i am cheap and looking for a sub for citric acid when using my FART .  Anyone try vinegar?

$9 and change for a 20 ounce bottle of Lemi-Shine at Wally World. Or $12.99 for the one pound food grade citric acid. A bottle of white vinegar is $2.28. Not a whole lot of savings to be found there and vinegar would probably require a lot more even if it works. Not sure as I have never tried it.

A quick search of the internet found this:
Keep in mind that vinegar dissolves not just the patina or stains on your brass surface. You may not notice it, but it can dissolve brass itself, depending on its potency. So, when you polish brass with vinegar, be careful not to scrub or buff too hard.

It does not sound as though vinegar is the solution that you seek.

So i had to scratch the curiousity itch after my initial post.i have a coffee can of 9mm range brass. not too dirty or tarnished.  i put it in my FART which filled it up half way and added pins.  added water to the top and added 4 oz vinegar and about 2 oz dawn.  tumbled it for 2 hours . just finished and rinse and inspected.   brass came out gleaming , i think even better then when i used lemi shine.  

i need to go to the outdoor range and grab some tarnished brass and see how it does on that .

A few months ago I bought some of the rcbs case cleaning solution for wet tumbling. My brass would always corrode after a while no matter what I used. It must've been the water.
After I switched to the rcbs stuff, my brass looks a lot better and so far has no signs of corrosion. I have cleaned thousands of rounds and probably a quarter through the jug so it goes a long way.

Just providing some insight.

https://www.rcbs.com/ultrasonic%2Frotary-case-cleaning-solution/356697.html

OP:

When Bigboybrad said:
".....Keep in mind that vinegar dissolves not just the patina or stains on your brass surface. You may not notice it, but it can dissolve brass itself, depending on its potency. So, when you polish brass with vinegar, be careful not to scrub or buff too hard......."

He meant that vinegar is also known "acetic acid" which is not the same as "citric acid" and so the affect on the brass can be quite different.  

If you want to save money............ sell the FART............. and use a large sealable jug instead.  
Shake until you can't shake anymore............. done.

do not use vinegar. brass will be junk if you do. not the same action that takes place

ok i get it.


https://www.okshooters.com/threads/citric-acid-and-brass.188137/

Try a second (short) run thru the wet tumbler with some wash&wax for cars, the wax should help coat the brass and help prevent corrosion and slick it up a little as well.  

And also make sure that you are drying the cases well, on hot days a few hours in the sun works, otherwise I do the oven at 230 degrees for 2 hours.  No issues with corroding primers.

Also as a last step, after loading I drop the ammo into a dry tumbler with some polish, run it for 20 min or so, wear gloves, I dump the ammo onto a towel and wipe off the dust, then package into ziplock bags and then into an ammo can.  Not having oils from your hands on the brass and packaging it up like this will keep it from getting fingerprint corrosion like you might see sometimes.  No reason to have your freshly loaded ammo corroding like that.

Throw a piece of scrap brass into a jar of vinegar and another in a jar with citric acid.  Let them sit for a day, a week or a month.  

I've tried it with soap only (no pins) works very well. Just a squirt, not ounces.

Tried it with soap and pins, works better, but not a big enough difference to mess with the pins on pistol brass.

Here is the Pourbaix diagram of Copper (main ingredient in brass)



Note that once you get below pH of about 5 and any oxygen is present (air in headspace), Cu wants to be the Cu++ ion.  which is to say, it wants to dissolve and go away.  Zinc is even worse. (It's never quite as simple as this, with temperature, ion balance, alloy, time etc effects: but it's an indicator of what it wants to do)


Lemishine is not pure citric acid.  It's a mixture of citrate and carbonate, which is relatively pH balanced to neutral.  Vinegar has a pKa of 4.7.  Which means in solution, it want to go acidic, to a pH less than 5, depending on what's in the water and buffering it, and its concentration.  But point is, if you run straight vinegar, it's possible to go pH less than 4.5 even, and that's going to start extracting Cu (and Zn) from your brass.

I wouldn't run vinegar on my brass.   If you insist, be sure to run a very weak solution.  Consider adding some baking soda.

(By the way, notice on the right, it want to go to Cu(OH)2 under alkaline conditions.  That's what ammonium will drive it to, which is a great solvent - and a brass trasher as well.  )

I've tried vinegar. Even in small amounts it turned my brass pink. Not good.

Neither would I.  

Vinegar is not pure acetic acid.  It is only a few percent acetic acid in solution.    You can control the pH by diluting it, no?  

Also, you do not want to dry your brass with any amount of acetic acid (vinegar) still on it.  Multiple rinses will be required.  Spent primer must be removed before cleaning.  As the water evaporates, it gets more and more concentrated.

Still, what is the point???  A single screw up eliminates any "savings" you might have gained.  

You may be "cheap" but is the cost really any sort of burden in this era of 10 cent primers and $50/pound powder?