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

I noticed that a handful of pieces of the 100 brass were discolored after the most recent firing. I've never seen this from a bolt gun before, after thousands and thousands and thousands of rounds fired. It kind of looks like the "burned" discoloration you sometimes see on pistol brass. This is Alpha 6mm Creedmoor brass. The brass has been fired 4 times, and never displayed anything like this before. When I annealed it, the color became darker almost instantly, and quickly traveled down the neck, shoulder, and body of the case. I was able to scrub off the discoloration with extra fine steel wool. It's not normal, loose soot as is sometimes seen around the neck of an underloaded cartridge, but it almost seems like soot that has been plated onto the case. And the colour only shows partway around the case, not the entire circumference. The rifle and ammo has performed as expected, with no abnormalities.

Case on left was fired in the rifle. Cases on the right were annealed after firing. On the right there is a normal case after annealing, as well as a few of the discolored pieces after annealing. Has anybody seen this before?




And one of the discolored cases after annealing...

TAG

Wow! Never have seen anything like that before.

Quite the mystery. Reckon I’d be contacting Alpha.

I've seen it in .223 ammo. I can't remember the brand. It is from annealing.

Already gone done it

Can you explain further? This brass was annealed by Alpha, and never again before this showed up. The cases on the right in the first pic have all been annealed. The left-most piece did not discolour after firing, and looks like normal, annealed brass. The other three on the right were discoloured after firing, and darkened even more after annealing.

Maybe somebody screwed up and let them cook too long??? elifino

When I have seen similar it was because of lower pressure loads and the brass did not obdurate completely. This allowed gas back into the chamber.
The Alpha is a harder brass so less than max pressure this could be the reason. Other than this I would be guessing. The annealing could be a factor.

Agreed, I’ve seen similar with under-pressure loads. The load in this rifle is pushing a 108 ELD at 3115 fps. Definitely not low pressure…

It’s puzzling- I’ve never annealed this brass until today, and it has 4 firings on it already. The discolouration occurred after the last firing, and before today’s annealing.

Get Stick to write you a letter and tell Alpha it is a letter from your lawyer. He has a way with brass manufacturers.

Bwhahahahahahahaha

Me being polite:
"That's quite curious."

Me being honest:
"Is that from an F'ing Creedmore? If so, WGAS."

CBHS?

try a different brand cartridge case and see what happens ? let us know too ,I wonder if there is some type of solution-grease on that brand case? one other question do those shot cases out of that rifle still resize ok ?

This only happened to maybe 6 or 7 out of 100 cases, and they’ve been tumbled prior to the most recent firing. All cases resized fine. I wish I had taken a video of the annealing, it was wild to see the dark black staining spread down the already darkened portion of the case almost instantly.

Moon phase yesterday? Another mystery...wild....

Keep us posted on what Alpha has to say.

something is on those few cases or medal is not right ,here is what I would do throw those cases away and just watch for it in the future ?

I have had similar discoloration when I had wipe out residue on my fingers from cleaning a rifle, and then handled brass while in the process of "breaking in" a rifle... shoot a few, clean rifle, reload cases just fired...repeat.

I would guess that those cases came in contact with a cleaner or solvent. I would bet that if you sacrificed a case by sanding it or taking a file to it, you would find that the surface discoloration can be scrubbed off.

If the cases were in contact with a solvent, it is likely that some copper was leached out of the brass and it may be more brittle and react to annealing differently.

Thanks for your comments. I threw all the cases in the tumbler for an hour and a half, and only the darkest couple of pieces of brass are still discolored. I took some extra fine steel wool to them, and was able to scrub off the staining. Still curious what caused that, and if the brass is still good to use.

Got a reply back from Alpha, but they need more info before giving me much of an explanation. Will update when they get back to me again.