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March 7, 2010, 04:02 PM | #1 |
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Headstamp on 45 acp brass.
I had a friend bring me a coffee can full of brass the other day. 90% of it was 45 acp, some 40 sw and 9mm.
The most of it was Remington, but there was a lot with the headstamp wcc then with a number after it some 42 some 82. Is this a winchester case, which I prefer. Some of this brass measured under .888, according to my reload books .888 is minimum case length. After depriming and sizing I found quite a few that were .885. I put them in my brass recycle bucket. Any comments on tossing these cases? Thanks Coptersteve |
March 7, 2010, 07:04 PM | #2 |
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I believe you are correct. WCC I believe is Winchester Cartridge Company. I've had very good results with WCC brass.
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March 7, 2010, 07:20 PM | #3 |
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WCC followed by two digits is one of the military headstamps used by Winchester. The two digits are the year they were made. 82 is fine. 42 would likely have been fired with corrosive primers originally and may be weak. Check it carefully before reusing it. Some collector may want to pay enough for WWII era brass to enable you to buy some newer stuff?
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March 7, 2010, 07:29 PM | #4 |
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.45 ACP brass shrinks with repeated use. I don't bother measuring case length and just shoot them until they split or are lost.
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March 7, 2010, 09:18 PM | #5 |
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March 7, 2010, 10:45 PM | #6 |
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Headstamps
Wow Pete, what a great site, I found all the headstamps on casings I have. Who'd known that TZZ was Isreali Military. Thanks for sharing!!! I bookmarked the site for future reference.
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March 8, 2010, 05:18 PM | #7 |
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If it is OK I will continue to call WCC Western Cartridge Company, then there was WW, if it is OK I will continue to call that one Winchester Western, most of this started in about 1929 when Winchester got out of the hardware business and the gun business and the ammo making business. Before that WRA was used, and during WW11 Olin used WRA with a date stamp.
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March 8, 2010, 06:34 PM | #8 |
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Their incarnations are numerous. I've used that collector's site for headstamps for some time. It lists:
Code:
Stamp Company 616 Imported to Sweden from USA and made by Winchester/Olin CALGARY P.S. Olin Corp., East Alton, IL 62024, USA (for the Calgary Police Services in Canada) W-W Winchester-Western (Olin), East Alton, IL 88 Western Cartridge Company (Olin), East Alton, IL WCC Western Cartridge Company (Olin), East Alton, IL WESTERN Western Cartridge Company (Olin), East Alton, IL WIN Olin Corp., East Alton IL 62024, USA WINCHESTER Olin Corp., East Alton IL 62024, USA H Winchester Repeating Arms Co., New Haven, CT W Winchester Repeating Arms Co., Bridgeport CT WRA Winchester Repeating Arms Co., Bridgeport CT WRACO Winchester Repeating Arms Co., Bridgeport CT
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March 9, 2010, 12:17 PM | #9 |
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"42 would likely have been fired with corrosive primers originally and may be weak"
Two types of corrosive primers, mercuric was not an issue, mercury has an infinity to brass, when fired the case is scrap before the bullet left the barrel, we have not used mercuric primers in this country in the last 85 years+, we use a primer that has little or no effect on the brass case but leaves a salt in the barrel when combined with the atmosphere causes rust in the barrel, then came washing the barrel with water after that came Windex? Back when mercuric primers caused brass to harden and become brittle there was an effort to tin the inside of the case. with 1,000s of cases to choose from that were pre-1952 military I was warned about corrosive primers, without the Internet I used forming dies, I turn the forming die upside down in the press and crammed the case into the die, once the shoulder hit the die the case starts to collapse to form a bellows or fold like an accordion, cases that collapse in this manner are suitable for reloading and are not hard and or brittle, cases that are brittle will fold collapse and or split. After the Internet, if I want to know if brass is workable, I screw the forming die in from the bottom , cases that split while collapsing are not suitable for reloading, the cases could be god candidates for annealing. F. Guffey |
March 9, 2010, 12:20 PM | #10 |
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'the cases could be god candidates for annealing'
Should have been good canidates for annealing... Forgive, F. Guffey |
March 9, 2010, 12:35 PM | #11 |
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All the early non-corrosive stuff was mercuric priming. It started with a Swiss patent in the first decade of the 20th century, but I don't recall the exact dates. The Europeans didn't seem to mind that their brass became un-reloadable. The stuff also apparently tends to deteriorate rapidly, causing short shelf life.
I was more thinking of conventional corrosion. I've got some WWII era brass that has verdis gris spots inside. My assumption was the potassium chloride residue may have initiated corrosion there? But maybe not. I've also got a few rounds of some non-corrosive 1982 surplus 7.62x51 that corroded through the necks to the bullets from the outside. Because of potassium chloride, if the 42 cases look OK from the corrosion standpoint, I would at least decap them separately and wash them in soapy warm water and let them dry. I wouldn't want the salty primer dust in my best presses if the primers are original?
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March 9, 2010, 12:50 PM | #12 |
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The problems with mercuric primers and brass cases were discovered very shortly after the Army's switch to .30-40 Krag.
The US military was pretty unique (and cheap) in that it collected all of the brass expended in training and sent it back to be reloaded. It had done this with .45-70 brass, but the low pressure black powder rounds, combined with the fouling, apparently served to protect the brass from mercury embrittlement. Once the source of the problem was tracked down the military began working on non-mercuric primers. As far as I know, the switch to non-mercuric primers in US military service ammunition was pretty much complete by about 1904, or perhaps earlier. Commercial manufacturers also began to transition around the same time, but commercial use of mercuric primers continued for some years. The military still loaded mercuric corrosive primed match ammunition as late as the 1960s because it was felt that the old style primers promoted greater ballistic uniformity and accuracy. Boxes of ammunition were marked that the brass was not suitable for reloading. That practice was ended sometime in the 1960s.
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March 9, 2010, 02:07 PM | #13 |
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WINCHESTER correct a MUNDO
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March 9, 2010, 02:37 PM | #14 | ||
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Quote:
The Swiss started issuing a non-corrosive mercuric mix with no chlorate in 1911. The Germans followed suit. But in this country we didn't follow foreign language publications that discussed these matters in those days, and it took us until the 1922 to figure out that smokeless powder was not corrosive, as had been the explanation for smokeless loads causing corrosion up to that point. A bureau of mines engineer, Dr. Wilburt J. Huff, was tapped to investigate corrosion in barrels, and he figured out it was the potassium chloride in the primer residue that was to blame. He figured out some other interesting odds and ends, too. Barrels wouldn't corrode in humidity of 50% or less. Indeed, at 30°F, corrosion didn't occur until humidity was between 68% and 76%. The old Ordnance Department ammonia solution for removing cupro-nickel fouling had prevented corrosion inadvertently because the 20 minute soak in that aqueous solution also dissolved the salt. Hatcher describes how an early non-corrosive, non-mercuric mix was tried for the 1930 national matches, and achieved record setting accuracy. However, the quantity of priming mix needed, as with the early mercuric Swiss formula, could not be fit in a boxer primer cup. It had to use the Berdan system. Hot weather at Camp Perry that year caused some high pressure signs with the ammunition, and it was withdrawn from all future consideration by the Ordnance Department and replaced with standard ammo from a prior year for the rest of the matches. Hatcher regretted he was overseas with our rifle team at the time, as he suspected some other factor was at work than the primer. The rifle team overseas had no problem and won the World Championships and "almost everything else in sight". Quote:
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March 9, 2010, 03:01 PM | #15 |
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As far as I know, no link was ever shown that potassium chloride salts (potassium chlorate is changed to potassium chloride in the chemical process of primer detonation) served to mitigate the effects of mercury.
If a case was originally loaded with a mercuric primer and smokeless powder, and then fired, there would be no black powder fouling to protect the brass. The mercury would be driven deeply into the case, and embrittlement would occur. On subsequent firings, even with low pressure black powder, the brass was brittle enough to fail. If, however, the scenario was revered, brass first fired with black powder and then reloaded with smokeless, chances are the case would NOT fail. As far as the potassium chloride salts being suspended in black powder fouling, black powder was well understood as being corrosive as hell. Everyone had known that for hundreds of years. The potassium/sodium nitrate is hygroscopic in much the same manner as potassium chloride. So, naturally, the potassium chloride salts would be removed in the normal cleaning regime necessary with black powder. When the change was made to smokeless powder, it was understood that the powder fouling, what little there was, was not corrosive, and no cleaning was needed. It wasn't clearly understood that the potassium chloride salts in the primer would cause corrosion. Until there were a lot of rusted rifles and cleaning procedures were adjusted accordingly. It was known that smokeless powder fouling was not corrosive far earlier than 1922. As early as the late 1890s both Du Pont and Lafflin and Rand were certifying to both the military and civilian markets that their powders were non corrosive. For whatever reason the commercial market in the United States apparently knew long before the military that primers were the culprit. Winchester started working on non-corrosive primers as early as just before World War I, but there were serious difficulties in developing a mixture that was both sensitive AND stable. Winchester and Remington both came out with Staynless and Kleenbore non-corrosive, non-mercuric priming years before the military developed a composition that they found suitable. Over the course of time it was well proven than both the Winchester and Remington formulas would have been more than adequate had they been adopted - millions of rounds of .30 M1 Carbine ammo were loaded with Staynless and Kleenbore formulas during the War and were still perfectly serviceable when distributed by DCM in the 1960s. Apparently the methods that the military used to simulate long-term storage were FAR harsher than anything that would actually be seen in long-term storage, hence the issues with dead primers, hang fires, etc.
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March 9, 2010, 03:41 PM | #16 | ||
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Otherwise, you seem to be saying the same thing Hatcher did about the powder firing sequence. The 19th century combination fulminate of mercury and potassium chlorate primers did not embrittle cases loaded black powder from the git go. If people bought smokeless rounds primed that way, then subsequently tried to load them with BP (or anything else), they then proved brittle. The early .22 rimfire smokeless cartridges had such a high ratio of priming mix to powder, that they gained a reputation for causing instantaneous corrosion, and nobody in the know would use them. Quote:
I don't think the commercial non-corrosive non-mercuric primers showed up in Kleanbore and (I'm blanking on the Peters equivalent) until the earl 1930's, which would correspond to Hatcher's tale of the FA priming mix from the 1930 National Matches being an early one. It's perfectly possible, I suppose, that the commercial outfits did read the Swiss and German publications on the matter that our military obviously did not, but the foreign non-corrosive was all mercuric and American reloaders didn't like that, so I assume they would await the availability of a non-mercuric non-corrosive priming mix. It would be odd if Hatcher and others active in shooting sports would be unaware of commercial non-corrosive developments of that sort in advance of the Bureau of Mines work? Hatcher did say something about DuPont pressuring them to go to Berdan primers so they could adopt the Swiss priming mix, but that was later, I think? If DuPont and Raffin and Land were proving non-corrosiveness in the 1890's, I suppose, absent non-corrosive primers at the time, they may simply have been lighting powder on steel plates with a match? Given the primer availability issue, they may simply not have been believed in many quarters? Also, institutional memory can be poor. The officers who were convinced may simply have retired or changed posting without bothering to pass it on? But again, I am just repeating Hatcher. I am at a disadvantage in not having been there to experience some of this for myself. My dad is old enough to remember some of it, though. He tells of buying a surplus trapdoor Springfield and some BP ammunition for it by mail for $5 when he was ten years old or so. He had to conclude cleaning of the gun with boiling water. He says he shot a rabbit with it once, and was dismayed by how little remained for the stew pot, and so he retired the gun for that particular purpose.
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March 10, 2010, 12:55 AM | #17 |
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My head hurts.
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March 10, 2010, 10:23 AM | #18 |
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"What I meant was, black powder fouling mitigates the effects of both mercury and of potassium chloride."
OK. Now I understand what you were trying to say. I wouldn't say that the BP fouling mitigates the effects of the primer salts, though. BP fouling, as I noted, is just as hygroscopic, and just as corrosive, as the potassium chloride salts in primers. If you clean for one, you've cleaned for both, because they're virtually equally water soluble. "Hatcher seems pretty clear the military didn't know this until they put Huff on it." In retrospect, reading between the lines might be beneficial. The fact that Hatcher recounts the investigation into what was causing barrels to rust indicates to me that they did know that the powder companies were saying their products were non corrosive. What really baffles me, though, is why not one of the materials scientists for the military was able to do some simple chemical reaction analysis and recognize what was going on. "they may simply have been lighting powder on steel plates with a match?" More likely it was determined as part of the pressure bomb testing that was done to determine burning rates and peak pressures. It was known that, unlike BP fouling, smokeless powder fouling was not water soluble. That's why not long after smokeless powders came out you began to see the first Nitro Powder Solvents that were developed specifically to remove smokeless fouling. Hoppes No. 9 was first marketed in, IIRC, 1903. "I don't think the commercial non-corrosive non-mercuric primers showed up in Kleanbore and (I'm blanking on the Peters equivalent) until the earl 1930's." Both Winchester and Remington were working on non-corrosive priming mixtures prior to World War I, but only came up with viable mixtures that passed their own requirements testing in the mid 1920s. Remington applied for a trademark on the Kleanbore logo and name in October 1926, and received the registrations in early 1927. Winchester lagged a few months behind, applying for and receiving registration for Staynless in 1927. Peters Cartridge Company apparently never trademarked the term Rustless, which they used in their advertising for non-corrosive primers, but it starts appearing in late 1920s/early 1930s. advertising. Given that both Remington and Winchester applied for trademarks at virtually the same moment, it's pretty apparent that both companies cracked the non-corrosive primer question and had product ready for market in 1927 or 1928.
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March 11, 2010, 06:04 PM | #19 | |||
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Mike,
This will interest you. I did a more careful read of Hatcher, rather than just skimming to refresh memory, and he actually pretty much says what you did. We forget in the Internet era just how slowly and unreliably information could be passed around back in the first part of the last century. No TV or Radio or even private telephones in many homes. My friend Mark Bernstein wrote an excellent book called the Grand Eccentrics about inventors and innovators in the Dayton, Ohio area at the end of the 19th century through the first half of the 20th. He points out that several years after the Wright Brothers flew at Kitty Hawk and despite their subsequent regular flying activities at what later became Wright field, there were still east coast newspaper editorials stating human flight was all rumor and no substance. Crowds would gather around the field to gawk at the flying, apparently having been unwilling to believe what they had not seen with their own eyes. It's not like there were no cameras back then, so one marvels at the persistence of conviction in the face of such evidence to the contrary? It's been awhile since I read the book, but it seems to me it took someone of particular reputation witnessing and supporting the claim before New York believed it. Hatcher says the Germans had worked on non-corrosive primers since about 1900. Quote:
Hatcher says Dr. Huff got the job of looking into bore corrosion because, in 1918, the War Department requested the Bureau of Mines look into the matter. They must have felt those guys had the best explosives expertise, or maybe they were just too busy with the war? They apparently weren't reading German or Swiss publications on the matter. Regarding BP fouling mitigating potassium chloride damage: Quote:
Quote:
A last item and a question: Hatcher said 1927 is when Kleanbore priming actually got to market, which agrees with the timing you gave. He goes on to provide the formulas for Kleanbore, Staynless, Rustless, and Western non-corrosive priming mixes. All had mercury fulminate in the vicinity of 40%. Hatcher comments that, owing to the short shelf life of these primers in humid air, Kleanbore was soon revised to have a substitute for the mercury compound, and gives examples of a couple of such mixtures. He does not, however, give the years in which the sale of non-mercuric non-corrosive primers actually began? More importantly, he didn't give the years production of mercuric primers stopped? That's what is critical to mercury-embrittled case identification, not counting such primers sold to handloaders (if handloaders ever bought any)? I wondered if you had any information on those dates, or of a date certain past which commercial load lots would have been mercury-free? Would a decade have seen the end of mercury in those rounds? Nick
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March 12, 2010, 09:10 AM | #20 |
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Mike/Unclenick: You guys need to get into more discussions. I have learned a lot reading this thread.
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March 12, 2010, 09:48 AM | #21 | |
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Quote:
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March 12, 2010, 10:27 AM | #22 |
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Nick,
I know it's potential heresy, but I simply don't buy Hatcher's explanation of events, especially not regarding the .22s. Why? Because, as I noted before, because the corrosive component in black powder fouling and the corrosive component in early primers have VERY similar solubility, which means that they have virtually the same ability to attract water from the air. And, comparatively speaking, the amount of corrosive compound left by a charge of black powder is probably a factor of tens, if not hundreds, of times greater than the amount left by a primer. My personal guess? Shooters were cleaning with nitro solvents, which simply will not remove corrosive priming residue. You can use Hoppes No. 9 to clean a gun fired with corrosive primers until hell freezes over, but the bore is going to rust because Hoppes contains no free water, which is required to dissolve the potassium chloride. Smokeless powder at this time was so completely new and different that it really had a lot of people off balance when it came to dealing with it. There are accounts of people lighting small amounts of smokeless powder in the open air and, on seeing how feeble the flame is, simply dropping back to their blackpower knowledge and loading shells accordingly. With a progressive smokeless powder you can imagine what the result of that was. Chloride salts are generally corrosive for one reason -- because of their hygroscopic nature. Sodium, potassium, cobalt, etc., they're all pretty much equally hygroscopic, and with the same corrosive potential, because of the chloride ion. Granted, some of them actually deliquesce (sp?), or are so hygroscopic that they will dissolve, but that's not the case with any of the compounds we're talking about here. "Hatcher said 1927 is when Kleanbore priming actually got to market, which agrees with the timing you gave. He goes on to provide the formulas for Kleanbore, Staynless, Rustless, and Western non-corrosive priming mixes. All had mercury fulminate in the vicinity of 40%." That's very interesting, because as far as I know Winchester was advertising in a left handed manner their smokeless power ammunition as mercury free before World War I. It was my understanding that all commercial ammunition produced post World War I, unless specifically marked, was non-mercuric primed, but it's looking like that is wrong. I have a couple books on ammunition manufacturing - one a "shop manual" produced by Federal Cartridge Company as an operations manual for new national defense plants in the run up to World War II, and another one put out commercially by NRA pubs a few years ago. I'll have to dig through those to see what I can find. I'm also going to have to take a look at my old boxes of ammo from Winchester and Remington to see what they say. Also, take a peek at what I just found on Google books... http://books.google.com/books?id=dHb...ynless&f=false It says that virtually US commercial primers became non corrosive by 1931, but unfortunately it says nothing about mercury fulminate in commercial ammo at the same time. But, given the indication that RWS was the first company to commercially use lead styphnate as a priming compound in 1927 (Synoxid primers), it was probably some time after that in the United States.
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March 12, 2010, 10:38 AM | #23 |
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OK, page 44 of the Google book I linked:
"As a result of the need to reuse spent cartridge cases for economic reasons, there has been no mercury in U.S. military small arms primers manufactured since 1898. It was used to a later date (about 1930) in certain U.S. commercial primers." I have GOT to get me a copy of that book...
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March 12, 2010, 01:56 PM | #24 |
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Mike,
That book link is great. Thanks for finding that. The cheapest copy I can find is $86. That keeps happening to me. Lots of interesting out-of-print books seem to be hoarded by small sellers hoping to make a killing on them. The chart on top of page 46 of the book is copied straight out of Hatcher, right down to the typeface. Your second note caught it. The military (Hatcher again) never used the mercuric primers because none of them passed military testing; hang fire tests in particular. The pre-WWI Winchester primers were non-mercuric because they were chlorate primers, but they weren't non-corrosive. The mixed mercury fulminate and chlorate primers began to come to an end when the Ordnance department analyzed the Krag cases, as you described. Hatcher lists the mix (didn't I mention it earlier?) that replaced the mercuric primers. It's only the later non-corrosive mixes that brought mercury back again. So, we have a history in which there were mixed mercuric and chlorate primers up until the the Krag, and that was not a problem because black powder loads were rendered neither more corrosive nor brass-damaging by the presence of these compounds. It was only when smokeless came in that the effects of mercury on brass and chlorine on steel became issues above and beyond (this is the only point of disagreement you and I have) what happens from using them in BP loads. Then, the chlorate was removed to get all the highly corrosive chlorine out of the chemistry starting in 1901 in Europe and in 1927 here. Here that was done by putting mercury back in again, which must have frustrated reloaders. I would expect that reloaders continued buying and using mercury-free (but corrosive) chlorate primers for that reason, until the fulminate of mercury substitutes finally made non-corrosive primers mercury free. It's a hard date for this last event for all manufacturers that has been elusive, but it was probably done by WW II? Steel in salt water exhibits more corrosion than steel in fresh water, which is why corrosion resistant coatings are tested in salt spray rather than plain water. Water itself (pure de-ionized stuff) is pH neutral and not aggressively corrosive. Indeed, a chemist once told me he shipped steel drums filled with water with a few drops of ammonia added to make the pH very, very slightly basic. That would protect the whole drum from corroding at all during shipping because the hydronium ions were well constrained by it. I began my engineering career designing production test instrumentation for a scientific instrument company. Their line included relative humidity measuring instruments, and one of the standard test methods for checking them was to use saturated salt solutions that controlled humidity by solution equilibrium in closed chambers held to specific temperatures. Decades later, I still use this principle to keep a few good cigars humidified in a pickle jar for special occasions. It works like this: I fill a cup with sodium chloride and pour in enough distilled water to cover it. The water quickly saturates with salt. I then set it in the pickle jar. Some portion of the water goes into the air in the jar, bringing the relative humidity to about 71% (it changes some with temperature), but no more. In the sealed container, any water that attempts to evaporate beyond producing that RH is recaptured by the salt crystals that are produced by the resulting super-saturation of the solution. That crystal formation is key, because it means that if you put that same cup of saturated salt and water into a lower RH open environment, instead of having excess water to give off, the crystals start to form. They still tie up some water as hydrate in the crystal form, but, in effect, an RH below that level will dry the salt out. All water soluble salts do this, and they all can be used to regulate humidity in the way I described, but they each have a different relative humidity they will regulate to at any given temperature. That because of the differences in their hygroscopic strength. In other words, they don't attract or hold water with equal enthusiasm. IIRC, the ASHRAE handbook, among other sources, has lists of the RH's of equilibrium for different salts at different temperatures for people wishing to use them for humidity control. I'm sure some p-chem books will, too. The above explains why Huff found that corrosive primers used with smokeless powder caused no corrosion in barrels at humidities below 68%-76%. Over the temperature range he tested at, those were apparently the equilibrium humidities for potassium chloride. Until the humidity gets to that level, any water taken up by the salt is tied up by hydrate formation. An excess of water beyond that is needed for the salt to start to ionize, which is when corrosion commences. As to your point about cleaning solvents, you are likely correct that many individuals didn't know better than to use nitro-only solvents with chlorate primers. Hatcher discusses bore cleaning solvents at great length, including use of aqueous solvents and polar solvents like lanolin or acetone that can scavenge water, and also of emulsions of polar solvents for removing salt. He carefully distinguishes them from non-polar nitro powder solvents. He describes how even five cleanings with such solvents would not prevent rust from the chlorate primers. (Huff showed oiling the bore did not create enough of a moisture barrier to prevent it, either.) Hatcher gives a formula for bore cleaner that included both polar and non-polar solvents (analogous to Ed's Red) and that successfully protected his guns from corrosion. Hatcher's comment about the .22 shorts indicated that nothing you could do would stop corrosion from them. I have a hard time believing, given his extensive awareness of the solvent situation, that he did not mean that to include using the right bore cleaning solvent. My surmise is that these guns, if used in humidity above the Huff limits, would commence corroding on the microscopic level before the gun could be got back home to be cleaned. Once rust forms, it protects the underlying salt, and helps hold moisture, so it takes some herculean efforts to get it to stop continuing to rust. But I may be wrong. Hatcher's chronology is not always 100% clear. I suspect that unless we do an experiment with some old barrels and corrosive primers and both BP and smokeless powder, this point of relative corrosive aggressiveness may remain unresolved? One thing that tips the scale for me is trying to explain how, if BP residue offers protection from brass exposure to mercury by segregating the mercury from the brass, it would not do the same for potassium chloride which also comes only from the primer and also only in small quantities? The BP itself has no chlorine salts. Like the early non-corrosive primers, it has nitrate, and that's it for salt. In addition, H2S03 will form from sulfur and water (it takes the presence of a pentavalent catalyst to take it to the more reactive H2SO4, IIRC?). It will eventually corrode the steel, but not as aggressively as chlorine. Now, where to find some corrosive primers? Nick
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