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Really that doesn't surprise me a great deal. The ability to truly clean these bottle neck cases is a bit iffy. I do my best and then use a vibrating cleaner (I now have two...one for first cleaning which ends up contaminated with residue and a second one that does the final cleaning). What I think I really need (or at least have convinced myself of such) is one of the wet tumblers to use for stage one, which is on my list of things to buy once my wife retires and we get rid of her house and my son's in Newport News and once again regain sound financial footing.

As you know I use a lot of Pyrodex and I'm still using the same cases I was using when you left for S. Africa. I have seen none of the structural problems shown in you pics. However my cases in general don't spend the time in inactive storage but are shot on a regular basis (perhaps another case of use it or lose it). However my bandoleer does contain cases that were reloaded prior to your departure to SA and it will be interesting to see how they fare when next fired. Personally I don't expect to see any problems....but I've been wrong before.

I assume you are talking about the mercury(II) fulminate that impregnated the brass with mercury, which of course is about the worst thing for copper....but back in the pre-mercury hysteria days, the best thing to clean fouling from bores. Mercury was of course used because it wasn't very corrosive to steel (guns), but was loathed by reloaders for its effect on brass…an effect that often was seen before the cartridge was shot. The more commonly used (in the 20th century) sodium petrochlorate was of course very corrosive to steel, but did much less damage to the brass. I can't imagine that anyone could or would put mercury in a modern powder, nor sodium petrochlorate for that matter based on its reputation. Anybody have a mass spectrometer? It would be interesting to run 777 through one to see what is in it that would do this to copper.