Thread: nasty bullets?

I've got a bunch of nasty green tarnished .224" bullets I pulled from some wolf ammo that was too bad to shoot. I shot up some of them in .30cal sabots where their nastiness wouldn't be touching the riflings, but I was wondering if it would hurt to shoot these in a normal .223?

If bullets this tarnished can damage the bore, is there any way to clean them up and make them safe to use again? I've probably got 200 or so of them, and considering how poor and cheap I am, it bothers me to have these sitting around when I've got a bunched of primed .223 brass and no money for new bullets for them.

thanks

Why not tumble them as you would for case cleaning or try the old white vinegar soak, not sure about reaction with lead ? if the bases are open ?
Or clean each by hand with tarnish remover-brass polish Brasso-Flitz etc?
Ensure you leave no abrasive residue and avoid abrasives that could embed into the copper jacket.

The bases are open so there is lead exposed.

I guess tumbling them might work though.

Tumble them in walnut media, it's more dense and the bullets won't just collect at the bottom and rattle against each other. I've done that many times with crappy looking surplus bullets, works great. Avoid washing the bullets especially in vinegar, it eats lead, and could intrude between the jacket and core if the cores arn't seated properly, making them shoot badly, also, lead oxide tends to swell and could deform the bullets. If you want to, you can also use copper plated BB's.

Avoid water, if you do use water, wash in alcohol afterwards which will suck up all the water.

Just put them in the tumbler with some sand, that'll blast em clean. Cheap enough?

I tumbled them for a few hours yesterday in walnut media. Some of them cleaned up good enough to shoot, but a third or so of them have that green crap caked on so hard that I don't think they're going to clean up with any amount of tumbling, so I'll toss those and load the rest.

You can try washing them in a little bit of CLR (calcium lime rust remover), I would recommend applying it with a rag so as not to innundate the lead core. brush back and forth real quick, then use a damp water soaked rag. to wipe off. Re-tumble.