My son and I went shooting last weekend.

we took an old Colt Official Police revolver that I had just bought, plus a bunch of other handguns and rifles.

I dug in my ammunition stockpile, and retrieved a box of Remington/UMC brown box 130gr full metal jacket .38specials That I had rat-holed in the mid 1990's.

Well...the stuff must have gone bad! The ancient Colt works ok, the ammo definately didn't. Some were near squibs, 2 rounds wouldn't fire at all. The Colt definately put a big dent in the primer, ammo must have gone bad for some reason or other.

I tried some other ammo from the same crate ths stuff was in(7.62 NATO, and 7.62x39) no issues with it.

Only thing I might think would have effected the .38 ammo it that this particular crate of ammo had spent a year in a yard storage building. A dry place, but hot and cold with the climate, and extremely hot in the summer. I figure the budget UMC ammo may have(must have) suffered from that, or else being cheap and old!

I've shot other even older surplus military ammo, some back to the 1930's without failure.

I guess a guy should rotate his ammo stash occasionally, and I've been doing just that. Shooting up all my stash as I buy replacement ammo. And particularly getting rid of the corrosive and replacing it with clean primed ammo.

Any ideas or experiences with or about deteriorating ammunition?

I had sinilar issues with WWB bulk back 9mm ball that had spent a winter or two in non climate controlled storage.

If you have any of that cheesey ammo left, pull a bullet and examine the powder. If the powder has a light, sweet solvent smell and is a nice silvery grey color it should be good. I'm suspecting the primers are crap. Did the near-sqib loads have a lot of half-burnt powder? A weak crimp would probably compound the situation.

quote:

dug in my ammunition stockpile, and retrieved a box of Remington/UMC brown box 130gr full metal jacket .38specials That I had rat-holed in the mid 1990's.

Well...the stuff must have gone bad!

That stuff may have started off bad (primers).