Aged Ammo


Hoplites1234

New member
A guy on the web (ammoman.com) is selling ammo for the mosin-nigant. It's stated to be 1970's production--is this stuff still good? Opinions?
 

A guy on the web (ammoman.com) is selling ammo for the mosin-nigant. It's stated to be 1970's production--is this stuff still good? Opinions?

I think your prudence is well-founded. At great personal risk I will take it upon myself to check this ammo out for you. Just purchase a few thousand rounds and have it delivered to me. After careful perusal and detailed inspection, including firing tests, I will give you a complete report.:54:



Seriously, I think the oldest ammo I've ever fired was made before WWI and I shot that up about 20 years ago. I came across a couple of bricks of .22 lr I packed up and forgot about a couple of moves ago that I bought from Montgomery Ward back in 1980 and it works fine (I've been told rimfire only keeps about 20 years--another myth down)

Quality centerfire ammo seems to keep indefinitely if stored properly and kept dry. I have some '70s production 7.62X51 and .45 acp that is as good as new. I just wish I'd bought more when the price was low. If you like the price--stock up!:cuaoo[1]:
 
Storage is absolute paramount with ammo. The worst enemy to ammo is heat. If it has been stored in a cool environment it may be o.K. That of course is the problem because you do not know for sure what kind of storage it has been in.
 
If you are looking for ammo for you mosin I get mine from Aim.com good price and good ammo. And like all have sied if it is stored right you should not have any proplem with it. Most come in a sealed can.
 
probably the same stuff I get. 7.62 x 54R? as mentioned above it will most likely come in a sealed can. it should be fine I have never had a problem with it and I love shooting it.
 
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I have a more than a few bricks of .22 from the 70s, and when shooting it I still hear the bang everytime. Plenty of people attest to shooting WWII ammo all the time and it works fine. As long as it was quality ammo to begin with, I wouldn't worry about it. Needs to be quality manufactured first though. :balt06:
 
Nitro-glycerine fun.

Earlier on in my military dayz, we were doing some M2, 50-Cal range fire training on North Ft. Lewis, WA. Used to getting the ammo in O.D. green large metal cases, often 'Nam era issue, this was a wooden box with rope bindings & rope carrying handles, a new sight to us VOLAR troops. Stenciled on the side in fading ink was 'Round, ball, 50-Caliber', a run of numbers and a date ending in 1952! Inside each round was dull brown not bright bassy colored and was oozing clear liquid from where the casing married-up with the round. The bottom of the box was saturated with this gel! One of our senior Non-Coms told us to 'scatter' so we did like rabbits. He picked up a single drop on his fingertip, flicked it at a row of sand-bags near-by and that tiny globule blew a 3" hole outa the bag it hit. The gun-powder had secreted nitro-glycerine over 30 years in storage and should never have made it into our inventory, but I guess some genius thought it was still safe to use! No wonder the deuce + 1/2 that bumped it all the way from some ammo dump hadn't gone up in one BF kapowee. We called EOD and they stuck a blasting-cap (no need for a wasted kicker charge of 1/4 pound of TNT) wired into a Claymore mine clicker unit, then we all backed off. "Fire in the hole!" They blew it in place and the concussion wave blew in every glass military vehicle's windows within 200-meters of the box to splinters. It left a 4ft deep crater 10ft wide and those of us (me one!) stupid enough to be standing 'safely' 200 meters away & watching for the 'fun' of the blast, not laying prone, found ourselves knocked on our asses with painful ringing in our ears for hours after. This was in 1981, and this batch had come from the Korean war some 30 years earlier. Talk about old ammo and unsafe training, we sure had both. I can only imagine how much 'fun' we would have had with a belt of that volatile shit locked up in the head-space & timing feeder of an M2, or what would have happened to the gunner and his spotter/feeder! 'Saving Ryan's Privates' and dog tags would have been all we would have found of them! Just a true tale of how to spot VERY bad ammo that is MUCH more dangerous than frigging TNT.

Canis-Lupus
 
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Earlier on in my military dayz, we were doing some M2, 50-Cal range fire training on North Ft. Lewis, WA. Used to getting the ammo in O.D. green large metal cases, often 'Nam era issue, this was a wooden box with rope bindings & rope carrying handles, a new sight to us VOLAR troops. Stenciled on the side in fading ink was 'Round, ball, 50-Caliber', a run of numbers and a date ending in 1952! Inside each round was dull brown not bright bassy colored and was oozing clear liquid from where the casing married-up with the round. The bottom of the box was saturated with this gel! One of our senior Non-Coms told us to 'scatter' so we did like rabbits. He picked up a single drop on his fingertip, flicked it at a row of sand-bags near-by and that tiny globule blew a 3" hole outa the bag it hit. The gun-powder had secreted nitro-glycerine over 30 years in storage and should never have made it into our inventory, but I guess some genius thought it was still safe to use! No wonder the deuce + 1/2 that bumped it all the way from some ammo dump hadn't gone up in one BF kapowee. We called EOD and they stuck a blasting-cap (no need for a wasted kicker charge of 1/4 pound of TNT) wired into a Claymore mine clicker unit, then we all backed off. "Fire in the hole!" They blew it in place and the concussion wave blew in every glass military vehicle's windows within 200-meters of the box to splinters. It left a 4ft deep crater 10ft wide and those of us (me one!) stupid enough to be standing 'safely' 200 meters away & watching for the 'fun' of the blast, not laying prone, found ourselves knocked on our asses with painful ringing in our ears for hours after. This was in 1981, and this batch had come from the Korean war some 30 years earlier. Talk about old ammo and unsafe training, we sure had both. I can only imagine how much 'fun' we would have had with a belt of that volatile shit locked up in the head-space & timing feeder of an M2, or what would have happened to the gunner and his spotter/feeder! 'Saving Ryan's Privates' and dog tags would have been all we would have found of them! Just a true tale of how to spot VERY bad ammo that is MUCH more dangerous than frigging TNT.

Canis-Lupus


I found a box of old birdshot in granddads attic one time....and when i shot it it went bang
 
I have shot Korean war era .45 without a single FTF. Properly made and stored ammo should out live all of us.
 
I agree LongRider,
"Properly made and stored ammo should out live all of us."
As I recall this was not properly packed, nor stored, and the N-G would
have blown us 2 bits had we shot even 1-rd thru the M2.
In Germany (1978) our combat engineers found & dug up some cases of Waffen metal crates full of 10mm (I think) belts of MG ammo right outside our Kasern, and they were in perfect condition.
We turned it over to Fritz's sappers who drove off w/it smiling like they had just broke the bank at the casino in Baden Baden.
Regards,

Canis-Lupus
 
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