How To Clean Shell Casings For Etching

At a Fall 2022 KCPMC Guild meeting, Pat Kuehn gave united states a corking evening of etching, using PCB Etchant (available for custom carving circuit boards) or Ferric Chloride acid. This stuff is slightly nasty and very stain-inducing, so protect your hands, eyes, wear and workspace. It corrodes any metallic it touches and then must be stored in plastic or glass.

There are many online explanations of etching on copper and contumely, so I will not indistinguishable those. (Some links provided below) or search for etching tutorials on YouTube and whatever search engine. In that location are great photos and links to several tutes on a Pinterest board of Janice Thompkins.

Virtually etching, especially that of very finely detailed designs, is done with PhotoPolymer Plates or Toner Transfers, both which require FLAT METAL. But I love the look of totally tubular bullet casings with designs and have a big bag of spent crush casings from my brother-in-law....

After looking all over the interverse looking for a tutorial on carving bullet shell casings and finding none, I decided to do my ain experimenting. The results were demonstrated at the February coming together of the KC PMC Guild and summarized here, with photos.

Materials and tools

Contumely trounce casings, whatever caliber, of copper or brass
Nail punch or awl (must exist narrow enough to accomplish all the way into casing)
Hammer or mallet
Riveting block or anvil with small-scale hole bachelor from Absurd Tools, Contenti or Beaducation, which besides has a quick tutorial for using it to brand rivet heads.
Vise or vise grip (sometimes needed to pull punch out of hole)

OR y'all can purchase tools from the gun folks – such every bit MidwayUSA. Check for their hand tools for reloading. They also sell the volume presses for doing thousands….I learned a lot from reading online postings from various "reloaders" - gun enthusiasts who make clean and reload shell casings. Many don't hold on techniques, merely you can acquire a lot from reading their tutorials and conversations.

Bamboo skewers
Toothpicks
Dense foam, sliced to three/8" thick (I saved blocks from recent carpet cleaning)
Woods dowel the diameter of shell openings, or slightly larger (sand or file to fit)
Tumbling mediums (basis walnut shells for cleaning, stainless steel for hardening and polishing)

Resists

Sharpie black markers
adhesive label newspaper and punches
waxed linen thread
fingernail polish
WhiteOut
StayzOn Ink pads and rubber stamps
Gel medium
gesso
experiment!

First, clean brass casings, especially if they've been retrieved from outside and take dirt or leaf droppings. The ground walnut shells do this well, used Dry in a tumbler. Fine them at pet stores (used as bedding for lizards, snakes and birds) or at Harbour Freight (used for sandblasting).

If you want holes, make them now. Use a drill press and some type of vise to concord casing while drilling - information technology is dangerous to agree with your fingers, plus the metal turns and gets hot when drilling. I use a jig made for drilling lentil beads, but you tin also use a jeweler's vise or other small vise with leather or foam padding to protect the metallic.

Drill ii holes horizontally through the contumely tube at either end, depending on your need. Notation that drilling too close to the closed end is hard - the metal is thicker there.

Crush casings already have a hole in the bottom for a blasting cap, punching the cap out seems easier to me than drilling and fighting with vises and drill bits.

Y'all can drill though the ends using titanium bits, only punching them out is unremarkably faster and easier. The caps have an inner slice so you are really drilling through a couple layers and you can end up with jagged holes and broken bits.

Ammo reloaders have their own specialized tools for this step (see sample press here) but unless you are going into mass production, yous won't need this!!

This motion-picture show shows iii aforementioned-caliber casings. On the left, drilled with the cap coming out and leaving a messy pigsty. The heart 1 was drilled successfully, leaving just a small hole outside. The one on the right was punched, removing the cap and leaving the small interior hole which was already there.