DallanC wrote:

Year or two and pretty rough feeling. I dont really want to vac pack ammo.

Pics?

Any sort of significant tarnish in that short of a time frame in this climate surprises me. Generally the arid Utah climate is rather favorable to firearms and ammo.

I could go and pull ammo off my shelves that were loaded a few years back and take a look, but I don't think I'd find anything like you are seeing.

Does your tumbled, unused brass get the same tarnish on it? If not, it could be due to the sizing lube/agent you are using.

Bushmaster wrote:

I'm with Azar...How much tarnish are we talking about. I loaded these 5 years ago and they have been setting on my loading bench ever sense.

you need to get out more Bushy.... heck shoot the ones eating the lil Ladies roses down the drive if necessary but you just got to use those loads up........I took mine of similar age out and shot wallabies for the day and still didnt use them all up


have heard good things of vibrating cleaners that use S/S pins but it seems the pins them self are a rare commodity over here.
the vasoline I resize cases with and then wipe off (on pants leg is SWMBO isnt watching ) must keep mine protected as Ive never seem corrosion on any of mine.

Using Vaseline as resizing lube
I would suggest that is not a particularly good lube mate...lots of potential for dented necks etc there.

Have a look around and see if you can get your hands on a tin of Imperial Resizing Wax...absolutely brilliant stuff, and you need so little of the stuff to do the job.

I like the look of DD's cleaned cases, but no way I could justify that amount of money just for clean cases. I'm like Bushy...who looks on the inside.

I shoot about 3000+ pcs of .223/5.56 brass a year. I pay 5 cents a piece to have the brass sized, trimmed, chamfered and de burred with flash holes uniformed and primer pockets swaged to remove crimp and then stainless steel tumbled to this finish. That use of $150 saves me hours of time and aggravation and wear and tear on my tumbler and dies and press. Even using a drill to run my trimmer I figure it would take me about 30 hours of clock time to size and trim and detail 3000 cases not counting tumbling time. I look at it as paying myself $5/hour not to make my hands ache for days.

For 2 cents more per piece, I get it annealed every third reload too.

Special loadings and the opportunity to use them hasn't come up. Besides I've been working with my .50 Hawken and other weapons. One must keep one's self defence skills up when one carries a .45 ACP.