How to safely dispose of ...

[Boom-stick]

My Range actually supply a pair of pliers on the firing line for twisting the heads off dud .22 rounds, we just pull 'em off and chuck 'em in the trash.

But... don't ever use a bullet puller on a rim fire case, not unless you have something against 'eye sight'.

 

[silicon wolverine]

I remember one time we were out at the lake and had a good bonfire going and some jackass from the next campsite ran by and threw a handfull of .22s in our bonfire. I think it musta looked like cockroaches do when you turn on the light cuz we scattered! THey popped off, nobody got hurt but i think somebody beaned that kid with an empty beer can on his next trip by.

SW

 

[creitzel]

Soak them in oil eh? Any particular kind of oil?

...Unknowingly,I recently dumped several hundred live rounds that had accumulated in my loading room in a burning trash barrel

This line gave me some pretty good mental images, and had me spitting coca cola all over my keyboard, thanks


Thanks for the replies,

Chris

 

[VirgilCaine]

...Unknowingly,I recently dumped several hundred live rounds that had accumulated in my loading room in a burning trash barrel.

Familiarity breeds contempt!

 

[bpisler]

Buy a quart of cheap motor oil at the
local parts store.

 

[WayneConrad]

Pressure sets off primers? Not in my experience.

Don eyes and ears and put a primer in a vice. You can squish it very flat and it won't go off. Hit it with a hammer. Harder. You have to wack it pretty hard for it to go off. It takes a sharp impact to set off a primer.

I think there's a myth that needs busting here. When I get a chance I'll use plairs (and don eyes, ears and gloves) to twist apart a handfull of 22-LR rounds. I'll be amazed if I set one off, and even more amazed if one going off did more than scare me.

 

[Brian Williams]

Don't just throw them in the weeds, we have had a few tossed rimfire rounds go off when they were run over by the lawnmower, makes for interesting times mowing around the range. If they are 22 rimfire rounds I single feed them in an auto or put them in a revolver, if they are still a dud after a few strikes I pull them apart with my fingers by wiggling the bullet back and forth. If a centerfire round duds I use a kinetic bullet puller.

 

[hksw]

Huh, to me the replies so far have been overly cautious.

IMO, and I've done this often, particularly with Thumberbolts, if the round is not excessively damaged and will still chamber by hand without much effort, reload and fire again.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Our range has a bin for misfed or dud rounds.
They do not want us dumping misfeeds or duds
in the "burn barrel" with targets, jugs, plastic bottles etc.

I have burned old ammo myself: the bullets don't go far,
but the casings are miniature rockets! They won't do
much harm inside a 55 gal metal drum. if they do get
out, they are going up, or bounced off the side
of the barrel, and fall to ground harmlessly.

The best and safest thing is to pull the bullets, dump the
powder and even forget about recycling the bullets or casings.

As an experiment, I found that about half of .22 rimfire duds will
fire if you rotate the shell so the firing pin strikes opposite
the original firing pin mark on the rim: sometimes the
priming compund is not uniformly distributed in rimfire cases,
especially in the cheap bulk pack ammo.

I have also had old .303 military surplus rounds hangfire up to
a second, so don't be too quick to eject that "dud."