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Thread: Question about drying cases after tumbling wet. biggie.

  1. #21
    Boolit Grand Master

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    An hour at 350 degrees ... that may or may not have softened them .

    Annealing is only done to the neck - shoulder area ... not the complete total case .

    I would at least do a crush test on the body of one or two to see if they were softer than an un-baked case . You don't want any head seperations when firing these .

    30-06 are just too common and easily available to run the risk that the whole case , including primer pocket , has become too soft .

    I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree but I wouldn't risk shooting them ...
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  2. #22
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    The oven temp only needs to be above the boiling point of whatever liquid they were immersed in.

    I rinse my brass in water so the oven temp is set to 220F. I set the timer for 20min.

    The change in color is oxidation. Higher temp and longer time more oxidation. The zinc in the alloy is the problem. From a metallurgy web site.

    "The first sign of dezincification of brass is a change in colour, from the yellow typically found in brass to the salmon pink of pure copper metal. The pink colour may then turn reddish and then brown if the surface copper corrodes to form cuprite. More severe dezincification produces a porous, weak metal, which is mainly copper (Dinnappa and Mayanna 1987). "

  3. #23
    Boolit Master hoodat's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by charlie b View Post
    The oven temp only needs to be above the boiling point of whatever liquid they were immersed in.

    I rinse my brass in water so the oven temp is set to 220F. I set the timer for 20min.

    The change in color is oxidation. Higher temp and longer time more oxidation. "
    I'm with charlie on this. Water pretty much boils/vaporizes at a little over 200. Get the brass up to temp, let them cool and load away. jd
    It seems that people who do almost nothing, often complain loudly when it's time to do it.

  4. #24
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    wallacem, I’ll send your friend 50 30/06 cases to keep him from a potential disaster. Pm me if you find this acceptable.
    I firmly believe that you should only get treated by how you act, not by who or what you are!!

  5. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by BamaNapper View Post
    A couple years ago I tumbled a hundred or so 223 brass, then tossed them in a toaster oven to dry quickly. I probably had it set for 250-300. I regretted it. The brass took WAY TOO MUCH effort to size. I re-lubed and tried a few of them, but decided it was not worth the gamble of breaking something. I mean these were HARD to size. In the end I chose to toss them to the scrap bucket. And yes, they were a different color. More red than usual.

    I'm thinking the problem was because I tossed them in a cold oven, then turned it on. The elements were running full bore to get the oven up to temp, and there's just no way of knowing how hot the brass got. I assume by the time the entire oven heated to 250 the brass may have been twice that. It would depend on where the heating elements were and where the temp sensor is. I still use the oven to dry brass, but I heat it up to 250 and turn it off before putting the brass in. Never had a problem doing it in that order.
    Something else must’ve been going on with the brass. No way heating it up and letting it slow cool made it harder! The only way to harden something is to heat it up to a temperature and then quench it! What you described would only have made the brass soft if it changed at all. Not harder! Besides that I seriously doubt by raising your brass to 300° it would’ve been hot enough to harden it! It gets hotter than that just firing it from your weapon! Depending on how calloused your hands are you can probably hold a piece of brass that’s 200° in your hand for a second or two. Try picking up a piece of brass immediately after it’s been fired! It’s possible that your oven was way hotter than two or 300° but unless you quenched it after you heated it it still wouldn’t have gotten harder.
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  6. #26
    Boolit Master mehavey's Avatar
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    Brass does not "quench" harden.

    That said, toaster ovens can reach lead "slumping' temperatures
    before settling back to the temperature you set it for at the beginning.

    https://thefiringline.com/forums/sho...7&postcount=10
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  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by rockrat View Post
    I often wet tumble my cases, but then I dump them on a towel to take off the worst of the water, then put them in a food dehydrator the other half was going to get rid of.
    I do the same and for the temp comparison, the food dehydrator is running at 150 degrees F, so no concern if they are in there for an hour or two

  8. #28
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    Long-long time ago, when brass was readily available, easy to find, and cheap (think range pickup), I used a gas grill to cook off the water after washing 500 x 223 cal. cases, which did not go well. Red hot is far too hot. Brass changes color in stages from yellow, orange, red, to black in time (oxidation). Turned out, every primer pocket was TOO SOFT.

    Not knowing, I loaded a half dozen. Primers blew out of the first three when fired from a single shot Handi-rifle, which OPENED the action on less than hot loads! I scrapped ALL of them. Lesson Learned. [pre-dry below]

    If it was easy, anybody could do it.

  9. #29
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    What I like about sites like this is it makes me do some research

    If you have heated up brass and it 'feels' hard or brittle then you have basically removed the zinc and created a copper oxide. The brass is permanently destroyed. If you heated it up and it 'feels' soft then you have annealed it. If the case head is soft you have destroyed the case.

    You cannot harden brass by heating and quenching. The only way (maybe) to harden brass is by work hardening. We notice this when we repeatedly resize and fire cases. The brass is being work hardened. Enough times (especially if sizing down a lot) and the case necks can split. That is why some folks anneal the case necks. Soften them before sizing.

    Annealing cartridge brass has been documented for over a decade. Tons and tons of info out there. Basic info is, you need to be above the recrystallization temp for significant annealing to take place. Below that temp and you will see some softening. A couple papers showed temps as low as 480F will result in some softening. Does not take much time for that to take place.

    Finer points. There are differences based on how the brass is worked and/or annealed prior to any measuring. If it was formed and then not fully annealed then the brass can harden very slightly at a very specific temp (between 300 and 400F). Then above that it will start to soften again. Various techniques of slightly work harden and 'partial' anneal give different results. And brass that sits for a long time does not age harden. Brass is also affected by some common chemicals, like ammonia. For example, if you clean your brass with something like windex and don't get all of the ammonia off, the brass can crack over time. There was one article that claimed the brass could be hardened by ultrasonic treatment but I could not find any info on frequencies or time or actual hardness testing.

  10. #30
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    Just to finalize this discussion, my friend put the 50 cases back in his tumbler and they turned back the original color. He loaded them and shot some and they worked fine. I guess they are ok. I would have scrapped them but I guess they are ok. Wallacem in Ga.

  11. #31
    Boolit Master WRideout's Avatar
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    Just another alternative: after I wash my cases in citric acid, they go in an aluminum pie plate, on top of the water heater. By morning they are completely dry.

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  12. #32
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    I have access to a rather large thermonuclear device that I use to dry mine. I’m in North Florida, only works on non-cloudy days, which we have a lot of.
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  13. #33
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    I use an old dried fruit dryer that I have had for eons. I cleaned it up and now use it to dry brass. The brass does not get too hot to handle with bare hands and it only take a couple of hours or so for the wet caes to dry. works for me, james

  14. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by LabGuy View Post
    I have access to a rather large thermonuclear device that I use to dry mine. I’m in North Florida, only works on non-cloudy days, which we have a lot of.

    This my favorite method of drying brass also.

  15. #35
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    Like atr, I made a nail board with hundreds of very long finishing nails on which to hang my wet brass for drying. I do this way in advance of any plans to reload. They may stay on that board for days or weeks before I get around to using them. Rarely do I have to do a beginning to end processing for a reload. I have the various components in various stages of completion.

  16. #36
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    I use a board with nails, an old towel and a hair dryer. I tumble the cases in an old towel to remove much of the water drops and then place the cases on the nails, fire up the old Remington Hair Dryer and heat them for about ten minutes. By the time they are cool to the touch, they are dry and I can reload them. I am leery of using my toaster oven (those have a very poor temperature control when starting up) and am denied the use of the kitchen oven by SWMBO, so this is what works best for me.
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  17. #37
    Boolit Grand Master OS OK's Avatar
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    No problems . . . 'Easy Peezy'





    Make a hammock out of a large bath towel, dump your brass in the middle and then grab both ends of the towel and work them back and forth making the brass tumble in the towel from side to side...the 'wash & wax' makes the brass shed any water whether inside or out and the towel pulls it away...
    Lay the towel out in the Good'ole sunshine that dries the brass in less than an hour.



    Use your magnet to pick up the spilled SS-pins...pins that might have stayed in a case will be in the dark colored towel and you can retrieve them there.
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  18. #38
    Boolit Master

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    Quote Originally Posted by OS OK View Post
    Make a hammock out of a large bath towel, dump your brass in the middle and then grab both ends of the towel and work them back and forth making the brass tumble in the towel from side to side...the 'wash & wax' makes the brass shed any water whether inside or out and the towel pulls it away....
    I do the same but made some drying boards out of synthetic 1 by. Instead of nails I drilled 1/2” deep holes into which I glued plastic pins. Trick is to make sure the pins are longer than the brass so water drains off. I set the cases on pins and let the sun finish drying them. Thought about using finish nails but didn’t want rust stains on otherwise clean brass.

    Click image for larger version. 

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    I try to tumble, dry, sort and lube on sunny days but in a pinch (and if the wife isn’t home) I can set the boards on the sneaker drying shelf that came with our front load dryer. Run for < 20 minutes at low temp does the job. The sun works great but air movement gets them dry.

  19. #39
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    Couldn't you just dump them onto a screen and let them dry?

  20. #40
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    I place mine on a dark towel on the sidewalk in the sun in the summer.
    I place them in an old dehydrator in the winter.

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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check