Years ago in the late 80's I knew nothing about storing ammo to last for the long term, I was just a know nothing kid. My only experience with old ammo came from finding some old paper 12 and 16 gauge shotshells in 00, #6, and slugs in our very humid farmhouse attic. This was in Ohio, anybody that lives there knows the humidity can be terrible during the summer. These were from the 1960's and 70's from the box art and what few dates we could find. My Dad looked them over for splits, cracks, or deformation and said we'll try them out with the very old single shot shotgun we had. After going through 10 or so shells we declared them safe and proceeded to shoot them. Out of the 600 or so shells we had 10 or 15 FTF, not bad really.
Now that I'm older I've been thinking about ammo storage and have started using Mil steel boxes and plastic ammo boxes with rubber seals. By the way, check for the rubber seals when buying because I've found Cabela's selling them without them. This was not just one lost seal either, that's what I thought at first too. They had a whole stack that they advertised as ammo storage boxes and not one had a rubber seal. With some sort of moisture remover (descicant, I've even heard of using rice) and a rubber seal I can only guess how long ammo will last. Some of those shotshells were approaching 30 years old and still went bang and had enough oomph to let your shoulder know you were shooting 12 gauge.
Before my grandfather died he gave me some old 9mm, .45acp, .30-06, and .308 that were stored in a non climate controlled Ohio house and all went bang. After close inspection for problems I shot them all. I even took a few apart of each caliber to see if the powder had degraded, no problems were apparent. The .30-06 and .308 used stick type powder, the 9mm and .45 used ball type. Both powders looked intact and had no dusty or broken down look to them. These were between 10 and 20 years old without a single FTF.
Now for the questions.
What is the oldest ammo that you have?
What is the oldest ammo you've actually used and what were your results?
Do you store your ammo in sealed containers with or without desiccant (or rice, I've heard some real old timers used it sometimes)? If not how do you store it?
I have had these questions come up a few times at work and with family so I thought I'd ask for others experience with ammo storage. If you have actual test data available that would be great too. That is all I'm looking for, experience and actual test data. Not things that you've heard or what a friend of a friend says. Thank for your time and answers in advance guys.
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