Aging Brass

Discussions covering the components and techniques of reloading for your long gun.
Ohio3Wheels
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Re: Aging Brass

Post by Ohio3Wheels »

Ranch Dog wrote:I imagine Henry is using the 12 groove rifling because that is the SAAMI Spec for a 44 Mag Rifle.
I'm sure and I imagine the legal departs at the other makers are insisting on 12 grooves also. Given that that is the spec for rifles and in this day and age it would be unwise to abandon the spec.

I wasn't surprised to see 12 grooves it just has a different look to it compare to 3 and 4 groove rifling
.

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Curt.......makin' smoke and raising my carbon foot print one cartridge at a time +guns +guns
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Re: Aging Brass

Post by Jeff H »

Macd wrote:...........
3. Stress Cracking or Seasoning
This is a combination of the residual stresses left in the brass from manufacture and loading combined with chemical attack by ammonia. Ammonia may be present in man made materials particularly some cleaning products, in the soil or anywhere animal urine decomposes releasing ammonia into the surrounding air. Humid conditions accelerate this process. As brass hardens its elasticity decreases and neck tensions increase adding more stress to the case..........

............annealed by induction rather than flame..............

.........
Brasso has ammonia in it - or at least it used to. I caught a guy using it in his tumbler and he liked it so much he tumbled thousands of rounds of brass to clean it all up and make it pretty. A couple years later he started finding split necks on loaded ammo - lots of loaded ammo. I attribute some of the splitting of some of the very old brass I had to that because he and I swapped components and casting/handloading tools for years. I finally got all the old brass segregated and recycled after a few years. We were both working on 257 Roberts rifles at the time, so my exposure was limited, although interesting.

Sometimes, the brass looked fine, but when fired, I would get three-inch groups at a hundred yards with a rifle/load which usually produced sub-half-inch groups. Other times, I'd pull a cartridge out of the cardboard box and the neck would be split all the way to the shoulder and the bullet welded to the inside of the case neck with verdigris.

I've left very old brass loaded for decades, especially in the 257, without necks splitting and the neck area in my chamber is wide. The throat is long too, so when I neck-size, I only do about two thirds of the neck for 75 grain HPs and it looks like I'm loading to fire-form brass for a wildcat - there's an extra "shoulder." OK, that's an exaggeration, but it's very visible. So, I had been really working my brass over. The 257 isn't too hard on brass to begin with (low pressures), the old brass was probably high quality, but the addition of the ammonia on some of it just wasn't helping things at all.

I'm no chemist nor a metallurgist, but both a chemist and metallurgist have told me that ammonia is very hard on brass, so I knew better. Felt bad for the guy who ruined almost every piece of bottle-necked brass he had, to include a very large lot of good ol' National Match '06.

Dang! Induction-annealing! I never thought of that. I know wheel spindles (and other automotive parts) have been induction-hardened through industry my exposure, but never thought of doing brass that way. I used to know the basics of the process for wheel spindles, but forgot. I do remember that a spindle can be turned cherry-red in part of a second. Hmmmm, how to do this without electrocuting myself..... And I just promised an old Lincoln Buzz-Box to my brother. Bet that has some componentry that would be helpful....

No,.... That's too much like work to figure it out and I'd end up with big a collection of brass puddles before I ran out of cases trying to get it right.
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Re: Aging Brass

Post by Macd »

Jeff is correct. Brasso contains ammonia as well as Oxalic acid.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brasso
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Re: Aging Brass

Post by Ohio3Wheels »

Conclusion:

Second round in the TC split as bad as the ones from the Henry. Pulled the down, save bullets and powder, cases to the dump.

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Re: Aging Brass

Post by Jeff H »

Just an update to what I shared before, useful or not, but I recently inherited a WRAC Model 70 which was rechambered from 6.5x55 to 6.5x284. Please don't groan, I'd have left it original myself, but it is what it is.

I remember that rechamber and the initial reforming (necking down brass .020" and annealing) and load development. All was done with extreme care by a very experienced rifleman, reloader, wild-catter. As far as I know, no Brasso had ever been used on this lot of Winchester 284 W brass.

I got a box of 50 cartridges along with the gun, all kept in a MTM box in a wood/glass gun cabinet in an upstairs bedroom. No moisture, no exposure to chemical fumes, almost ideal except for wide temp swings in the unheated upstairs. The cartridges were extremely well-done - looked like factory stuff, loaded by a meticulous and experienced loader.

Eleven of twenty rounds loaded with Nosler Ballistic Tips had split necks from the mouth to the shoulder. The bullets twisted easily in the finger-tips and came out easily. I would not be surprised if those would have jammed back into the case while feeding into the chamber from the magazine. There was a faint bit of verdigris at the bases of the loose bullets, but there was also verdigris at the juncture of the polymer tip and copper jacket - only on the ones with split necks. Weird. It wasn't airtight storage, but there was very little moisture in the air where they were stored.

There were some spent cases - no cracks. There were some loaded with Hornady bullets - no cracks.

On this particular incident, I'm, blaming the brass. Regardless of the other factors, these were loaded in '94, and I had plenty of trouble with Winchester brass at that time, like 7x57 handloaded, new cases slpitting and actual factory 6.5x55 necks splitting on the first (only) firing. That may have only been a temporary thing because I have read of many people happy with Winchester brass. I've not bought any in 25 yeas because others I tried at that time worked and I stuck with it.

Not sure why none of the cases with Hornady bullets split, but enough of the others split that I'd not trust a single case in that lot.
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Re: Aging Brass

Post by Jeff H »

I forgot to mention that these cases would have been new, never fired, or at most - fire-formed, but I am almost certain that hadn't been done yet. There is other brass for this gun which I have not received, but the ones set aside with the gun were "fresh" and "clean" - just a hibit of this particular reloader.
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