Has Anyone Made a Chart or List of Clean to Dirty Powders?

[TAJ45]

That would be great Dusty. I seem to run out of that commodity much more frequently than years previous. WhattaPal !!!!

 

[spclark]

Dawn has up to 5% Ethanol. Not good for cartridge brass.

Never heard that.

Used denatured alcohol (ethanol with a bit of methanol added to avoid taxation as distilled spirit, otherwise sold as Everclear) for years to quickly dry wet-processed fired cases.

Can you cite reference(s) supporting this please?

Alcohols are basic compounds, ethanol has a pH of 7.33, a bit more basic than water.

Ammonia in aqueous solution is a fairly strong base @ pH 11.6.

And we know ammonia’s bad for brass.

 

[Macropod]

Running at 60K+ pressures tends to keep things cleaner. Within the design limits of the case and firearm of course.

 

[fyrewall]

I use oceans of 91% Isopropyl alcohol to clean up gun stuff - it is cheap, and relatively benign. Submerging the innards of my AR and scrubbing out the receiver with a tooth brush and using a 20 GA brush inside the bolt carrier seems to wash away lots of black crud. The cam pin is easily removed along with the bolt head and the ejector slicked up and extractor are easily brushed clean. No scraping. Ready for a light application of lube. After 100 rounds or so the rifle smells real bad but the alcohol fixes it. I wipe off my lubricated sized brass with the isopropyl to remove the lube and black crud. It also works inside primer pockets with my tiny home made primer brush (soda straw with bundle of wire epoxied inside) but has to evaporate completely - lots of black crud there, containing lead and whatever. This gets into my protocol of wearing nitrile gloves to keep the bad stuff off my skin.

Soap & stuff used for cleaning - common ingredient is ethanolamine - an effective safe solvent that is also used in gun cleaning solvents - it sort of attacks copper but only mildly - like making it look bright and turning patches blue - time dependent - foam and propylene glycol retard evaporation. Quite possible that Dawn might contain ethanolamine, many other household cleaners have this stuff added.

Shooting off 6.5X47 Lapua rounds @ 62K plus makes for clean brass.

Some breweries add kerosene to distilled ethanol for industrial use (tour Olympia brewery, rationed free samples, circa mid 70's

 

[Grimstod]

Both are bad for brass. Vinegar needs to be deactivated.

Dawn has up to 5% Ethanol. Not good for cartridge brass.

In long term storage, brass will become brown and brittle.

Citrus in water with 2 drops of Dawn is safer. Imo.

very good to know.

 

[243winxb]

Can you cite reference(s) supporting this please?

The old link no longer works. -
Ethanol effect on cartridge brass

The test fluids selected for this investigation were Fuel C, CE10a, CE17a, and CE25a. Fuel C was selected as the control since it is representative of premium gasoline and is a standard test fluid widely used for studying material compatibility to gasoline. CE10a represents an aggressive formulation of E10, and as such, it can be viewed as a baseline test fuel since E10 is currently available in many, if not most, fuel dispensers. https://bioenergykdf.net/system/files/Intermediate Ethanol Blends Infrastructure Materials Compatibility Study_Elastomers_Metals and Sealants_Kass.pd


Not going to research it again. A few drops of Dawn is not going to hurt anything. Just dont over do it.

Short term, no problem. Ammo stored for 10+ years, not a good idea. Imo.

 

[Walt Schmidlin]

Dirtiest powder I ever used was H-380, sold 7.5 Lbs to a friend who liked the powder and was happy to buy more.

 

[spclark]

A few drops of Dawn is not going to hurt anything. Just dont over do it.

Short term, no problem. Ammo stored for 10+ years, not a good idea. Imo.

Yep, I agree.

And thanks for putting that study up! I learned something from it.