Brass Case Annealing

[ESquared]

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Patina? What was used in the wet?

Steel tumbling pins, hot water, Dawn and lemon juice. By "patina," I just mean dull, not shiny. Not green, in other words.

[Mistered]

I told ES I experienced the same thing - IE brass discoloring from drying in the oven.
I use Dawn & lemon juice in my wet solution.
All I can think is some sort of weird 'electrolysis' taking place.

[ESquared]

Since these cases are now so recognizable, it'll be interesting to see if the shiny brass finish reappears when I tumble them again. It's not a bad look, just not a "new" look.

[Mags]

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was the patina very faintly pinkish?
which version of Dawn?

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Patina? What was used in the wet?

Steel tumbling pins, hot water, Dawn and lemon juice. By "patina," I just mean dull, not shiny. Not green, in other words.

[wingnut]

information from folks familiar with the positives and negatives; along with, recommendations would be appreciated

See:
https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthrea ... #Post47871

[Mistered]

it'll be interesting to see if the shiny brass finish reappears when I tumble them again.

Oh they will come back bright and shiny! Air dry this time around however and they should stay that way.

[wingnut]

More salt:

https://forum.nosler.com/viewtopic.php? ... 264e2f4dbc

[Firefly]

As a number of respondents have stated when cases have been reloaded a number of times the case necks become harder, this has two results firstly the neck tension holding the bullet in place becomes weaker and secondly the case has a tendency to split when fired.
The solution is to anneal the case, however only the neck must be heated, if the base becomes too hot the case is weakened to the point of becoming very dangerous to use.
The simple way to do this is to stand the cases in a shallow tray of water approx half case depth, heat the case mouths using a propane torch then either tumble the cases into the water or just leave to cool, it make no difference to the result. Brass heated and quenched shows no difference in hardness from brass heated and air-cooled.
The problem is how much to heat the case mouths, glowing red is to hot, the brass needs to be heated to around 400 deg c at this temp a very slight colour change will be visible, using a propane torch with a flame temp of between 1000 & 2000 deg c this can be achieved in about 5 seconds.
An alternative is to hold the base of the case in the fingers and rotate the mouth in the propane flame for 3 or 4 seconds then quench or just set down on its base to cool. The second method does work but with short cases burnt fingers are common. As I note I reload a lot and have not split a case in years.