Yesterday's Weapons Forums

As I have mentioned in this forum in other threads, I have been using some Trail Boss powder with good results.

I have also mentioned before that often I use a liquid case cleaner to get started down the road of case preparation. The cleaner of choice for me is Birchwood-Casey brand, which is a mild solution of phosphoric acid. I punch the primers out first with a Lee universal decapper so they wash more easily and thoroughly. After they dry, I resize them and sometimes rewash them in water and kitchen detergent to get the lube off, other times I drop the in the tumbler to do this.

Shooting lead bullets in rifle loads seems to create more dirt than when shooting jacketed ones. For one thing, some of the bullet lube gets burned off; for another, the sudden turbulence of the powder charge going off tends to dislodge particles of metal off of a lead bullet that it tends not to with the harder metals of a jacketed one. The benefits of cleaning cases with a liquid cleaner are much more obvious in the course of cleaning rifle cases that have had lead bullets fired out of them.

Before I started cleaning cases tonight, I noticed a light sheen of verdigris (green corrosion) on the shoulders of some of my 8x56R cases. Of the 72 rounds of 8x56R that I fired last weekend, exactly 20 were lead bullet loads made using Trail Boss powder, reported on another post in this forum. However, at this point, I wasn't sure if the cases with verdigris on them were the ones fired with Trail Boss or some others.

When I went to the range last Sunday, I also fired a single action revolver in .45 Colt with some loads made with Trail Boss.

Now there's a dandy combination to show up with at a Cowboy Action Shoot - - - a .45 Colt and a Steyr Model 1895.

Anyway, I took a look at the .45 Colt cases, and sure enough, they had this same green corrosion on them that some of the 8x56R's had. After washing all of these, I had the 8x56R's all lined up and I can pick out exactly 20 pieces (the same number loaded with Trail Boss) that have the same now rose-colored frosting on their shoulders. When brass cases get corroded, the first element to suffer is the zinc, the minority metal content. This causes a kind of pink or rose red bloom to remain on the surface of the case after they have been chemically cleaned. I don't know that this hurts the case; I have found cases laying around in the desert before that had been exposed to the weather so long that they turned brown. Upon cleaning with chemical cleaners, the brown washes away and the result is an entirely pink case. I have some of these that I have fired lots of times, and if any failed I haven't noticed that is was due to anything but the same fatigue that would result in any other much-used cases.

So, I mention all this because it would appear that Trail Boss has some, however slight, corrosive qualities. The cases that I discussed above only sat around for four days after firing. If you fire Trail Boss in any of your weapons, it might be wise to clean them right away.