Some had discoloration which normally means it is simply discolored. The PMC brass looked just fine. After a month in the shed, I went out to load the remaining brass which included the PMC brass.
The primers in the majority of the PMC brass would NOT eject down the ram and necessitated removing the shell holder to grip the primer flash with hemostats and rip it out. Upon inspection, it was apparent that the primers had severely corroded in their primer pockets and the majority of the primer was still in the primer pocket. Further inspection showed most of these cases also had white residue on the inside of the case where the propellant and firing residue has embedded itself into the brass.
ALL of the other cases with different head stamps deprimed normally and exhibited NO corrosion like the PMC cases do.
These cases are useless since one can’t manually remove primer parts with hemostats and there is no way to get the primer cup out of the primer pocket once the primer ‘cap’ gets removed from the primer.
I wanted to give you all a heads up about this PMC brass since the brass itself may be compromised. I can only conclude that PMC is using either a different propellant due to the lack of availability of their more common and preferred propellant and/or they may actually be using CORROSIVE priming compounds in the current ammunition. The residue seen reminds me of the corrosive priming compound residues we used to see decades ago.
Could this be a Cowboy Action Load using BP and the resultant corrosion?
125504 125505
125506 125507
125508