AMMO FACTS I'VE LEARNED OVER THE YEARS

[chief38]

A little potpourri thread that I have learned about ammunition over the last 50 years. This is not meant to be a lecture or suggest anything to others - it is simply what I have found to be true for ME.

Quality Factory ammo is a lot more durable than most of us give it credit for! I used to be a person who would routinely rotate my EDC ammo out every 6 months. I used to hunt with new Factory fresh boxes of the stuff. When I participated in target shooting matches I'd always use the newest ammo I had - for reliability and accuracy. In normal times, that may not be a bad thing however I have found out that while it makes us feel better it almost doesn't seem to matter.

Because Factory ammo has gotten scarce, expensive and a chore to ship, I have been seeking out alternatives. By that I mean I have been hunting with paper hull 12 Gauge Shot Shells that go back to the 1950's (the Pheasants and Grouse don't notice the difference). I have participated in matches with ammo that is from the 1960's. I have not been rotating out my EDC ammo nearly as often as I used to. I have not had one single failure, squib or dud! Now don't misunderstand me, I (or my Dad) has owned this old ammo since the day it was sold from the LGS so I know it was properly stored under the correct conditions. Buy old ammo from a swap meet, a friend, a gun show, etc. - all bets are off as we do not really know under what conditions the ammo was stored throughout its life.

Now here's a kicker! I have found that some of my vintage ammo is way better, more consistent (velocities, accuracy) than some brand new ammo is. Because of the current political climate we live in, ammo sales have gone through the roof - and production has been sped up to the absolute maximum. Has quality and consistency suffered because of this - more than likely yes!! I've seen 22 ammo that has so many duds in 100 rounds it's almost unbelievable! I've gotten numerous recall notices about possibly buying double charged 22's. Yes there have always been recalls - but now more than ever seen from my eyes.

For EDC I do stick with modern new ammo mostly because the newer designs and technology was not available years ago like it is now. However like I stated above, unless my gun/ammo gets wet, or the weather is so extreme that it could affect things, I now have longer swap-put intervals. I would not hesitate to compete in a match using ammo that is 50 years old. While some here may think I am being foolish and taking a chance I am only basing my practice on what I have personally experienced. AGAIN - I know how my personal ammo has been cared for! Any ammo gotten from friends, I do not use for anything other than plinking or informal target shooting.

So my point here is just to report what I have learned through my own experiences. I am not telling anyone what to do or how to do it - however I did want to post this as I frequent the Range a few times a week and go through lots of ammo. This has been my personal experiences and I just wanted to share them here.

PS: I do use my own Reloads for normal practice sessions and target shooting. The age of my reloaded ammo seems to make no difference at all either.

Safe and happy shooting!

[Univibe]

Cleaning out my mother's house after her death, I found a box of my 45 ACP reloads. They were made about 2 years after I started loading. They were 32 years old. They worked perfectly when fired.

[505Gibbs]

There's WWII ammo that when used I wouldn't stand in front of the muzzle when the firing pin hits the primer!

[Nevada Ed]

I try to shot my lead ammo before or if it starts to turn a light gray......

or my copper bullets start to turn color or get a tuch of green on them.

My oldest rifle ammo right now is about 12 years old and will be fired as soon as I can get out. They are just old "Quality ammo" that have 3-4 rounds left in a 20 round cardboard box, that need to expire to clean up my ammo area. The correct name that my wife gives it, is...... junk.

[Rammer Jammer]

Rotating edc ammo isn't needed as frequently as many think it is.

A few months ago I shot the five rounds of HST 38 SPL ammo that's been in my LCR for at least 2 and a half to 3 and a half years. Been in freezing Temps, hot Temps, humidity, my pocket etc. All fired fine.

Edit to add: a few years ago a guy on another forum reported his SP101 falling off his tractor or 4 wheeler. Didn't find the gun for over a year. Holster was damaged, gun was OK and all 5 rounds fired fine after several deep snows, thaws etc in the Rocky Mountains.

Ammo is way more durable than many think

[teletech]

I have some surplus .303 British ammunition, made by Winchester, I don't know it's full story but I've kept it cool and dry and while I shot up most of it a year or three from when I bought it, it seemed a bit more accurate than the factory .303 I was buying from Remington, so I saved some for "special occasions" and still have some left. Every few years I take a handful and shoot it, it's still just fine.
How old is this ammo? Well it's left from "The Great War", before we knew to number them. Yes, hundred year old ammunition that I bought about three decades ago from an old gunny who used to sell at the local flea market.
It's harder and harder to use the remaining rounds as they dwindle.
The war, the gunny Captain, and the flea market are all long gone but are honored every once in a while in a quiet meditation on the range, just before the sporadic one-gun salute.
Some day I guess I'll run out. I might keep just one round and ask a friend to light it off after I'm gone. I don't know if it will still work on that day, but it wouldn't surprise me.

[desi2358]

Yeah ammunition can certainly last a lot longer than many people think. One of my hobbies is collecting ammo, both the boxes and individual rounds. Add in my interest in old military weapons and it's easy to accumulate a lot of really old stuff. Some ammo can be quite rare and expensive but a lot of it has only marginally more collector than shooter value (though the current insanity has messed that up a little).

I have shot some very old military surplus at times, saving a few rounds for my collection but then taking the rest out to see how it performs. Such old stuff should be inspected for possible issues of course, corrosion around primers or the case neck is a bad sign usually indicating chemical breakdown of the powder or primer or both. Clean ammo without such signs is what I like to test. Not long ago I obtained a large amount of 7mm Mauser. After sorting out some damaged and corroded ones I found I had a lot of 1913 dated DWM military and undated UMC most of which I have since shot up. I had a couple of delayed fires in the DWM (just long enough to notice), the UMC either fired cleanly or not at all with more firing than not. Pretty good results considering the age of the ammo in question.

Since I prefer to collect full boxes whenever possible I have from time to time shot the rounds out of partial boxes I ended up with. I have had good results with US commercial ammo going back to the late 20's/early 30's. 22 rim fire seems more sensitive than center fire stuff of the same era with a slightly higher misfire rate.

From the 40's on I have found very little ammo that wasn't still fairly reliable so long as it was clean and not showing any signs of imminent failure. I have gotten the occasional box where there were obvious signs of trouble such as primer or case neck corrosion. I have pulled down such ammo, either to make display dummies (if worth the time) or just to salvage the bullets (if the powder has gone bad the case is usually too badly corroded inside to trust).

I have a high level of confidence in the quality and durability of US ammo produced since the end of WWII. Much of the foreign ammo I've encountered is certainly well made too. Well, except for the French.... they seemed to build in a failure mode. In particular their primers seem to have a very short usable life span. But, in general, ammo ages well and I have no qualms about using older ammo.

[HenryT]

In the last 18 months or so, I have shot .30-40 from 1898, .45 ACP from the 1920's, 22lr from the 60's, 30-06 from 1914. All shot well with no issues. All purchased or given to me in the last 35 years. Ammunition, if keep well will last and shoot for a very long time. Imagine how long all that sealed spam can Eastern Bloc stuff will last...?

[Dave Lively]

A few years ago I decided to shoot up some partial boxes of 22 and 9mm ammo from when I started shooting in the mid-eighties. Both were as reliable as brand new ammo. Meaning some of the bulk 22 needed to be rotated in the chamber and no failures of any type with the 9mm.

During the last ammo shortage in 2014 I bought some CCI Clean Fire 9mm which has a lead free primer. I later read the lead free primers deteriorate rapidly compared to normal ones. Its only been 7 years but the 1000 round case of it I shot earlier this year had zero failures.

All this ammo was bought new and stored in the climate controlled portion of my house. But I have seen surplus ammo that looked like it was stored for decades in a dusty warehouse that worked fine too.

[ISCS Yoda]

I have also discovered the long term stability of factory ammo. I have put dates on ammunition boxes and I laugh when I pull them out to see that they're boxes going back many years that I never used. Nary a problem.

[DWalt]

It's a given, with rare exceptions, that most ammo made after WWI will probably fire if it has not corroded away. My experience is that US military ammo (.30-'06, .45, and .30 Carbine) from WWII is always sure-fire, but not necessarily the case for foreign military ammo. Ammunition from late in the 19th century used Mercury Fulminate primers which had a notoriously short shelf life, especially if stored at high temperatures. I have tried shooting some .45-70 ammo from the 1880s, and all rounds were duds. I have also attempted to fire both .30-'06 and .45 ACP from WWI, and those were iffy, with frequent duds. Seven or eight years ago, I fired a full (but ratty) box of Winchester-made .38 Special from 1932, and it fired 100%.

[Rustyt1953]

Ten years ago I moved into mom and dad's old house. In the basement I found a box of S&B .380 ball ammo. Dad hadn't owned a .380 since the 80's. The box was deteriorated and the bullets looked like moss.

A few minutes with some steel wool and they looked showroom.

Every one went "bang".

[ralph7]

[quote=505Gibbs;141268213 Any ammo that when used I wouldn't stand in front of the muzzle when the firing pin hits the primer! [/quote]

Fixed it for you..

[67tempest]

Going through my dad's stuff I found a stripper clip of 5 rds of 30.06 dated 1911. I waited until 2011 when it was 100 years old to try and fire it. I tried 3 rounds and 2 out of the 3 fired with no issues, the 3rd was a dud.

[mikerjf]

Finished off some 45acp Win XX from the 1970's last year... shot like new.

[diyj98]

As others have said, storage method means a lot. I came into a pile of WWII era 45 acp several years ago. Most went bang, but a few didn't. But who knows what the ammo have been through over the years.

[Greyman50]

Have shot quite a few 1906 ball dated 1917, IIRC no duds in an O3. Hate to shoot corrosive in a M-1 as disassembly and cleaning is a chore. I carry my long proven 45 ACP hand load, no worries.
Agree regarding current ammo not being very good. Certain 22 rf’s have several duds in 50-100 boxes and do not buy it any more. Had several duds in certain aluminum cased 45’s the other day, will not buy any more of it either.

[Muddyboot]

I have shot many rounds of 100 + year old blackpowder .41 long colt with nary a problem, it go's bang every round....

[eric1959]

I ended up with a decent amount of great war ammo mostly .303 and 8mm. The .303 has a moderate rate of hang fire, the 8mm seems to always go bang. I shot a few years of trap with my Dad in the late 60's and early 70's, we reloaded for 12 gauge and there is still some of that in my stash. Always goes bang also.I also have a fair bit of Russian/eastern bloc ammo from 50-75 years ago. That's a mixed bag but as other's have commented who knows how it was stored.
Eric

[teletech]

Ammo coming from hot places is often trouble.
The Pakistani .303 tended toward awful. I had the longest hang-fire ever out of some of that, several seconds.
The worst I ever bought was some Egyptian 9mm. Hangfires, duds, and a few things that were almost squibs. Gave up on it pretty quickly.

[ggibson511960]

When I was a kid we seemed to have a bunch of old paper shotgun shells, relics from depression era hoarding to put food on the table. My ancestors regularly hunted the duck roosts at night where one carefully placed shot at sitting (floating) ducks would feed the family for a while, sporting niceties suspended. These old hulls were swollen and corroded as paper shells were wont to do. We shot them for fun. Hangfires were common and kind of fun. We dared not open up a gun for a minute or two after a dud. I have fond memories of those old roll crimped paper shells. They smelled better after firing than plastic shells.

[vonn]

Shot some 7.62x39 in RVN that was buried in a bunker that had water standing in it and no problems. I believe it was copper washed as it was one color on case and bullet. Can’t believe it could have been stored any worse.

[kbm6893]

All my M1 Garand’s get is surplus ammo going back to the 50’s. Never an issue. I still have 5 or 6 boxes of my old duty ammo, 158 grain Nyclad’s. Shoot a few every now and then. All fire fine.

[Leslie Sapp]

I have some 7.7 Japanese which was found on a beach at Wotji Atoll in 1945, brought back to the states on the USS Fessenden and stored in the Florida heat and humidity in mostly unconditioned spaces for the last 76 years.

While it's been some years since any of it was fired ( Family heirloom ammo and all that),I don't recall any of it ever misfiring.

[Mike0251]

This stuff mfg 1943 goes bang every time. I opened the can, had too lol.