More about case cleaning

C

cdoc42

New member
It may be boring to discuss case cleaning again, but this experience triggered it. I was given a proprietary case cleaning/polishing product by a friend who has reached the point where his hobby has to be discontinued.

It is reddish-brown in color, and after an hour, the cases are, indeed, shiny and clean. But there is a reddish powder residue inside the .45 Colt case and in the extraction groove of the case. This leaves me to wonder if it will interfere with the powder burn efficiency as well as act as an abrasive in the extractor mechanism. I suspect there is a layer of the same residue thin enough not to be seen on the body of the case itself.

A logical question then follows about good old corn cob cleaner that lacks the polishing compound but may deposit a similar layer of fine powder as well but is undetectable by the naked eye.

Or, as previously discussed, is this a situation where excess retirement time lends itself to overthinking again?
 
If this was a dry mix, sounds like he added jeweler's rouge in there; does a great job of polishing. I use a 50-50 mix of corn cob and walnut and will, on occasion, add in some rouge.
 
Have you tried rinsing in water? RO or distilled if you have it. An hour in corn cob will remove it, squirt in some auto polish/wax.
Yes, over thinking.
 
I didn't rinse in water because I don't want to go through the drying process. I did run them through an hour's worth of plain corn cob that took all the deposit off the external surfaces but still left a noticeable red deposit on the first third of the inside of the cases.
I'm going to assume that it's no big deal and blast away at the range. I never load to max levels anyway, staying 1 to 1.5 grains under max just to play it safe.
 
If it is red rouge, it may polish the edges of the toolmarks in your bore after awhile, but there's no way a polish that fine will remove enough metal to affect a steel bore's life. Jeweler's rouge is ferric oxide, IIRC, and I remember it being used as a glass polish in telescope mirror making as the next-to-finest polish (cerium oxide was finest), though, in the "old days" when they didn't have cerium oxide, rouge was graded finer by collecting what remained in suspension after some was stirred into water and allowed to settle for a time.

If you want to get it out of the cases, Stainless Steel pin cleaning in a rotary tumbler will do it. The rouge will tend to stick to carbon deposits in cases, and the pins are a way of removing that. Ultrasonic cleaning will clear it, too. But re-cleaning probably isn't on your schedule of favorite things to do.
 
Thanks, Unclenick.....you hit the nail on the head regarding recleaning cases. If the residue is not enough to foul up my accuracy patterns or injure the rifle, I'll even let Martha Stewart give me a less than 100% clean grade if she inspects my work.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top