Getting Down To Cases
Even though It’s Our Nation’s Birthday, Let’s Talk Dirty!
Dave’s trek to this year’s Elmer Keith/John Taffin memorial shoot
in Idaho produced a crop of dirty brass and some good memories.
In my humble opinion, there may be no better kind of “dirty” than the powder residue one finds in the barrel of a revolver, around the front of the cylinder and the forcing cone, and on your fingers and hands after a day of shooting.
It’s a sweaty filth, compounded by residue on the empty cartridge cases just ejected from the chambers. It’s difficult to wash off, especially when using cold water pouring out of the cooler discharge spout and you have no soap. Wipe all you want to, the stuff is not coming off without maybe two scrubbings if you’re lucky.
And so it was following the recent Elmer Keith Memorial Long Range Handgun Shoot, which now also honors the late John Taffin. Traveling home over a five-hour drive from the northeast shore of Coeur d’Alene Lake in Idaho to my home in North Bend east of Seattle involved driving through a 40-mile dust storm of sorts, and nearly getting into a crash with a semi-truck at the east end of the Vantage Bridge crossing the Columbia River. A large orange highway barrel blew into one lane of Interstate 90. Top it off with trying to figure out a way around what was supposed to have been a freeway closure west of Ellensburg due to power lines blown down across all lanes (it had been cleared up by the time I reached the area), and it had the makings of a travel story.
Dirty deserves detergent. Filthy brass gets a good wash in
a wet tumbler. Three hours of rolling around with thousands
of tiny steep pins scrubs fired brass energetically.
The whole, long way my hands felt dirty and sticky against the steering wheel and a thorough wash with hot water and soap after reaching home finally made my palms feel clean. Until morning, that is, when I grabbed close to a hundred empties, dumped them into the Lyman tumbler with more hot soap and water for a three-hour roll, from which they emerged shining like new.
There’s something about turning dirty brass into sparkling clean brass which has always appealed to me. The reloaded ammunition resulting from this process is special because it’s all mine, made by me, and I’m not paying sales tax for a box of cartridges.
A glance down the bore of a Model 57 shows dirty powder residue.
Dave spent a sunny Sunday afternoon outside scrubbing the rifling.
The ‘Missing Link’
In the past I’ve tried to explain how the cartridge is what connects a shooter with the target. It’s the “missing link” of sorts when people discuss hunting or shooting success. In my case there was a fair amount of missing involved at the Keith/Taffin memorial shoot, which would have been embarrassing but for the fact a lot of other people were also missing the same targets. Hey, misery loves company.
Missed it by that much! Dave’s bullet hit the upper left-hand
corner of the plate on the right, but one of his companions wasn’t
so lucky. A lot of that going around. Target was 120 yards away
and wind was a factor.
During morning practice, we were all doing okay, but as we started scoring the wind picked up dramatically — it blew over three canopies which had been set up to protect shooters from the Idaho sun — and everybody started missing. Topping it off, we had to shoot with the sun beating down on our backs and shoulders and at the sun’s afternoon angle, it was a bit difficult to zero in on the white targets. What we thought would be highly visible steel plates turned into glaring mirrors projecting the sunshine right back into our eyes. It was a stark contrast to three years ago when this shoot was held in the rain.
Each of my treks to this annual shoot result in learning something new, so it’s not an entirely lost cause. Chatting with and watching other shooters, I’ve learned over the years to take more time with each shot. I’ve discovered I can use a reasonably stout load behind a hard cast lead SWC bullet and not get leading in the barrel. I’ve watched as bullets actually can hit targets several hundred yards away, but it takes time for them to arrive. Patience may be virtuous, but hearing that “clink” as a bullet slams into a steel plate at 120-150 yards (or beyond) is worth enjoying a vice or two when the smoke clears.
Sparkling clean, this brass is ready for another trip to the
reloading bench. It’ll be sized, trimmed if necessary and
refilled with bang powder.
Clean Cases
For years I tumbled, and re-tumbled, all of my fired brass in a Lyman Turbo tumbler with corncob media. They didn’t polish up as I would have liked, so when Lyman’s Rick Ranzinger turned me onto the Cyclone Rotary Tumbler — it cleans brass with soapy water — and when I saw the results for the first time, I was done with the dry tumbling.
Clean brass does more than simply look good. Once resized, each loaded cartridge glides better into the chamber. They seem to work better in my speed loaders and I’ve never experienced any trouble inserting or extracting them from the loops on my gun belt.
It’s also easier to spot cracks in cases after they’ve been through a tumbling. With the residue removed, close inspection isn’t impaired by any gunk on the outer case wall. More than once have I discovered cracks in my empties which hadn’t been spotted prior to being tumbled and cleaned. Those I simply toss aside and replace with new brass from Starline.
A Keith Memorial shoot produces dirty handguns, and Dave’s trio
of Smith & Wesson’s — (from left) a Model 19, Model 57 6” and
Model 57 4” — all got a bath of Hoppe’s No. 9.
Now pay attention: Try not to tumble brass of several different handgun calibers in the same batch. You will invariably wind up with smaller cases jammed into larger cases. It’s annoying and leaves the interior of the bigger cases still dirty. This doesn’t apply to tumbling rifle brass, which doesn’t get jammed together in my experience.
I will tumble .38 Special and .357 Magnum brass together and separate them afterwards. Ditto, the .45 ACP and .45 Colt brass but .41 Magnums get their own bath. Lyman has a cleaning formula for use in the Cyclone and it works wonders.
Citigroup Scraps Firearms Policy
In case you missed it, Citigroup last month scrapped its “universal firearms policy,” adopted in 2018 following the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
While this was a good move, a report in the Financial Times made clear it was probably due in part because of “pressure from Donald Trump.”
Of course, Citigroup wouldn’t acknowledge its policy was just bad news, so it said it was shifting its banking practices “with the intent of striking the right balance between our commitment to fair and unbiased access to our products while continuing to manage all risks to the bank appropriately,” according to a company announcement.
Bill Sack, director of legal operations for the Second Amendment Foundation, added this perspective: “Since 2018 Citi has enforced its so-called ‘Universal Firearms Policy,’ which restricted access to banking services related to constitutionally protected conduct — namely, the sale and acquisition of firearms. In its memo announcing the policy, Citi made clear that its dissatisfaction with what it deemed to be congressional ‘inaction’ on gun control was the impetus for adopting its own unilaterally imposed gun control against its customers. Citi customers who desired to continue making use of basic banking services were now required to enforce Citi’s own demand for universal background checks, unconstitutional bans on firearms sales to adults under 21, and the ban on the sale of entirely legal bump stocks and constitutionally protected standard capacity magazines.”
“Now,” Sack added, “Citi admits that the legislative and regulatory zeitgeist has shifted, and so it has now made the ‘brave’ decision to align with the current administration and abandon this policy. Second Amendment Foundation welcomes this change, while reminding Citi and the rest of the banking industry that both SAF and the American people will keep a vigilant eye on them moving forward.”
