Using "unknown and old" primed brass

[Whiterabbit]

Hi,

Picked up some reloading gear from a member here (thanks!) and sorted through it all. Incredibly, there was a ton of brass with live primers and live ammunition in with the equipment as well.

I spent some time disassembling every last piece of assembled ammunition (and it hurt, there were 50 good rounds in there!), but the primed brass has me wondering.

It's all 357 mag and 38 special, and I literally have over 400 rounds of brass, primed and ready to go. The problem is that it looks like it spent a long time in a non dry box, and the brass is pretty tarnished. I hate the idea of wasting what might be good brass, but once it is tarnished, is it no good to load anymore? Does it need to be de-primed and tumbled from scratch?

If it makes a difference, 100% of this will be fired through a GP-100, or not fired at all without re-work.

If it's OK, I was thinking about hitting it with the air compressor then having at it with powder and bullet.

Thoughts?

[joelogic]

Fire a primer and see if it goes off.
Load the rounds and then tumble them.
Decapp the live primers, tumble, and then reload.

[bruce381]

fire some primed only brass and see if it pops if so load a box

[Whiterabbit]

So you guys will load dirty brass? doesn't need to be shiny new and corrosion free?

[XDRoX]

So you guys will load dirty brass? doesn't need to be shiny new and corrosion free?

Dirty brass has the potential to scratch your carbide dies, so I don't like loading dirty brass.

Primers are so cheap, you could just de-prime them, tumble them, and re-use the brass. That's probably what I'd do. Plus you aren't sure what type of primers you have (mag or standard).

But it is very unlikely that your cases are corrosive, so don't worry about that.

[gunboat]

Tarnished brass is fine -- corroded brass depends on how bad it is corroded.

wipe brass with a rag dampenedd in mineral spirits to remove dirt --

while it is not good practice, dirty and especially tarnished brass will not harm a carbide die, unless of course, the dirt is diamond dust ---