Wet Tumbling Curiosity

Toadywart, you may be on to something. The tumbler I used when my brass came out champagne colored was a new one. When I was assembling the tumbler, I apparently picked up a regular steel screw and lock nut rather than the stainless. Since replaced.
I did not connect the two, but it was in the same time frame.
 
Nothing has changed on my tubler set up. except of course for the fire salvaged brass. The color does come off easily with some steel wool, and it is all brass, no steel (magnet checked). I am going to run the empty tumbler tonight and then run some "good" .223 brass that is in the "to be cleaned" bucket, and see what it does. I have to think it is either staining from the pure filth or an acid reaction from the ash etc. on the old brass.
 
Just checked the Lyman 600 and the corn cob media is slowly removing the discoloration. Guessing maybe 60 percent of way to shiny. I may throw the second batch of discolored brass into the wet tumbler and see what happens this go round.
 
I have found that after 15 loads, the ss pins get dirty. Not to the eye, but schmootz starts to cling to the pins that can't be seen, but it reduces the effectiveness of the pins. Run the pins, alone in your tumbler with a shot of simple green. An hour like this and your ss pins will be refreshed.

Not saying this is your problem, but it's helped me.

Also, any longer than 2 hours and you'll need to replace the water and soap. Beyond that, you begin to burnish the brass, which will cause that funky color.
 
The pins get cleaned regularly, it always amazed me how much crud come from just running the pins. Generally in "normal" cases a couple hours cleans them just fine. These "fired" cases (pun intended) were so incredibly dirty that I ended up changing the water every hour for at least the first 2 hours. I have let normal cases run for 24 hours before and noticed no burnishment of brass or discoloration, just the same shiny clean you get after 2-3 hrs. I ran them again last night, changed the water and am running them again, again its all expiramental for fun, I don't intend to load any of them as I don't know how hot they got in the fire, and I have plenty shiny, resized and trimmed just waitint to be reloaded.
 
You know if the brass spend a lot of time in the fire? Might have gotten heated hot enough to make it too soft. Suspect the odd color indicates excess heat and it's been annealed too much.
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Don't know exactly how long or how hot the fire, although it was hot enough to melt lead out of bullets leaving the copper cup/jackets.
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Annealing starts around 500* , lead melts just over 600*

Cartridge brass is annealed at the neck and shoulder only . It's important the case does not get to hot at the head . I would not load those cases that came out of a fire . If it burned hot enough to melt lead out of cartridges . The heads of the brass were likely annealed rendering them to soft to be safe .
 
No worries, these were never going into the reloading bin. Just an attempt to see if I could clean them up. The ones that have been in the Lyman 600 for a few days are.almost normal looking now. Also ran the second batch of through the wet tumbler a couple more time they are slowly getting lighter in color. Amazing that even after I think 4 cycles (2 were very long) that the water is still filthy. One more last test to clean some of my fired brass to make sure that somehow I haven't forgotten how to clean brass, then I will find something else to be curious about.
 
Disclaimer:
I am not a metallurgist.
I did not play one on TV.
I did not stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.:rolleyes:

Here goes my understanding of annealing.

Brass, and other metals, are a crystalline structure.
When heated, the crystalline structure 're-arranges itself' (non-technical term)
in order to create a strong yet soft, or ductile (technical term) structure.
This allows for the expansion, and contraction of the case when loading as well as firing.
Each time the case is fired, it looses some of the ductability. If not re-annealed, the case will eventually split.
This is because the crystalline structure has re-alligned itself, and created a less ductile, or work hardened metal.

For a completely technical description Try this explanation form Wikiedia:confused:

Someone please correct me if I am mistaken on any of this.:o
 
Just general info on annealing. Many do not understand why they need to anneal. Just that they do. I believe if you are going to execute some process, you should have some understanding of why you do it, and what it does.
 
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