Cleaning black powder cartridges

[abunaitoo]

The guys at the range dump their cartridges in a container of water right after shooting it.
I'm sure most people do this.
I know they still get corrosion because of the splits they throw away after reloading.
Inside is eaten away in places.
Has anyone tried mixing baking soda in the water?????
Baking soda neutralizes acid.

[quail4jake]

Try Ballistol 10:1 with distilled water. You can just leave 'em soak in it until you get a chance to decap and wash in hot soapy water.

[bruce drake]

I put my fired blackpowder cartridge brass into a jup of soapy water while at the range to help counter the salts and also help with cleaning the brass safely.

[rfd]

there is no need for baking soda. just a jug of water with a few drops of dish soap is all that's needed. shake every so often. what happens when you get back to the ranch and do yer real case cleaning is another matter ....

[JSnover]

I dump mine in soapy water until I get them home and haven't had a split yet but they are light target loads (45 grains 3F, 500 grain boolit). They get rinsed with hot clean water and dried before tumbling.

[Kevin Rohrer]

Dawn dishwashing soap has an alkali in it to aid cleaning. Put some in a jug of water and dump your casings in it after firing. Easy-peasy.

[Gunlaker]

Baking soda isn't going to help. The main combustion products of black powder are not acidic, but basic, and are soluble in plain water.

Chris.

[Nobade]

Wow, I have never seen a case split because of corrosion. I wonder if they are shooting them a lot without annealing? That will do it. At any rate, I just put them back in the box, come home, decap, rinse, wet tumble with SS pins and Dawn, let 'em dry and they are good to go. Anneal every 3rd or 4th firing and they last forever.

-Nobade

[Bent Ramrod]

I take my cases home, deprime and rinse them, and wet tumble them in the Thumler with the Maurer ceramic chips and cleaner. Have only had one .45-70 case split in what must be 15 reloadings, at least. I full-length resize every reloading.

My shooting partner uses a .40-70, and is using up his supply of stretched and reformed .30-40 Krag cases before switching over to Captech/Jameson brass. He's been through a satisfactory series of reloads, and doesn't size them, but they are going out; two or more splits out of the bunch every shooting session.

Maybe your range friends are going through the same thing with violently reformed cases. They let you shoot the guns, but they are makeshifts, leave us face it, and can't be expected to have the same service life as properly made shells.

[country gent]

I have been using the lemi shine tabs and dawn dish soap for the soak bottle. I Tap to the gallon and a few drops of dawn dish soap to the 3/4 full gallon jug. I shake these several times art the range then when I get home I drain and agitate draining again. This removes a lot of black crud from the cases. I then rinse several times with hot tap water again agitating and draining several times between rinses. I then hand decap and polish in corn cob media. From here if needed I anneal ( I anneal every 3 loading when I can). I too agree with the above corrosion may not be the reason for the cracks but hardening of the cases from the salts and sizing. Even with smokeless and corrosive primers a lot would wet clean to neutralize the salts to keep them from hardening the cases. The primers alone were enough to cause this to happen. I have sectioned cases occasionally to check and with this regime they look very good inside at 14-15 loadings even

[Gunlaker]

I would expect that the cause of the cracks wouldn't be corrosion. I have some .32-40 cases that have been fired with BP more than 200 times now. They only get cleaned with hot water and a bottle cleaning brush.

Chris.

[GARD72977]

Wow 200 loadings!

[Gunlaker]

Wow 200 loadings!

This is not too uncommon with schuetzen style rifles where you bring a hand full of cases to the range, and a bunch of primers and powder. I'll usually shoot one or two targets with a single shell that gets reloaded at the bench. The case gets scraped out between shots, and at the end of the day I scrub it out with water and brush. My Ruger #1 only has 14 cases and the rifle has been shot a lot :-)

Chris.

[rfd]

this thread is just another in a loooong line of reoccurring "bp cleaning" threads at this and many other forums. there are many good ways to clean the bp residue out after a day of shooting. getting the brass dropped into at least plain water asap is the first good step.

back at the ranch, after rinsing and depriming 30 to 60 .45-70 cases, they get 30 minutes in a hornady ultra-sonic, a rinse in tap water, and either set out to dry off or spend 5 to 10 minutes in a corn cob vibratory tumbler with its cover off. done. and boy does that brass shine - inside and out. love my ultra-sonic, will never go back to tumbling.

no, this is not new brass, all have been fired over 20 times ...

http://i.imgur.com/VbsMVSZ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/UVwFd0F.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/cjrBJpk.jpg

[sac]

I use clear vinegar and water then when dry put the in a tumbler.

[kokomokid]

what solution are you using in the ultrasonic?

[Lead pot]

Wow 200 loadings!

200 reloads is not unusual. I been using .30-40 stretched Krag cases in my .40-70 Shiloh since 99 I would bet some have been loaded more times then 200. The only brass I have ever has split down the middle is Bertram .40-70 cases. Some didn't last 4 loads and most split around 10 loads.
I hate to guess how many times the 500 Bell .50-2.5 cases have been loaded. That rifle has better then 20,000 rounds through it.
Brass will last a long time if you handle and work it right.

[Gunlaker]

Kurt, I had some Bertram .45-110 brass that did that on the first firing. That was before I heard about the Norma stuff :-)

Chris.

[Big Mak]

rfd,
That was my process for a year now. I've recently purchased a wet tumbler (duel drum) off Ebay for $56 and bought some steel pins.

My first test batch (Mixed BP and smokeless brass) is mixing as I type this.

I set the timer for 3 hours.

Follow up picture soon....
Here is the before picture.

[John Allen]

I do like alot of guys. I just use dawn dish soap and water. The container I use has a sealed cap so I just give it some shakes. Once I get home I wash them good.

[rfd]

what solution are you using in the ultrasonic?

hornday's u/s concentrated solution mixed with distilled water - i keep meaning to experiment with some of the online u/s solutions.

the thing for me about the u/s is that it's quiet and fast and does as good if not better a job than my rebel wet tumbler with s/s pins. i see no reason to back to wet tumbling, and i'll only use dry tumbling (with cover off) to dry off the brass after using the u/s machine.

[Gunlaker]

I realized that my posts might have been a bit misleading. I clean my schuetzen cases with soap and water, but for the higher volume stuff I use an ultrasonic and Hornady solution. I also run them through as second ultrasonic pass with cold water. I like this better than other techniques I've tried.

Chris.

[kokomokid]

hornday's u/s concentrated solution mixed with distilled water - i keep meaning to experiment with some of the online u/s solutions.

the thing for me about the u/s is that it's quiet and fast and does as good if not better a job than my rebel wet tumbler with s/s pins. i see no reason to back to wet tumbling, and i'll only use dry tumbling (with cover off) to dry off the brass after using the u/s machine.
My cases dont come that clean with Lyman u/s solution or citric acid. They look sploched and have some carbon inside near the flash hole. I tumble with SS pins for thirty minutes with armall wash wax at 20 RPM. Any longer or faster gives me peened case lips. My cases peen easily because I anneal after each firing.
I may try the Hornady cleaner. THANKS

[Big Mak]

rfd,
That was my process for a year now. I've recently purchased a wet tumbler (duel drum) off Ebay for $56 and bought some steel pins.

My first test batch (Mixed BP and smokeless brass) is mixing as I type this.

I set the timer for 3 hours.

Follow up picture soon....
Here is the before picture.

Follow up:
Here is the after, 3 hrs of tumbling. Soapy hot water and a 1/2 teaspoon of lemishine.
Also shown is the tumbler (Stole is NEW on ebay for $56) and drying the brass (and drying the steel pins for next time) in the oven I have out in the shop.
So this has essentially eliminated any need for the vibrator/tumbler with corncob.
Now I just deprime, steel pin tumbler, dry. Ready to load.
I'm very impressed with steel pin tumbling!

https://photos.smugmug.com/Steel-Pin-tumbling/i-rRXs3Rw/0/O/20170227_140722_1488233976561_resized.jpg

https://photos.smugmug.com/Steel-Pin-tumbling/i-pZVFxXV/0/O/20170227_140623_resized_1.jpg

https://photos.smugmug.com/Steel-Pin-tumbling/i-Dvs8DCR/0/O/20170227_140050_resized_1.jpg

BEFORE

https://photos.smugmug.com/Steel-Pin-tumbling/i-qZgN359/0/O/20170226_113414_resized_1.jpg

[Eric Johanen]

I'm somewhat different. I keep my cases dry. No damage to them and I can clean them next day or 2 or 3 days later. Hot soap and water, bottle brush for interior and #4 steel wool for the outside. When they get too brown (5 or 6 reloads) I wet tumble with the SS pins. Have not lost any cases with this method. Some have been reloaded well over 100 times. Mom always used to say (dust will keep if you don't get it wet!) With in reason it works for black powder cartridges as well. I have left some as long as a week with no damage.

[yulzari]

I just take them home. Wash them sometimes days later wiping the insides with a bore swab. Dry and dry tumble them in a cheap Lyman tumbler for a couple of hours. Not lost any in over 3 years. Never anneal. Never size. Hand load with no press. Maybe the solution to the problem is that there is no problem?

Fastest is the British Army standard musket paper cartridges. Faster to make than reloading brass and no cleaning except swabbing out the bore with wet tow and drying it with dry tow. Then clean the tow and reuse it.
As Shirley Conran said: "life is too short to stuff mushrooms".

[Lead pot]

When June comes around I load up the Gypsy wagon and head west to shoot the Big Hill match at Baker Montana then head off the the Quigley match in Forsyth Montana and back to the Big Hill for the second shoot. I end up with a 5 gallon bucket full of empty brass. I cober the bucket with a lid to keep the air off as much as I can till I get back home. I deprime them before I fill the bucket with water to let them soak a couple hours and run them through a tumbler with mix of ceramic and SST pins with a squirt of Dawn and a little Lemishine and they come out looking like new.
I wont put the cases in a jug with water and shake the cases, all that does is peen the case mouth edges.

http://i704.photobucket.com/albums/ww43/Kurtalt/c079706d-58f3-425c-82a9-aa92af1b4518_zpswgl7zh3u.jpg (http://s704.photobucket.com/user/Kurtalt/media/c079706d-58f3-425c-82a9-aa92af1b4518_zpswgl7zh3u.jpg.html)

[Nobade]

You got a lot of brass! 😁

Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

[flint45]

I like to use water and simple green, that's also what i clean my barrel with works great and very fast.I clean the barrel with strait simple green just soak the patch.