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I have these .44 Mag cases (and some live ammo) that have been stored in a leather ammo belt for 30+ years and have a green, vertigree-like tarnish on them. Are these safe to reload/shoot or has the integrity of the brass been compromised beyond the point of safe use. I'm not concerned about cleaning them, that isn't the issue. I just don't want to put any effort into them just to have a large number of them fail after the first firing.
Attachment 118
Ed
If they are not pitted they should be good.
If I were you, I would clean them and closely look for signs of pitting in the brass. Normally when I see pits I toss them, if not I use them. We all know those aren't on the endangered case list and aren't that expensive to replace.
Yup, if after polishing you see only smooth metal sides you should be good to go. If it is really really tarnished it would take like wet rotary tumbler with stainless steel media to get it totally back to all nice shiny metal with no tarnish spots.
I recently processed about 600 44 magnum cases, all matched headstamps, which were stored in a very damp reloading room. They were green all over.
I popped all the primers out as a first step.
Ran them through an ultrasonic cleaner for two cycles. Then, ran them through my vibratory tumbler with walnut shell media. Then, ran them again in crushed corn cob media.
They came out looking like factory new brass! No pitting, no dangers.