Tonight's discoveries:

(or, Adventures in Chemistry!)

When attempting to clean brass casings for future reloading, remember!

Sodium bicarbonate + hydrogen peroxide + brass = BAD

Not, thankfully, as immediately bad as Sodium hypochlorite (that is to say, Clorox bleach) + vinegar, when trying to neutralise the bleach used to discharge fabric (Sodium hypochlorite+vinegar=chlorine gas; x_x;).

But still.
When you've weakened the copper part of the brass with your intensely peroxidy bath, what happens to the rest of the case once it's refilled with powder, fitted with a bullet and primer, and subjected to the force of being fired?

You don't know?

Neither do I, and I'm not very eager to find out.





(Although I must admit: the fizzing and unearthly blue that happens when all things are mixed is rather interesting.)


So.
Back Mark goes to his lemon juice, water, and dishsoap mixture. Because apparently, lemon juice is stout enough to take the oxidised bits and random shyte off of the brass, but not quite stout enough to unbrassify it.




Also:
Darn you, Seamus, for dangling ideas over my head at a time of night when I'm susceptible to 'em. Now, whatever else I'm doing, all I'll be able to see on the backs of my eyelids is the what-if version of how to set up your fencing manual for printing, whether the nice heavy calligrapher's paper I found would work well, and how I could bind it in leather in Period style.... This would require materials I don't have, to say nothing of SKILLS I don't have... But that doesn't stop me building this shyte in my head...

Darn you, Seamus; darn you straight to heck.

I'll call with a materials list when all of my avowed projects are done and/or I have a better idea how it could all go together. Januaryish, maybe.