Case cleaning?

J

jlmurphy

Guest
Does anyone clean the inside of their cases? With a borescope I can see built up powder fouling on the interior case walls. I would think it would eventually change the interior volume, and certainly would not be consistent. I thought of using powder solvent, but since brass is a copper alloy, I didn't want to risk it attacking the case walls. This must have come up before, but I have never heard it addressed.
 
Go over to the accurate shooter forum (6mmbr.com). Talk to a fellow that goes by Gunamonth. He is somewhat of an expert on ultrasonic cleaning. It will leave your case shinny inside and out at no harm in little to no time at all.
 
I have a commercial deep fat fryer that I mix up with simple green and water and boil all my fired cases after running them through a decapping die.

About 20 minutes and they all squeaky clean again. Just be sure to rinse the snot out of them because if you let them air dry the simple green forms a slimy scum layer on the brass.

Works great.

Another option is what a buddy does. He has a rotary tumbler full of small OD stainless steel ball bearings. He tumbles his brass in this with a couple cap fulls of dawn dish soap.

Works really, really well also.
 
jlmurphy said:
Does anyone clean the inside of their cases? With a borescope I can see built up powder fouling on the interior case walls. I would think it would eventually change the interior volume, and certainly would not be consistent. I thought of using powder solvent, but since brass is a copper alloy, I didn't want to risk it attacking the case walls. This must have come up before, but I have never heard it addressed.
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I tried an ultrasound using white viinegar and water and it will clean the inside of the cases like new. I can't remember which site I got the info from but I think it was 6 BR. I tried it to see if it would work and it did. I onlly clean the outside of my cases because I think cases are sort of like smoking pipes(tobacco only), which require a lot of burning before the pipe smokes right. I get the opinion that the benchers would not even think of cleaning the inside of their cases once they fiind the good ones.
 
jl ...

jlmurphy said:
Does anyone clean the inside of their cases? With a borescope I can see built up powder fouling on the interior case walls. I would think it would eventually change the interior volume, and certainly would not be consistent. I thought of using powder solvent, but since brass is a copper alloy, I didn't want to risk it attacking the case walls. This must have come up before, but I have never heard it addressed.
Click to expand...

The simple truth is that in 100 yard/200 yard "B"enchrest the vast majority do not clean the inside of cases. Heck, there are a lot of folks who don't even clean the outside of case necks. Having said that, there are a few who clean everything. Hence, the article from 6mmBR.com on total cleaning: http://www.6mmbr.com/ultrasonic.html. :)
 
Mine is not nearly so elaborate, but it makes me happy. I use different size of ceramic media for different size case, case cleaning soap and a foot bath pick-up at the second hand store for 5.00 (it heats also) It sure works for me, with little waste.
 
NesikaChad said:
I have a commercial deep fat fryer that I mix up with simple green and water and boil all my fired cases after running them through a decapping die.
Click to expand...

You ever fry food in that unit? Twinkies, onion rings, or maybe even butter?:D

Your shop sounds like it has everything!
 
Take the cases you've shot..............

today and run some warm water into any container, add a quater teaspoon of ascorbic acid (powdered) and agitate them for a couple minutes. Then dump the mixture and rinse thoroughly, then set out on some sunshine-warmed concrete. You can read in Rifle #135 (letters to ed.) that the vitamin C dissolves the ammonia generated by combustion, which will, over time, cause stress corrosion cracking, which annealing will NOT eliminate(don't ask, but I know). This is a common problem with RELOADED ammo that has set for some time. Once dry, you can keep the so treated brass around until you have a tumbler full, then tumble them all at once. You can also tumble them w/the ascorbic acid, I just prefer to do them ASAP, rather than wait to tumble them when I "have enough for a load" (I have a large tumbler) HTH;):D
 
I use stainless steel cut wire for media, in a Thumlers tumbler. Load the tumbler half full of deprimed cases, use 5 lbs of the media, fill with hot water and 4 oz. of Ivory liquid. Tumble for 4 hours, cases look like new, inside and out. Media is .041" diameter cut in .25" lengths.

Primer pockets are clean, as well as the inside of the cases. Takes extra time to shake the media out of the cases, need to do that under water as the media tends to bridge, but no carbon inside or out.

Picked this up from a gentleman who's handle is Hummer, it is the best method I have ever used to get really clean cases.
 
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