The Back Room
This isn’t limited to gun shops, as far as I can tell – any business that’s been around for longer than 10 years has that one room. It might be a closet, or a forgotten place in the back of the garage, or a shed. But it’s a place that gets filled with things and then… people kind of forget about it for a while.
I’m going to do a couple strips on this. One of the long-present questions we’ve had for a long time is – does properly stored ammunition have an expiration date?
To my knowledge, it does not. But I am not an expert on this, so I’m asking.
I’ve heard people say that you shouldn’t keep ammo for longer than 10 years, or it will be less reliable. I have fired at least a few hundred rounds of various boxes that were certainly more than 10 years old. Most recently, Mel inherited her grandfather’s bring-back WWII Luger, and with it, a box of OLD Remington 9mm. We fired most of that box (with nary a misfire), which still had a price tag on it of “$1.37” for 50 rounds. And I’m not even getting into the 1986 Yugo ammo we use for the Mosins.
I’m not talking about bullets that were kept in a tin pail, out in the shed behind Gramps’ cabin in the mountains. Properly stored ammo – how long does it last?
There’s been a plethora of shooting vids on Youtube involving scantily clad women. And lord, I have posted a few here. Well, this guy wants to even that out. This one’s for the ladies. And hell, some of the men, too.
The answer is “pretty much no”. I know people who’ve shot ammo that was over 100 years old with no problems.
ell, the big imponderables are: 1) was it good quality in the first place? And 2) How was it stored over time? Well-treated quality ammo lasts a LONG time.
Hell, ‘duds’ from the American Civil War and WWI are still occasionally killing folks… If it was meant to go “BANG!” in the first place, it probably *still* wants to go “BANG!”
😀
anecdotal re: old ammo..
I picked up a Lee-Enfield and around 900 rounds of ammunition at a sale in 2002. the ammunition was mostly dated, and had dates ranging from ~1900 to 1950. after sorting it and tossing a handful of rounds that had split or that had more corrosion than i did bravery (aka: stupidity) I used most of it up plinking and hunting with no more than a dozen duds.
And honestly, out of let’s call it 800 rounds, even a few dozen duds or that are’s ammo might have been duds if they had been fired the day after they were made.
I had a goodly quantity of Radway Green .303 dated 7-54. Worked fine for the first twenty years I had it (1982-2002), then I started getting hang-fires. I had stored it well, but I have no idea of it’s life before I got it. It’s all used up now. I’ve read (internet… must be true) that hang-fires aren’t unusual with that vintage of RG .303; to the point of some injuries when folks jacked their SMLE open before the “click” was barely done. I always drew back the cocking-piece and gave it another strike if it waited too long to fire; never failed to go bang after that.
Under optimal conditions, it is not unreasonable to use century old ammunition. The sources evade me but I recall our military testing old ammunition and about the only thing they noticed was the variation in muzzle velocity increased slightly. So don’t expect gilt edge accuracy. Don’t forget that many old rounds have corrosive primers. You will have to use a water based cleaning solution to ensure the bore is clean.
Also, in VA there are still occasional stories of uncovered civil war ammo, that when disposed by bomb squads still goes boom with it’s own powder. This is stuff buried for more than a century.
There was also a fatality from the Civil War unexploded ordinance in this century as well.
I have always wanted one of those old Lugers…
Thank you for the eye candy vid … and the guy wasn’t bad, either.
Mmmmm, eight gauge…
+1
I’ve personally shot ammo over 100 years old out of my 30-40 Kraig.
And the gun store I work at? I don’t know about yours, but here we have people that bring in stuff they found when cleaning out dads closet, or whatever. “Um, we found this evil ammo for dads gun. We sold the gun, can you dispose of this for us?”
I literally have ten 50 cal ammo cans full of free ammo people brought in for disposal. I’ve been slowly disposing of it one shot at a time. Or pulling it, and reloading the components.
We moved across the street three years ago. From a store where we had been for over twenty five years….. The things we found when we moved the gunsmiths shop. About five million springs and pins. I can’t say how many Mauser trigger groups. A massive collection of bullet lodged barrels. (Why?!)
And loose bullets. Oh god…. They were everywhere. I still have nightmares.
And we found a still in the wrapper, bar of soap emblazoned with a “vote for Jimmy Carter” slogan. IN. A. GUN. STORE…..
“It burns when I pee!”
Well, nice eyecandy on that movie, although he couldn’t dance at all.
nice smile tho…
after watching that video…I just have one thing to say…
if you start pissing fire, it’s time to see the doctor. Keep your willy healthy and happy.
Lyrics NSFW: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vmPwZT-9zY
On a more serious note, medical researchers are now saying gonorrhea might be untreatable by 2015, because it’s evolved resistance to all the first-line antibiotics used to treat it: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-22263030 The days when gonorrhea was a mild annoyance curable with a shot of penicillin are long over. Scary shit.
Mick, Alex and Heidi don’t have to worry about that shit, unless Mel and JL want them to have to, but the same doesn’t apply IRL. Condoms fail in several ways. I wish that this wasn’t the sort of news required to get people to consider sexual virtue, and that they’d take it up for its own rewards.
You know what has a worse infection rate than using condoms?
Not using condoms.
It is in fact possible to live a life not merely of married chastity, where you only have sex with one other person your entire life, but even complete sexual continence, where you don’t have any sex at all. Both of those are sexually moral lifestyles, and even when not using condoms (another immoral act, just ask Sigmund Freud), involve a 0% chance of STI.
Human beings are genetically predisposed to fuck. It’s why we’re here. As in you and me – we exist because, stretching back millions of years, our genetic ancestors fucked.
Possible? Sure. But humans are (thankfully) not very good at abstinence OR monogamy.
For the most part, old ammunition doesn’t have an expiration date, assuming proper storage.
That said, there was a time when primers were based around mercury fulminate, and THAT ammunition does have an expiration date. The reaction between the mercury and the other metals in the cartridge results in cartridges that are fundamentally structurally flawed. I would personally not recommend firing any old cartridges known to have been manufactured with such primers.
I had to look, as I carry ammo from a small commercial loader here in VT… I do have:
7.92 Kurz
8mm Lebel
8x50R Austrian
8x52R T-66
8x57JR .318
8x57JRS .323
8x58R Krag
8x72R
8mm Kropatchek
but I do not have any 8×56 Mannlicher. I can probably have it made, though, if you need it.
From collecting milsurp’s, I have a fairly large amount of old surplus ammo. Some of it is Turkish 8mm from before W2 and Indian 303 that everyone tells me that I should just toss out, that I haven’t had a dud or hangfire yet. Then there’s the 8×56 Rimmed for my M95 Mannlicher that’s dated 1938 with Nazi eagle head stamps. It’s in 5 round enbloc clips. It shoots great although I also reload for it now. Actually, the enbloc clips for it are rarer than the ammo.
I was given a box of about a hundred or so of 7.35 carcano rounds by and old uncle of my wife’s. Not that I have anything (yet) to fire it out of, but from my research, it doesn’t have a very good rep for reliability.
Nazi headstamps? Man, I wouldn’t be shooting that. I’d just look at it and gloat. I once asked a Jewish FFL (who had about 5 tables worth of Nazi marked guns at a gun show) as a Jew, how he could deal in Nazi guns? His answer: “Because dey’re dead, and I’ve got deir guns!” (you have to imagine the Yiddush accent!).
Now, that’s the attitude!
Similar to one of my reasons for collecting old Commie iron.
A fair whack of those Nazi M98s were bought by Israelite partisans, who used them to very good effect indeed when the British Mandate ended.
1. Black powder is good for CENTURIES stored properly- A while back, some roofers in Northern England found a bucket with a powder flask & balls up under the roof they were replacing. From the 1600’s. Powder was tested, worked fine. Metallurgy of the balls was acceptable, they had a bit of oxide but could have been loaded…
2. Smokeless powder is variable, depends on how well the nitrocellulose was purified of acid and what kind/how much preservatives were added to scavenge the tiny amounts of nitrous oxides even the best made NC continuously gives off. Things like diphenylamine, ethyl centrlite, even urea. When the preservative is finally used up, the powder goes bad in a few years to a few decades… Look out for green, ugly brass with powder that has turned into a “chunk”. Split cases or bullets stuck in the barrel a-plenty!
3. Primers are not all created equal- Mercury fulminate degrades, hot storage speeds it up. Chlorate/Antimony sulfide could last for centuries… Or not, depends on purity of chemicals, formulation and storage. Lead styphnate primers properly made will last a Looooong time, we don’t know just how long yet- Various US military arsenal 30-06 ammo from 1953 on I’ve fired a LOT of, never had a noticeable rate of primer failure.
What kind of a gun guy hasn’t heard of 8×56? wonderful little cartridge, almost puts the 7.62x54r to shame with its power levels.
almost. not gonna lie, picking a rifle out of a crate for 150 bucks isn’t bad at all.
As a benefit of cleaning out the storage shed of an old family friend, I got to keep some ammo I found.
-A wooden crate of mil issue 12ga. 00. Each pack of 10 was sealed in a foil lined heavy paper and was stamped “1-67”. I test fired one pack out of my Winchester Defender, and it performed perfectly.
-Two sealed 600-rd “spam cans” of .30 carbine (I estimate late 40’s early 50’s). The cans had at some point been coated with a cosmo-like substance, so they were greasy and filthy. When I opened one, the rounds looked fine. A trip to the range with the carbine proved these worked great as well.
Free ammo makes me smile. 🙂
In general, old ammunition deteriorates in three ways, the first is that the primer goes dead, the second is that the powder deteriorates (pretty much just smokeless does this) and lastly, the brass can harden and crack. I’ve burned black powder that was over 150 years old and it went up fine, and I’ve (tried) to fire Civil War ammo that just went “click.” For the most part, it depends how it was stored, sealed in the can, tends to last. But I’ve opened WWII sealed metal cans of 12 gauge shells and only one in five would go bang. Embarrassing when the shell goes “click” and you hear the shot rolling down the barrel and out the muzzle. Lastly, metallic cases can harden over time and the neck holding the bullet can crack.
my mosin ammo is mostly early 70s, not a single FTF so far. Its all gone bang.
I love my mosin…and my Freak out/Break shit shirt…one of these days I’m going to replicate your store image with my mosin 😛
Speaking of ammo shelf-life….
I seem to remember a lot of hand-wringing over a mandated change in the formulation of primers back during the Clinton era that was prompted by environmental considerations. The preppers were up in arms (pardon the expression) because supposedly those newer primers had a much shorter shelf life, something like five years as opposed to essentially forever. This promised to wreak havoc on their ability to stockpile ammo as a hedge against a potential SHTF scenario, and, as can be expected, some people saw the environmental issues as a smokescreen and believed that the real goal was to prevent long-term stockpiling.
Does anyone else remember anything about this? I can’t find anything in a quick Google search. I don’t know whether this was a real thing, or something that was just being kicked around. If it was a real thing, I don’t know whether it was implemented. If it was implemented, what were the real-world effects on the shelf-life of ammo? Apparently none, because I haven’t heard of any increase in duds from 15-20-ish year old ammo.
The whole Clinton primer scare was a crock, as far as I know. But I DID get to buy a lot of cheap primers several years later, from the hoards a few folks put away over it-
The new small primer .45ACP is actually made with lead free chemicals. DDNP is the sensitizer- And DDNP is known to have a shorter life span than Lead styphnate. Buy military primers if you are seriously worried about storage life. Milspec doesn’t smile on short lifespan-
http://iaaforum.org/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=10634
Soviet MILSPEC even less so. the stuff I have for my mosins says 1977 on the headstamp, and we haven’t had a misfire yet.
Thank you! I was having a crappy day to start and this just made my whole day! Tears streaming down the cheeks laughing my ass off!!! Shared with my couple and we’re all laughing. Soooo glad this guy can laugh at himself like that! That rawks!!
Funny… In the IT world we find all manner of ancient hardware in our storage shed. Green screens, a box of 5 1/4 floppies(not the drives, just the disks). A brand new set of DOS install disks, still sealed in the box. A solid metal case for a computer that still has the toggle switch to turn the power on(286) which is propped up against what looks like a whole series of boards which use wire wrap instead of solder.
In the academic IT world, we find all manner of ancient hardware still in service. We had a PDP-8/I still faithfully running an instrument here until 2008, rack of paper tapes on its side. A MicroVAX cluster sat in the next room to process data. Since we retired those, the oldest things I’m aware of around here are a pair of 486s, with a Power Mac 7100/66 the runner-up.
Vyk — sounds like my alma mater….*LOL*
There’s a box in there for an IBM mainframe, with the outside showing the reel to reel…
Think of most ammo like cheese, if it’s not green and fuzzy it’s still good.
Many cheese variants are considered edible only when they are green and fuzzy.
I’m thinking not. I’ve shot untold thousands of rounds of Soviet milsurp 5.45×39 and 7.62x54R, some of which was manufactured in the 60’s.
I’m still happy with the several boxes of Federal 9mm Hydro Shock JHP I picked up in 95. I put a random round out through my carbine once a year just to test the batch. I realize 20 years isn’t a “Long Time” compared to some of the ammo being mentioned here…but I’ve found federal to be pretty reliable.
I’ve shot stuff from the 1920s, and heard reliable reports of people shooting loads from the 1880s.
And I have 8X56R Steyr here. Several thousand rounds, some of it Nazi marked. Not that rare.
Mmm… 9×18 makarov… I had picked up a surplus CZ-82 a while ago and a split case of Silver Bear FMJ/JHP not much later. the JHP is actually pretty decent in terms of penetration for defense use, and at the time it was pretty inexpensive.
As far as old ammo goes, The ’63/64 czech silver tip I have for my Mosin has gone bang every time.
“That closet.”
Yup. I can relate. When I was SysAd for the Recruiting District in Jacksonville, we had a storage room that held many things… Like full-height 5.25″ floppy drives. Bernoulli drives, and 20MB disks for same… *Unopened* boxes of 8-inch single-sided, single density floppy disks… The list goes longer, and gets stranger.
TL;DR – if you manage the O2, light, temp, pH and humidity levels correctly (which isn’t actually that hard), the ammo will outlast even the most optimistic projections for the duration of our species.
My stomach hurts now. Thanks for the laugh. I really needed that.
I don’t have any old ammo, but my grandpa has stuff all the way back to civil-war era stuff. He doesn’t fire it because he considers it collectible, but he’s said many times that he could use it if he needed to.
Why is anyone talking about old ammo?
I like that video.
A lot.