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.

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.

I’m not sure how the cases were annealed at Alpha, or what contaminants they may have come into contact with, but I know that I’ve never exposed them to any tap water or other chemicals, aside from possibly trace amounts of WO or the polish in the tumbler media. The darkening occured instantly upon applying the annealing flame, and you can see the result of my annealing process on a normal piece of brass compared to cases that discolored upon being fired in the rifle.

Still a bit of a mystery.

"or the polish in the tumbler media"

Could be, maybe. I like to tumble (brass that is) in clean corn cob for half an hour, more or less, after running in media with polish on the theory that the polish sticking to the case attracts dirt. Was surprised with the amount of polish residue on the brass. This is after resizing so that lube is gone too.

Thing is, I've tumbled using that polish dozens of times before, with nary a problem.

Jordan,

I think you said it was only the last rounds fired that ended up this way.... Have you fired the rifle since and if so did the brass look the same?

Jordan,

A few things that I think we know if I've been paying attention.

1. It didn't happen until the fourth firing.
2. The only change was cleaning the rifle with WO
3. It happened mostly on the last rounds fired

These three facts lead me to look strongly in the direction that it was traces of WO on the cases combined with high heat. I would propose that most likely the WO "if thats what it was" would ...........

A. Draw in under high temp loads....."last rounds fired"
B. Would only turn color where the heat was high enough to do so. The throat end of the chamber I would propose gets the hottest, and I would also propose that the draw would be strongest when the spent shell is ejected thereby getting most of the WO on the front of the new case going in and mostly on the bottom

If this is what happened it wouldn't surprise me if the WO got on most of the case along the bottom. It would be interesting to see if one applied heat to the entire case instead of just annealing the neck if the dark color would show up on the entire case.



Trystan

I’ll be shooting the lot of 100 cases in a match tomorrow, so I’ll let you know! Hope I don’t have any brass failures

Thanks for your thoughts. To correct #2, the cases were also tumbled between the 3rd and 4th firing.

The way I use WO is to insert from the chamber end, sealing the tubing against the throat of the rifle, then squirt WO until it emerges from the muzzle. I wait until the pressure of the expanding foam drops to about zero, and remove the tubing. I let it sit overnight, and push a dry patch through from chamber to muzzle. Then I use a chamber mop and clean out any trace amounts of solvent that may have tricked back into the neck of the chamber. There’s a very, very small chance of any WO getting all the way back to the recoil lug recesses. Having said that, I don’t know what else could have caused such discoloration.

The other strange thing, is that I’ve cleaned rifles this way dozens of times and never had this affect on the brass afterward.

I think that it's chemical contamination of some kind. The heat of firing started blackening the forward half of the case, and the heat of annealing completed it. I do not believe it has anything to do with the lug recesses. The pattern is remarkably consistent on those cases.

Were the cases that discolored fired consecutively?

Were they among the first, or the last rounds fired?

I tend to be somewhat methodical and fire rounds out of a box as I remove them beginning at the left. I charge and seat out of the loading block in much the same way.

What seater do you use? I wonder if it got contaminated by one case during seating and spread it to the subsequent cases as you seated bullets.

Love a good mystery.

What did you expect from a rifle painted SNOWFLAKE??

I blame the wipe out. Get yourself a piece of brass and put some wipe out on it for a day or 2 to see what happens. I played around with WO in .22 RF once just to try it. It turned into a mess. Some residual WO contacted rounds in the magazine and the brass looked about like that. I always keep rounds in the mag for yard varmints. I was pretty surprised when I chambered up. Had to clean the mag and receiver to get things right.

I actually saw a picture of that brass in the new Natchez Flyer and it looks the same as yours brand new.

- Some of the discolored cases were fired consecutively, but not all. Some were around the 50th case in the batch, but most of the darkest ones were between 90-100th. I am the same way, and work from front left to right rear when I load and fire my cases.

- Forster BR seater. I don't know what would have contaminated the cases. The bullets are moly-coated, the brass had been tumbled, etc. I've fired thousands and thousands of moly'd bullets, and have never seen this before.

Somebody gets it

I'm surprised Alpha didn't ask you to send them some of the brass for analysis.