I bought several cases of South African Cheetah reloadable brass cased 7.62X39 ammo back in the early '90's and it shot just fine over the weekend. Granted there is a huge difference not only in quality but also in performance between this ammo and Wolff. I tend to buy Barnaul manufactured Russian ammo for my plinking/practice ammo rather than Wolff anyway.
A friend at work was telling me this. He said ammo can become unstable over time and you dont want it going off in your house...
I said, I want to defend my home, and I want my ammo close to me.
If you keep it in nice, dry ammo cans it should keep for 20-30 years right?
Yes 20-30 years, yes right. Cool dry place in sealed ammo cans! Good job! also your right keep it with your guns and keep some cached where your going to travel with some more guns!
I got freinds that are wrong too, or tell me garbage like that cause they are jealous and/or not(truely or really or real) good freinds? While safety is important, what about opsec? Maybe he is not one to share that kind of info with. It is not dynomite and you don't have to worry about it that much. There is 100 year old ammo packed and stored well and it shoots great and people have zero trouble.
If a fire got hot enough to cook off my ammo, I say just let her burn. Save me the problem of sorting through the rubbish after what the fire department does.
Cool. That is what I thought to, but he has been in the military, I have not, so he thinks he is the authority on this stuff. Yeah, keep it nice and dry and it will be fine. thanks a lot.
Well he is sadly confused in a major kind of way.
I worked as a weapons tech for 21 years (RETIRED IN 2006) and never had even ammo from the 1970's cook off in one of my magazines or open revetments, EVER! We werent storing a few thousand rounds we were storing several millions by the pallet load!
Put it in a water tight container with dessicant and keep it 50-85 degrees and it will likely out last you, FACT.
This is huge news if it applies to more than a few lots of Wolf. If you don't mind, what caliber(s) were they?
This is the first I've heard of such a failure rate for Wolf or any other commercial centerfire ammo, Russian or otherwise. We have to keep in mind that true military surplus does not equal ammo sold on the commercial market. Military surplus ammo, even if intended for full-auto fire, tends to be very reliable with minute of man accuracy. OTOH, there's no compelling reason to believe commercial ammo commonly used for plinking is manufactured to medium to long term storage spec. One would hope it would last at least ten years, but lobo2gun's experience raises a troubling question. Does anyone else have any experience with Wolf or other Russian commercial ammo after ten or more years of storage?
(yeah I know this isn't really the right forum for this discussion, but it is where it is )
Imust agree i'm still shooting 7.62x54 russian from ww1
Like so many urban legends born in the military, this one has a miniscule grain of truth that is (like all the rest of them) completely unrelated to the subject at hand. Nobody wants to admit their drill sergeant was FOS, so we have vets insisting their M-16 had "Mattel" on the side of it, or the VC used M-16 ammo in AK-47s, and becoming enraged when we call BS. Just smile and nod. You know, like our wives do to us.
Way back in the day, the Brits used cordite as their smokeless powder. Cordite is made of nitroglycerine, nitrocellulose, and vaseline. Nobody has used it since WW2 because it's erosive as hell (note: not corrosive; erosive), and, when stored in really hot climates for long periods of time, it can break down, with the nitroglycerine "sweating" out of the strands. This seems like it should be a bad thing, and a good reason to avoid shooting century-old cordite-loaded Brit ammo stored in a jungle somewhere. Most recently, this is exemplified by the Kynoch .577/450 Martini-Henry ammo coming out of South America. So far, it's been click...bang ammo without explosion, but the ones that have been disassembled do show some degradation of the cordite. So the theory is correct, but it may have no practical impact.
Properly stored, cordite-loaded ammo is as good as any. Non-cordite smokeless powder doesn't have the same problem, but it, too can degrade if poorly stored. Corrosive-primed ammo does last longer than non-corrosive (which is why the 70+ year-old 7.62x54R is still good), and lead-free primers do crap out in a few years.
And Wolf refuses to admit the primers of those ill-fated lots of 7.62x39 were bad (or even any different from their other primers), but the stink seems to have had an effect: I haven't heard of any more recent lots going bad. I suspect it was lousy QC in an effort to maximize pre-Y2K profits.
Only one time have I heard of ammo going off. That was in a fire.
ok guys, here is the real deal on ammo & how it survives/expends in a fire. a couple of years ago i had a total loss fire in my detatched garage. according to burn patterns & melting points of different metals, the inspector said some points were well over 1200 degrees. i had 3 50 cal ammo cans on a shelf, 2 cans were from CMP loaded full of the hxp greek m-2 ball 30.06 ammo from the 50's & the other contained 840 rds of nato m-855 5.56. on the same shelf was a 500rd cardboard carton of monarch steel case russian 7.62x39.
as the fire grew hotter, some of the cardboard cased 7.62 ammo exploded, which actually scattered the rest down to ground level on the floor. as you know, heat rises, so everything on the floor survived, although muddy & over time, a little rusty, it cleans up well & has shot fine.
now to the canned ammo. i am THOROUGHLY impressed with the protective capabilities of the military ammo cans! the can of m-855 survived 100%, all rounds intact. the heat outside warped the can sides a bit, so it did get really hot but did its job. of the two cans of the hxp m-2, one can had about 6 rds cook off inside the can which charred the cardboard boxes containing the ammo, but other than a couple bent rounds caused by the few exploding rounds, the rest of the ammo survived well. the second can lost about 60 rounds, but had a few penetration holes in the can which i think may have let more heat in, thus cooking off more inside. two of the cans have since been sandblasted, repainted with new seals installed & pressed back into duty. the third can, that lost 60 rounds was too far gone to save. here are pics of that can & the spent rounds inside:
my final conclusion is i will have no problems storing ammo inside my home as long as its sealed up in surplus military ammo cans & preferably sitting at floor level. i have a closet that is situated under the stairs that will soon get a few extra layers of drywall for fireproofing & will become my "ammo vault".
The biggest problem of storing massive amounts of ammo in your home is if you have a fire and the ammo starts cooking off, the fire department may pull back and just let her burn. Just saying.
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man that loves guns Big Little X NAVY 375 Dan 357 M 41 M 44 M Long guns 22 223 243 25.06 270 30.06 Black powder 45 cal 50 cal hand and longe guns. I load all that I shoot
I try to practice the " buy it cheap, stack it deep" rule. IMO every man should have a combined total of at least 10,000 rounds on hands at all times......
Location: little hut in the woods, Blue River Wisconsin
Posts: 329
Just finished shooting up the last of 2700 rounds of M2 ammo manufactured in 1950 last summer. Threw away 3 cases that showed corrosion near the base of the cartridge and has a few come out with split necks but we are talking milsurp ammo over 60 years old. It went bang and hit what I was shooting at. This ammo had been stored in a sealed case on the floor in an unheated garage in northern Wisconsin for 40 years before I ever opened it and it took me 20 years to shoot it all. I have shot thousands of rounds of old 22LR ammo in matches the last 3 yeas just to get it shot up. Most of it was well over 40 years old with no more duds in them than I get from new ammo. I think your little fountain of ammo information might want to reconsider where he gets his information from because he is all wet.
what the hell waste all the space and money for, except perhaps in .22lr, because you get it cheaper by the 5000 rd case? Anyone who shoots much should have a Lee Master progressive loading press, with a bullet feeder, so he can load 1000 rds an hour.
what the hell waste all the space and money for, except perhaps in .22lr, because you get it cheaper by the 5000 rd case? Anyone who shoots much should have a Lee Master progressive loading press, with a bullet feeder, so he can load 1000 rds an hour.
(Raises hand) I can answer that...As a young man in the 70s in a rural area it was time consuming to travel and get the ammo to hunt with. Then they came up with a signature requirement for a couple years and many of the mom and pop places just quit carrying ammo. Things like the L.A. riots happened and we saw how fast the powers that be are to try and disarm everybody. Then Katrina and then just a couple years ago ammo just dried up and the price went through the roof. Reloading would be great but I just don't have the time with working 60 hours a week. So here I am a shameless and unrepentant ammo hoarder.
the time you spend, at 1000rds an hour, will pay a LOT more than you earn at work, I bet, loading rifle ammo. :-) That can easily make you $100 an hour, selling to friends and acquaintances from the combat matches and gun shows. Does your overtime CLEAR $100 an hour?
Easy answer: do both.
I have a Dillon 550, an insane amount of brass, and a metric sh*t ton of ammo, mostly surplus. The time I spend reloading is hobby time, so I don't put a pricetag on it.
As to selling your reloads: Many folks (including me) won't shoot someone else's reloads in our guns, nor do we want to absorb the liability of someone damaging themselves shooting our reloads, so I don't consider it as a factor in reloading.
I'm simultaneously amused and sorta feel sorry for BulkAmmo.com: a thread that has nothing to do with them is the busiest thread in their forum, and everytime someone tries to point out that this thread doesn't belong here, they are completely ignored (and yes, I know I am one of the folks keeping it alive). The thread has taken on a life of its own with at least 3 topic shifts. But perhaps it brings in enough traffic to justify leaving it alive...
the time you spend, at 1000rds an hour...... loading rifle ammo.
Hey, if you can find a way to load rifle ammo at that rate, let me in on the secret. I load many thousands of rounds of rifle ammo every year with my Dillons, I have 5 of them, and I can assure you I can't do anything approaching that rate.
By the way, if you don't want to spend all your time reloading, Bulk Ammo is a great place to buy ammo.....wait for it......in bulk! They are offering PMC .223 55 gr FMJ right now for $339 per K. I can load it for a little less, but not much. Good deal!! (shameless plug over)
Fos pos?
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Kevin
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