How to clean inert bullet shell casings
See how to clean empty brass shells. – Do not try this with live ammunition! – It’s quite simple, really, even with these very dirty .30 caliber shells. They were stuck to the cotton ammo belt, found inside a rusty .30 cal. MG ammo case at a farm in the Ardennes (or so I’m told). Anyway, after having the cartridges demilled with an unloading hammer by a professional, the heads got separated from the casings, but everything was still very dirty.
The secret: citric acid. You can buy it at your chemist. I used about 60 grammes for 1 liter of water and left the shells soak for about 6 hours. Then you still need to dry them off and polish with a soft cloth, or maybe even with brass polish, but the result is really nice.
You could hydrochloric acid as well, but in that case you’ll have to polish the shells as it affects the brass material. I tried it this way a while ago and it works very good as well.
Do you have to take any precautions using the citric acid? Or isn’t it dangerous?
Thanks for the tips Wouter!
No danger at all. It’s also used for preparing some kinds of herbal teas and preserving fruits. Just keep adding the citric acid to water, little by little until it tastes too sour on the tongue. Then it’s OK. You can use the amounts I indicated as a guideline.
I also heard of people using hydrochloric acid, but it’s dangerous to work with. You have to dillute it a lot, and you can’t leave it in the solution too long. That can be a big problem when soaking a lot of shells at once, like I did. Because you need to rinse them and polish them quickly after taking them out. Besides, citric acid is cheap. I paid 2,50 Euros for 100 grammes, but if you buy more, I think it can be cheaper.