The 10lbs is $1.10/lb cheaper than the 5lb. The bulk price reduction is much less from that jump. Worth it to get the 10 if you were gonna get 5 anyways.
Printable View
The 10lbs is $1.10/lb cheaper than the 5lb. The bulk price reduction is much less from that jump. Worth it to get the 10 if you were gonna get 5 anyways.
Ordered 10 lb from DudaDiesel & going to clean a ton of brass - love new ways to do things!
But Love Life, she must be one helluva woman! :lol:
Quote:
I use plastic 50 gallon totes for bras washing.
Hi all,
I'd like to give the citric acid a try for cleaning brass. However, I am not sure about the concentration of the solution.
* The store where I bought it recommended 25 - 50 g / l, which amounts to a 2.5% - 5% solution. However, this was for "general purposes" (I assume descaling).
* Here I seem to remember to have read 2 teaspoons / quart (but I cannot seem to find it anymore in this long thread), which amounts to a 1% solution. (I am from Europe, which is why I am using g, l and % rather than tsp's and quarts :-))
* Hornady's One Shot Sonic Clean Case Formula seems to be citric acid (see URL below for MSMS). The MSDS states this is a 15% solution. The solution should be diluted 40:1. Assuming the concentration in the MSDS is for the undiluted solution, this amounts to 0.375% solution, which does not seem to be correct.
http://www.hornady.com/assets/files/...se_Formula.pdf
* I found an interesting data sheet (see URL below) about citric acid passivation of stainless steel, where a 4% - 10% solution is used. This is about stainless steel and not about brass however.
http://27.111.87.182/~australw/citric-acid-passivation/
So, what is a good concentration to get started?
Is it recommended to add detergent, similar to the commonly used vinegar/salt/detergent solution? And if so, how much?
Does anyone have more insight into the One Shot Sonic Clean Case Formula? Are there other ingredients?
Thanks,
I throw a couple of table spoons into about 2 quarts of water in an old crock pot. Cook the brass for about 2 hrs., dry and tumble. This will take the black spots left by the torch (from annealing brass for swaging) off the brass. It has also cleaned some of the dirtiest range brass I have found.
1 tablespoon (level) of powdered citric acid weighs 15 grams, so 10 grams per liter is close enough.
Ive been using about 1TBL per Quart of boiling water with a shot of
of dawn and letting the brass soak a little while stirring occasionaly with good results. I buy my citric acid at walmart in the food canning section and its Ball Brand. I dont pay attention to the strength.
[QUOTE=sagacious;890503] You can find citric acid sold inexpensively at health-food stores, and some drug stores, farm-supply stores, etc.
Another source is a winemaker supply shop. They have one over in Nampa, Idaho (10 miles from here) that sells it for just shy of $5.00 a pound. Will save me on shipping charges. I'll go pick it up next week. 5-pounds ought to last awhile.
Awesome thread here. I am about to try out citric acid. Wish I had my canning supplies with me - but those are in storage while we wait to bring the rest of my stuff up from Texas here to Missouri. :)
But, my inlaws found an ancient Koolaid packet in their kitchen, and I snagged it. I boiled about a quart of water, and dissolved it. I'll add that to about 3 gallons of water, throw in some brass and see what happens. I'm working on my oldest lot of 5.56 (LC98) as well as some 9mm.
Here's my question - I'm using a cement mixer to tumble my brass. It's steel. I plan on having it Rhino-lined in the very near future anyway, but I wanted to ask what the citric acid might do to that. Won't matter on this round, and I won't be using the citric again until after I get the mixer lined. This is my test case to see if I *really* need SS media, or if the brass + citric is enough by itself.
I intend on tumbling this load during the bath of citric acid solution, as the 5.56 is grungy and will need it. Next item is to properly dry these things.
I can't use hair dryers or dehydrators - too small, and time consuming with the volume of brass I have.
LoveLife - what did you use for your drying racks? The hardware cloth I see at home improvement stores all oxidizes, and puts the dreaded green crud on the brass even just while drying throughout the day. I thought about putting Rhino liner on that, too. Thoughts?
EDIT - caught myself before I did this. Apparently the steel + brass + citric ain't bueno. Gonna do this in a bucket by hand the first time.
For the drying racks I covered them with that grippy stuff you put in cabinets to keep plates from moving around. Took care of the oxidation real quick like.
For the citric acid cleaning. Get a big tote, Fill it with hose water, add a mess load (about 10 heaping TBS) of citric acid, add some dawn. Now get you a 5 gallon bucket and drill it full of holes. Fill bucket with brass and dink into citric acid concoction filled tote. Spin it to agitate it for about 15 seconds and then let sit for 5 minutes in the concoction. Remove and allow water to drain from bucket back into tote. Dump brass onto toarp or drying rack. Repeat the process with more brass. I would do 250 lbs of brass before changing the solution out.
The next day I would collect the brass and run it through a cement mixer filled with 40 lbs of corn cob and treated with Nu-Finish and Mineral spirits. It cut the tumbling time down in half. Two hours of tumbling gave 2,000+ pieces of 308 brass a very nice shine. Well, except for the super dirty stuff.
I have since switched to cleaning my brass with a SS tumbler set up. Cleaner, easier, and you get 100% sellable brass.
1 packet of Kool Aid to 3+ quarts of water is going to be pretty weak.
I use 2 packets to maybe a quart or two of water. It is reusable, until the mix starts looking real green. When it's like that, it still cleans, just not so well.
Yup, that is exactly what I learned. Saw the nasty brass begin to lighten fast, but it just stopped after a while. Went to Walmart across the street and got a small jar of Ball citric acid from canning aisle. Worked great on 90% of the brass with one treatment.
Had to hit a chunk of it 2x at strong concentrations to clean up the grody ones.
After 2 rounds of rinsing, I will now dry them all in the oven.
Will post pics shortly.
OnceFired
Make sure your oven is on low.
I don't clean brass on nearly the scale you do if you are using a cement mixer. I do find that after annealing brass for swaging I will have a nasty black spot from the torch. I use a crockpot to heat the solution and cook the brass for about 2 hours. Dry and tumble over night (vibratory tumbler and lizard litter) with a little Iosso case bright in the tumbler and the brass normally comes out looking like the day it was first loaded. So, you may want to try heating your solution for those stubborn stains.
Ok here are pics as promised.
This is the brass I had set aside as quite tarnished. Some was tarnished all the way around, others in big streaks down one side, etc. It appeared to be mostly LC98 from the ones I could read. Understand this is what they looked like AFTER about 5x the amount of tumbling in crushed walnut as any of my other brass.
NOTE: all images have hi resolution versions on Flickr. More detail is there. If you look at the hi-rez for this one, you can see the detail of the dust on there, but the cases themselves are nice & smooth and have the layer of tarnish on them that makes them look slick/slippery.
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3691/9...464121c8_z.jpg
2013-07-25 12.32.38 by OnceFiredLakeCityBrass, on Flickr
To compare how dark those are, have a look at the rejects pile I had racked up by sorting my brass by hand. These have bent mouths, dings, tears, etc but in general were far less tarnished. These were the only semi-dirty brass I had left to compare to.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7459/9...fa46e820_z.jpg
2013-07-23 15.32.05 by OnceFiredLakeCityBrass, on Flickr
I had boiled a pint of water & put in one Koolaid packet. I added that to roughly 2.5-3 gallons of scalding water in the orange bucket from the tap. I did have to drive over to the storage place (5min away) before I could use this, just for reference of temperature. It was still too hot to touch with my bare hand on the glass jar of Koolaid. Then I added some brass and checked the results on that handful. Seeing immediate results, I dumped in all the tarnished brass. It overwhelmed the citric acid as one could expect, so I went and bought more acid at the store right across the street.
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5547/9...70bf4d9a_z.jpg
2013-07-25 12.33.01 by OnceFiredLakeCityBrass, on Flickr
Same shot, with flash this time maybe 30 seconds later if that long.
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5542/9...89cbfd0a_z.jpg
2013-07-25 12.32.50 by OnceFiredLakeCityBrass, on Flickr
Koolaid dose has been thoroughly outmatched.
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2882/9...99f2628b_z.jpg
2013-07-25 14.29.39 by OnceFiredLakeCityBrass, on Flickr
Here is the bucket after a liberal dose of citric acid + 10 minutes tops. Didn't have my measuring spoons, so I have no idea. I used a lot because I was hitting at least 1,000-1,500 truly nasty tarnished pieces. I used my hands to agitate the brass.
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5448/9...aabbefb6_z.jpg
2013-07-25 14.29.24 by OnceFiredLakeCityBrass, on Flickr
I strained the brass through my mesh screen, and rinsed the bucket & brass 2x more. This is what they looked like.
http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3778/9...2c01814a_z.jpg
2013-07-25 14.58.04 by OnceFiredLakeCityBrass, on Flickr
On the first pass, 90% of the tarnished brass was good to go to the next cleaning step (drying & tumbling.) But some of the rest had interesting patterns - like black tiger stripes, or black squiggles, or black cheetah splotches. Hitting them 2x more and letting them sit longer solved that issue.
I then dumped as much water out of each case as I could, then put them in the oven on low which worked nicely.
Now I have brass with lots of pink patches that should polish up nicely. I'll post a pic of that once I have them done. Oh, and now I can tell after cleaning all these up that they were mostly LC95, not LC98. Interestingly, even the LC04 and LC08 had a few in there that had also been jet black with tarnish.
Don't reload as much as most of you but have found that hotter is better. Ran the citric acid though an old coffee pot poured over the brass and added a dash of Dawn dish soap. After about an hour the out sides were clean and bright but the insides needed more time. Did about 400 pieces this way and even with only about an hour of soaking most primer pockets were found clean when sizing and de-capping. Next time I will leave them in overnight to see if the insides come clean if not a Scotch Bright should take care of that. Preheat the oven to 200 turn it off put the brass in and in a half hour they are dry as a bone.
And here is a pic of the funky brass tarnish patterns, after citric acid treatment.
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2845/9...129491a9_z.jpg
2013-07-27 20.56.39 by OnceFiredLakeCityBrass, on Flickr
Not sure what the lined pattern is coming from. The cheetah style splotches are kind of random, but the ones that baffle me are the zig-zag lines. I don't have one here like that because I forgot to grab it before I finished the last round of double tough tarnish lot. But I have absolutely no idea what might cause tarnish to pattern like that.
OnceFired
The pattern is coming from your drying racks. Specifically that mesh you have the brass sitting on in the picture.
Put some of the grippy stuff that goes in cabinet bottoms to keep dishes from moving over the mesh and you'll have no more issues with that. It also allows air to circulate around the brass.
So here's a question. If my cement mixer bowl is steel, with ostensibly steel bolts securing the inside bottom of the bowl & the two agitation blades - will rhino-lining the entire interior & bolts be safe to use with the citric acid?
I like the results I see from the acid overall. And, it doesn't seem that over-use of the citric acid solution is possible - the brass won't over-clean. As long as the acid cannot react with the steel due to the lining, it seems like it would be fine to use the mixer as the solution & tumbling simultaneously - with the brass serving as its own media.
I doubt I'd use quite as hot of water with the lining, but that temp decrease would be countered by having the longer exposure to lower heat level + the agitation should help remove more too. I know that just wiping the tarnish off the brass is possible once it's in the solution.
Thoughts?
I would NOT rino line as the brass will eat that stuff away over time and you'll end up with rino lining in your brass...
It is the galvanized mesh giving you zebra striped brass. Hit it with the citric acid again and run it through the cement mixer.
Citric acid wash it separately, and then dry tumble.