Old, wet ammo

[ginzomatic]

One usual point of discussion among ordinance hoarders, like most of us on this forum, is shelf life of said ordinance.

For your consideration and confidence, I submit the following.

The below pictured ammo boxes were taken from my father’s basement (he recently gifted me his Series 80 govt combat, along with all his .45 ammo). These are reloads that he made, as you can see by the box, back in 1994. Since then, for one score and five years they have sat in cardboard boxes in a super damp Pennsylvania basement. Subject to high levels of humidity, floods (although not submerged), and extreme high & low temps.

I took four boxes to the range yesterday, and to my surprise I had not a single misfire. Granted, there were a couple failures to eject, but there are a couple possibilities that could have caused this. One, the extractor was super dirty and spring old as hell. Second, 94 was the year before my folks got divorced, so my dad was housed pretty much that whole year- who knows the consistency of the powder.

A new spring is on the way and I broke the gun down all the way last night and cleaned the hell out of it, so I expect these problems to go away.

I was positively surprised that it all shot. For those of us that store ammo in cans with desiccants and no cardboard, expect it to last longer than we do!

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[Ron3]

I had a little collection going of nasty 9mm rds I gathered over the years. Very corroded. I mean blue powdery corrosion all over primer.

Wore a glove and fired them from a Glock 19. I was surprised they all worked fine.

I have had WW2 and Korean War-era ammo with duds or weak report / short stroke. This was .45, Bulgarian 7.62x54, and .38 ammo.

Shot some 60's Winchester 7.62x51 through an Armalite recently, worked fine.

Oh, and 5 rds of approximately 75 yr old .32 S&W (short) ammo. The report was weaker than brand new. Unfortunately none of it gave me a chrono reading. But it all fired.

[Gunfixr]

I had a friend bring me 7 full 50rd boxes of 45acp ammo some years back, all imi fmjs. Seems they'd been in his dad's basement when the whole town got flooded out. The town had several feet of water for weeks, idk exactly how long the basement was flooded, but they'd been submerged the whole time. Just in the cardboard boxes.
He figured as a reloader, i'd pull the bullets and toss the rest. I kinda doubt he'd seen a bullet puller used, especially 350x. Somewhere between 70-80% of the cases had corrosion on them, from just a little, to quite a lot. At least a couple boxes were real bad, and a little over a box was clean.
Spent a couple hrs in front of the TV, a 1911 barrel, some scotch Brite, grinding down the corrosion until they'd drop in the chamber.
Shot them all. Took them to 3-gun matches, where brass is lost anyway. Every once in awhile, the gun didn't finish locking up, i'd bump the back of the slide with the palm of my other hand. All fired on the first hammer drop. Sounded the same, recoiled the same, same accuracy as any other fmjs. Shot them in a couple different 1911s.
The looks on the other competitors faces was priceless.

[NWPilgrim]

I’ve shot ammo from the 60s that worked fine. Just stored indoors in a cabinet in the original boxes. However, for my own ammo, factory or handload, I store in ammo cans with the o-ring gasket. That stuff should last 100 years if I wasn’t shooting it up so fast. As long as I keep reloading it there should be quite a pile for my grandkids to shoot up when I get old(er) and feeble.

[Esq.]

I get odds and ends of ammo from a local pawn shop to shoot up as "range ammo". Basically, people come in to pawn a gun and will bring some ammo with them. The shop can't sell the ammo due to their insurance company rules etc...so they store it for me and I pick it up once a month or so. About two months ago I shot 10 rounds of .303 made by Kynoch. The box, what was left of it, said the cartridges were loaded with honest to God CORDITE!!!!! OLD ammo...No idea how it was stored but the box was pretty ugly.....Every round popped and was "Enfield" accurate. Ammo will store and be good for a LONG, LONG time....

[SteveS]

On many occasions I ran a speed strip of 38 special ammo through the washer "I forget to check my pockets" and they all fired. I just ran a few 22 lrs through the washer and I pulled the bullets and the powder was wet.