What readily available household substance dissolves wax? I'm not talking about candle wax out of your tablecloth, I'm talking about bullet wax out of cartridge cases. Yeah, it was that hot at the range yesterday. I've got them soaking in a chemical concoction in the garage. I just hope that I don't have to mitigate it with a HazMat team.
Grandson is having a birthday party later. He turned 14 yesterday, and he's requested lasagna and broccoli pie for his birthday meal. Broccoli pie is kind of a quiche, with broccoli, mushrooms, hamburger meat, baked in a pie shell. Oh, damn, it's good. The lasagna is ready to go into the oven, and the Milady will have the broccoli pie ready at lunch time.
My lawn has gotten all out of hand. As soon as it's daylight, I'm going to fire off some small engines.
Lawn care, birthday party and chemical concoctions. That's how I'm spending my Sunday.
If I recall, common charcoal lighter fluid worked great. I bet if you can get a good bit of the wax out, you could soak it in lighter fluid for 15 minutes, and scrub it out with a bore brush. I bet 2-3 rounds of that, followed by a tumble through the brass tumbler, and they'd be good as new.
ReplyDeleteOr... get a big pot of water to a boil. Dump the cartridges in. Boil for 10 minutes. Turn off fire and let sit for 4 or 5 hours, until cool. The wax should form a layer on the surface of the water, giving you a wafer of wax on top, with the cartridges -wet-but-clean- on the bottom. Tumble in brass tumbler, and good to go.
ReplyDeleteThe boiling water trick D.L.G. refered to works well.
ReplyDeleteCan you post the broccoli pie recipe?
ReplyDelete+1 on the water. I'd add the step of stirring the cases around a bit so that each case gets a bit of 'mouth-up' time to prevent wax from puddling in the the base of an improperly oriented case.
ReplyDeleteIf you have colander and a dishwasher, put the cases in the dishwasher on the drying cycle. It doesn't get hot enough in there to affect brass temper, and it sits long enough to drive out much moisture.
MC
Plain old mineral spirits will dissolve wax, and pretty fast if you let the sun warm it up. We dissolve paraffin, add linseed oil, and apply it to outbuildings for a sealer.
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