Wet ammo

[bkb0000]

I have several thousand rounds of various calibers of ammunition that was submerged in fresh-water for approximately 6-8 hours, then dried out. 2,000 rounds of federal .22lr, 1,000 rounds of UMC .45acp, 1,000 rounds of Wolf polymer coated .223 that's a bit rusted, an unknown count on a SHIT load of lead ball .45acp that's all white from "lead rust," and unknown count piles of various 223/556 reloads, few boxes of aluminum blazer .38s and .357s, etc., etc.

i saved it thinking i might have a burn-it-up party, but now that i've dug it out and looking through it i'm having visuals of primer ignition no ignites, getting projectiles stuck in bores, hang-fires, etc, etc...

anyone have any thoughts/experiences?

[sjc3081]

yes I have 100 rounds of Geco 9mm and Winchester slugs submerged for over 48 hrs. All the 9mm fired as well as the slugs. The slugs had accurratecy problems.

[markm]

Shoot it.

I had some hand loads that a buddy kept in a house with a swamp cooler once. The moisture destroyed the integrity of the brass to where the case necks wouldn't hold the bullet. I think we got some of it to fire. But after seeing how bad it was we scraped the rest of it.

[bkb0000]

ALL the wolf and UMC .223 shot fine- I did clean up the wolf a couple nights ago, though- i saw all the rust crusted around the bullet and couldnt bear the idea of grinding that into any of my bores. wasted about an hour rubbing them down with a mild solvent.

just about all the UMC .45 fired fine- we did have a couple FTF. the powdery lead-nose .45 kept hanging up on the feedramp, but i didn't clean any of it. had i rubbed off all the lead-rust im sure it would hav fed ok. lots of FTFs with that stuff.

the real problems were the .22lr- i had two bricks of federal that were entirely un-firable and lots of FTFs on thunderbolts- about 1 per 10.

the .38 and .357 blazers all shot fine with no FTFs, as did all the random mixed up stray .223s, .32s, 45s, 38s, 357s i've been collecting in a big box from dumped magazines and half-full boxes. found a bunch of 556 tracers in there, which was a cool surprise. one of my buddies had never seen tracers in action before. all shot fine.

was a good day at the range- not too often a guy gets to blow several thousand rounds off in a few hours without rounds coming in.