HELP: Black Liquid Leaking from Commercial Rifle Ammo

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italy4nra

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Thanks for reading.

Three of my S&B Match Grade .303 British Cartridges have a black liquid gunk leaking from the seal between the bullet and the case. The liquid has no smell of amy kind, does not burn (tried burning the paper towel I used to soak it up) and leaves the copper corroded green and black.

I have inspected and wiped down all the caes that were affected and have put aside the 3 weird ones. The ammo is recently purchased this year.

What the heck is this stuff? Any ideas?
 
Shellac? Lots of ammo manufacturers use it to seal the case necks. Maybe they used s bad batch.
 
Looks like molasses. I will try pulling one tomorrow. I havenot tried firing as mid-August all the ranges are closed here.
 
My guess?

It is factory asphalt bullet sealer, in combination with some excess bore cleaner you left in the rifle while playing "chamber me" games with them.

The bore cleaner is melting the asphalt off, and if it has any copper solvent qualitys, is turning the brass green under the black slime.

rc
 
OMG!!! :D


tar sealed ammo???
Click to expand...
You betcha!
The U.S. military has always used asphalt bullet sealer on all mil-spec ammo since before WWII.
So have many other countrys, beginning with the use of jacketed bullets prior to WWI.

rc
 
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As usual, RC most likely nailed it. It's bullet sealant, designed to help make the ammo resist immersion in water.
 
Lol. I don't play that type of chamber games. Only the other ones.
If a bullet is chambered, it is fired.
Pulling them now....
 
Here they are before pulling. The left has been wiped clean; note the brass corrosion verdigris. The right is still leaking, right out the seal. The gunk is more brown, not black, in fact just like tar, but it does not smell like petroleum, in fact it has no smell whatsoever.
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I cannot get the picture embed to work. You can find the image here: Picasa
 
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Maybe something contaminated the cartridges, and it just looks like it is leaking from the seal.
 
Chawbaccer said:
Maybe something contaminated the cartridges, and it just looks like it is leaking from the seal.
Click to expand...
Must be, although it really seems to come from the seal. All the corrosion is at the base of the bullet above the crimp, but the base of the pulled bullets is clean and dry. Anyways....

Friendly Officer says, "Move along folks, nothing to see here...."
 
That's nasty looking stuff for sure. I will go along with the bad batch of sealer thought. I have never seen this in 40+ years of reloading or reclaiming ammo components. The sealer is most often a hard black tar like substance across all types of surplus so far. The commercial has been like lacquer paint. Would it be worth emailing S&B with the lot number. They might be able to shed some light on this. I have several boxes of recent 303 Brit and 7.62X54 I bought from them to shoot so I could reuse the brass and none of mine is doing this.
 
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