Warning for .22 abusers

One of the reasons BTW that I chose for this experiment to fill a primed but bullet and powderless piece of brass with the WD-40 is my understanding is it is somewhat volatile. My thinking is that spraying a film WD-40 on the outside of a round of ammo the oil will evaporate before too long whereas having a cavity full of the oil will keep the osmotic pressure on for longer. Agree or disagree?

kBob said:

What I did was make a suggestion that the test be more like the conditions ammo that supposedly had this issue was in and reported what a guy 40 years ago blamed his failure to fires on.

By the way another cop I heard this theory from, face to face, only about 27 years ago, was Mas Ayoob.

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So what you are saying is WD-40 is magic and can diffuse in one direction with basically no pressure and not diffuse in another direction under some pressure? Do you think your instructors of high acclaim could explain how a primer could act like a semipermeable membrane? There must be a name for this condition.

I have a gallon (metal) can of WD-40, had it for about 10 years. You would think that based on you instruction that by now that can would be empty, the material all diffused out.

Thomas15, to me it sounds like if you spray WD 40 on your ammo primers, you may be risking contamination of those primers, causing a FTF. Sounds logical and possible to me. Why try to tell someone its not possible. If you want to coat your ammo in WD 40 go ahead. I don't think I will, but you can feel free.

ontarget said:

Thomas15, to me it sounds like if you spray WD 40 on your ammo primers, you may be risking contamination of those primers, causing a FTF. Sounds logical and possible to me. Why try to tell someone its not possible. If you want to coat your ammo in WD 40 go ahead. I don't think I will, but you can feel free.

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The point I'm trying to make is to contaminate the primer, the WD-40 has to get past the "seal" between the primer and the primer pocket. I question that by simply spraying the magic formula on a cartridge will not penetrate into inside to the primer compound. I'm trying to get a concentration of WD-40 placed inside the cartridge to seep to the outside and after 3 days nothing. I'm not saying it's impossible, what I'm saying is it very unlikely based on my tinkering so far.

Carl N. Brown said:

^ Keep WD-40 away from ammo. WD-40 has a penetrating solvent and leaves a waxy protectant. It's not a good lubricant. I'll soak rusted parts in WD-40 for 24 hours before cleaning. It's good to clean stuff and wipe off. It can penetrate and deaden the primer and gunpowder inside a cartridge.

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There are many who dispute this, including a video that shows it not killing primers, however I personally found it to happen to me with a 357 mag revolver, when I used it I had FTF's, when I stopped using it the FTF's stopped, have never used WD 40 for guns again.

For a week I have had 9mm brass filled with WD-40 and another with Kroil. Neither one has allowed any oil to pass through the primer.

robhof said:

when I used it I had FTF's, when I stopped using it the FTF's stopped, have never used WD 40 for guns again.

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There are good reasons not to use WD-40 on your firearms. Seeping past a seated primer to contaminate the primer and/or powder is not one of them. Based on my experiment as noted in this thread I can say without fear that WD-40 is not the reason for your FTFs.

thomas15 said:

For a week I have had 9mm brass filled with WD-40 and another with Kroil. Neither one has allowed any oil to pass through the primer.



There are good reasons not to use WD-40 on your firearms. Seeping past a seated primer to contaminate the primer and/or powder is not one of them. Based on my experiment as noted in this thread I can say without fear that WD-40 is not the reason for your FTFs.

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It's not the liquid WD40 that's the problem, it's the vaporized oil when the gun is fired, never had a problem with the 1st round, that's why I figured it was the vapor, all I know for sure is that I had no more problems when I stopped using it.

A water tight small container for the ammo you wish to carry and a water absorbing silica pack should preserve them for a year. I stored 22,000 rounds for five years nitro-packed in soda bottles with water and oxygen packs. The nitrogen was needed as the oxygen packs were large enough to cause a vacuum in the bottles, they were however free. When I sold them I tested them with the buyer and they worked just fine.

The thing is, why have your ammo exposed to WD-40 at all? While it may not be harmful, it certainly cannot be helpful.
It is not a bullet lubricant
It will not seal primers
It is a poor gun lubricant/preservative
This much is common knowledge.----just do a search for "WD-40" and "firearms"

I tend to agree with thomas15 that a lacquer sealed round (both primer and case mouth) should be pretty much impervious to incursion of most liquids, even penetrating type oils. The oil would first have to dissolve the lacquer before it could begin to infiltrate the powder or primer. That said, I don't think that a couple of days or even a week is enough time to kill the primer. If you were to do that for months on end and there was continually a wet bead of WD40 or Kroil laying around the primer pocket, it may eventually creep into the primer. The case full of said penetrant may increase the speed a bit, but the creeping is not due to the excess pressure the fluid column places on the interface. In fact I would say that has almost zero effect on the ability of the oil to migrate.

That said, anybody who sprays their loaded gun down with lubricant or water displacer as a course of normal preventative care needs to reevaluate their process. If you want to spray your gun down every day, take an extra 60 seconds and dump the rounds out, wipe the firearms down after spraying, and reload. It is not rocket science.

I've not done any formal tests with WD-40, but did use it years ago for all kinds of stuff. I still use it to deaden primers that might be damaged during reloading. I have tested this, and it deadens primers quite well. I started reloading in '67, and reloaded a batch of 9mm before going into the military. When I attempted to fire those reloads two years later, I experienced several dead primers. I have no proof, but I always suspected this was caused by either the WD-40 I used on just about everything except ice cream in those days, or the case lube necessary before I began using tungsten carbide dies. If either the lube or WD-40 was the culprit, I don't think it was caused by lube or WD-40 seeping past primers or case mouths, but due to lube and/or WD-40 on my hands contaminating the primers during the reloading process. In any case, I no longer need case lube, and keep WD-40 away from primers I would actually prefer to fire. Strangely, being more careful about this stuff, I've experienced no more dead primers with my reloaded ammo

BTW, I once tested some factory Winchester .357 ammo that had been stored in a metal storage shed for 20 +years. This, where summer temperatures sometimes reached 105°. It was like an oven in there in the summertime, maybe 130° or so? I tested about 80 rounds, IIRC. It all fired. But chronographed velocities were erratic.

I'm pretty sure that if you filled a center fire cartridge with WD-40, capped the mouth with wax or some such to keep the WD-40 from evaporating, and then placed the cartridge base-down on a piece of paper that a stain may develop where the primer contacts the paper - in a few months or years.
On the other hand, my cans of Kroil tend to weep oil around the rolled seams at the base of the can... .