Monday, August 24, 2020

The Do's & Don'ts of Ammo Storage and Wet Ammo


As always, these guys did a great job. I don't claim to have their expertise, but I've been shooting for several decades and have a few stories to share.

I buy my ammo mostly in bulk, and it's not unusual for 2 or 3 of us to shoot up my stash. Because I'm the salt of the Earth, I'll sell my discounted online ammo to friends when we visit the range. Needless to say, I'll go through a lot of rounds shooting at least twice per month. I was easily buying ammo for at least 3 of us before my daughter became an adult. I may not be MAC, but I go through a fair amount of ammunition in any given year.

Soooo... I was dim enough to store my ammunition in a wooden footlocker on my bottom level after I moved into my current home. I always planned on moving it upstairs, but something else usually came up... and it was heavy.
Guess what? We had a small flood, and my bottom level was under a foot of water for several hours. It was the least of my problems at the time, but I had a mixed bag of several thousand rounds under water.

It was in various calibers, and from a great many different manufacturers. 

The wise thing would have been to throw it all away, but that's not always how I roll. There was a lot of money tied up in the ammunition, and money was much tighter at that time. It was sorted, dried off, and repackaged in Tupperware containers. 

I spent the next year or so shooting it all up. This ammunition was for only for my consumption, and only for range use. It was kept separate from any newly purchased ammo, or home defense stuff. 

Here are the results as I remember them. The vast majority of it went bang. Almost a thousand rounds of birdshot in both 20ga and 12ga went downrange when shooting skeet. Only a handful of shells misfired. All of my birdshot was Remington and Federal ammunition.

Around 3,000 rounds of 9mm, .38spl,  40S&W, and 45acp was salvaged. There was a mix of steel cased ammo, domestic brass cased ammunition, aluminum cased Blaser, and even some reloads. The Russian stuff was almost entirely Silver Bear in 9mm or .40cal. A great deal of Winchester White Box was present.
Perhaps about 6 rounds failed to fire. It was close to an even mix between steel and brass cased ammunition failing to go bang.

All of my .22lr was simply thrown away because I didn't have time to mess with it at the price point it sold for around 25 years (?) ago.

So that's my flooded ammunition story. Not the most exciting tale in the world, but I was surprised at how well the ammo held up after being submerged for several hours.

Moving on...

I used to shoot up a lot of 9mm and .40cal Silver Bear a decade or so ago. I'd keep a case or two in the closet (upstairs now) most of the time. A forgotten case of 9mm Silver Bear sat in the back for a couple of years, and I  discovered that the cases felt a little "Fuzzy." My guess was that the zinc cases had oxidized somewhat. It was put downrange (by myself) in a very reliable 1911. It all went bang. Yawn (that's a good thing).

I've purchased some military surplus Malaysian and Aussie 7.62x51mm. I've had a lot of misfires with this ammo in a hunting rifle. I don't know if it's the rifle, or the ammunition. I do know that military ammunition often has harder primers so this may be the problem. The misfired rounds will go off when struck a second time. This rifle bores the hell out of me and is rarely used, but maybe I'll pull it out one day just to see how it behaves with civilian ammo.

The last boring anecdote. Honest. This is it.

I have a BOB in my vehicle. There's a few boxes of .22lr and a box of 9mm in my Bug Out Bag. I repacked my bag after a year or so of ignoring it, and shot up all of the ammo. There were also several boxes of .22lr leftover from a range trip. All of this ammo had made it through a full winter and summer in my truck (probably a couple of years for some of the forgotten .22lr). The temp range (outside) was 5 degrees to 100 degrees. I was very curious as to what the results would be with such half ass storage, and temperature fluctuations. 
It all went off. Bear in mind that this was pretty inexpensive .22lr. Very surprising. 

That's all that I have. I don't claim that shooting waterlogged or poorly stored ammo is a good practice, and my carry ammo is treated much much better.

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