Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Has anybody ever seen this before?

Just a guess but I have gotten similar discoloration when flame annealling when the case lube was not removed. That does not explain the 6-7 out of a hundred though
With Alpha I highly doubt it's a metallurgy problem. Tumble it off and go forth. Get the brass very clean before the next anneal and see if the issue goes away

I think TCP got it. Some type of residue.

Another odd one I had was I was cleaning some metal and left an open container of muriatic acid near a cartridge block. Those cases turned some funny colors mostly green and some got fuzzy looking just from the airborne fumes. I have also heard of military brass going bad when it was stored in the horse stables, the ammonia in the air was enough to ruin the cases and ammo. I would be on the look out for soft cases even though that appears to be surface only.

Keep in mind that the discoloration appeared immediately after the last firing, and long before annealing. The cases went into the rifle looking normal, and came out looking blackened around the neck and shoulder area. When I annealed it, it just became more pronounced, and traveled further down the case body.

It was also tumbled after the 3rd firing, after re-sizing, so there's about zero chance that there was any case lube on these cases when they were fired last (4th firing). I can't think of anything that would have gotten onto the brass before it was fired. Another detail is that the worst few pieces of brass for discoloration were also within the last 10 fired out of the batch of 100 pieces.

Has nothing to do with your brass issue, but what rifle is your 6 Creed? Just curious....

Ultimatum Deadline action
Bartlein HV barrel at 22"
MDT ESS chassis
TT Special trigger
Badger FTE brake
Tactial Snowflake camo Cerakote
SS 10x
Burris XTR Sig rings

Now, that's too funny...

I laughed out loud, sitting here all by myself...

DF

Curious about this.....tag to follow along.

Yeah, I'm tagging this one too.

My first and only thought was under-pressured - then I read 108 ELD at 3115 fps.....*nevermind*

Have had that happen with low pressure loads. Have had that happen with not low pressure loads but not so uniformly as it looks in the picture. Actually it happened seemingly randomly, sometimes it did but mostly it didn't. Didn't bother me (Lee case holder in a variable speed drill, steel wool fixes fast) so I never looked into it but reading the above and thinking back perhaps the chamber had excess oil the times it happened leaving a path for combustion gas to get between the chamber and the case. Seems like a stretch but that's all I can come up with.

Would be interesting to dry patch the chamber and see if it still happens, and wipe down the ammo just to be sure though I read you pretty much eliminated problems with that.

I think Larry’s already committed to writing letters for Alpha.

personally i have never seen low pressure loads appear that "sooty" that far down the case...

Prior to the 4th firing on this batch of cases, the bore was cleaned with WO and the chamber was cleaned out with a dry chamber mop. I doubt there was any residue remaining, but so far that’s the only possibility coming to mind that makes any sense. Still doesn’t explain why I fired a pile of rounds from the lot after cleaning the rifle with no effect on the brass, and then within the last few shots a few seriously discolored pieces of brass showed up.

The lugs recess are one of the worst places for trapping unwanted cleaning chemicals. It doesn't make it from the lug recess to the chamber until you've fired enough rounds to build enough heat to draw the moisture. Thats what I think happened. I'd take a case and put WO on it than fire it in your rifle and I'd do it when the barrel is warm



Trystan

If the contamination came from the lug recesses, the staining likely would have appeared at the rear of the case, rather than the neck and shoulder.

Here’s Alpha’s response:

“As you state, you have a strong load so it couldn't be too low pressure causing the brass not to seal correctly. To me it sounds like a slight contamination on the brass which is burning in the anneal process. With so few cases having discoloration I have to think it is just a slight contamination issue; also, you can clean it off makes me believe that too.

It doesn't take much to cause staining like that to happen. We experienced some issues with it until we developed our own proprietary wash chemical specifically for the process. Rinsing in regular city water due to the high chlorine content causes staining too, we usually see heavy spotting from that.”

Did you use any chemicals on your dies?

(Hint)

No, nothing that I can think of. From time to time I clean out my dies with brake clean, but I didn’t do that before the last firing.

What powder were you using? I wonder what if anything the de-coppering agents in some powders do to the case. But probably not as this would need to be in conjunction with leakage which you have ruled out.

R26

Tin or Bismoth anti fouling agents are pretty benign. They can leave more residue in the barrel but it comes out easily in most cases.

What those cases look like was when I was new to annealing and I really put the flame on some cases sitting in a water bath. The water created the distinct line. But these were toasted so much I could crush them with a pair of pliers with little effort. If I had shot any of them I probably would have gotten complete head separation. A lesser annealing can still cause the color change. Re-heating would bring it out again so this is a possibility and could be combined with some contaminant at an earlier processing phase. As Alpha pointed out it could be something as simple as tap water.