I'm sure others have had this problem so please help. I have a few hundred nonreloadable corrosive primed cases I need to dispose of. I have saved the power and bullets. Now, how do I safely dispose of these cases?

Spray some WD-40 into the case so that the primer gets contaminated with the stuff. This should deactivate the priming compound after a short while.

VH

Take them out and bury them a foot deep.

George

Put them in a tub of water for a week if ther just case with no heads this should get them de-activated.

Water won't reliably deactivate noncorrosive primers but will remove the potassium chlorate from corrosive ones.

The WD-40 trick won't work on modern primers. It might on the oloder ones. Once the WD dries out they are active again.

Scout Master 54

Scout Master 54 is right about WD40,motor oil works better.If you are not going to reuse cases,why not just bury them.

[ 11-09-2003, 02:57: Message edited by: covey16 ]

This was the topic of discussion on one of the Highpower sites. My take-home from the whole thing is that primers cannot be reliably inactivated with the commonly advised products such as WD-40, Water, motor oil etc.

Short of expending them, the only reliable method shared was the Arsenal procedure outlined by Jeff Bartlett who does commercial reprocessing of USGI ammo and regularly has to kill large quantities of primers. It involved a careful process of NaOH and acetic acid.

You could fire them.

Build a fire.

Put the cases in a wire basket with a lid.

Put the basket in the fire until all the primers pop.

Some of the primers are likely to fly out quite forcefully.

Make sure no one else is around and run away from the fire

You could also drop them off at your nearest police station. Then it becomes their problem, not yours. I don't know that they have a better disposal system than what's been suggested here, but it will save you a bit of heartache. Best wishes.

Cal - Montreal

Thanks for all the suggestions. Still not quite sure what I'll do. I'm waiting for a response from CCI and Sierra. I did try putting 1 in a fire a few weeks ago. Case went about three feet into the air. I WON'T be doing that again and certainly would NOT put over 300 cases in at once! Firing them takes a long time and is BORING. Im wondering about the safety of burying and also about ecological risks. Are there any? If NaOH and acetic acid works that's not hard - DRANO and Viniger? What's the procedure / sequence for this?

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

That's for deactivating lead styphnate-based noncorrosive primers. Plain water will remove the potassium chlorate, the main impact-sensitive primary explosive, from your corrosive primers. Depending on the formula, there's likely to be a small amount of TNT left. That's not very impact-sensitive. It'll dissolve in solvents like lacquer thinner. There may be some other minority chemicals like antimony sulfide, sulfur, etc.

But as to the sequence of the lye/vinegar treatment for lead styphnate primers, it's lye first, then neutralize the lye with vinegar. Leaves behind lead oxide and styphnic acid (trinitroresorcinol), both of which are toxic. Enough vinegar would make lead acetate, which is water soluble and toxic. The styphnic acid is also an explosive but not highly sensitive to impact as the lead styphnate is. If you just used the lye you'd convert it to sodium styphnate, which is likewise a fairly insensitive explosive and quite water-soluble. I'd NEVER recommend doing anything against the regulations concerning hazardous waste discharges, but something like that going down a sewer would be unlikely to ever be noticed, and as for neutralizing lye before dumping it, we send straight Drano and Red Devil Lye down drains all the time. The amounts of lead and styphnate are pretty trivial when you consider the volume of sewage going into the average treatment plant. Dunno if they'd affect bacteria in a septic tank, but I have a hard time imagining that they would. The lead would likely end up in the sulfide state very quickly; that's very insoluble. I know there are bacteria that eat TNT; I think they'd break down TNR (styphnic acid) as well.

Call a local gun club and see if a member will accept them. I get rid of a lot of my corrosive 8x57 Turk cases that way.

think of it as "anti-flinch" practice

Let me get this straight...you're going to get rid of a few hundred pieces of brass because they have corrosive primers??? Are they Berdan or Boxer?

Why don't you just fire them? It would take probably 20 minutes. Another 10 minutes for a good rifle cleaning, and you're out a total of 30 minutes for hundreds of pieces of brass.

If not that, why not just carefully de-prime them. If you're worried about boredom, trust me, that won't be boring.

RSY