is corrosive ammo worth it?

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nah.. you can rust the hell out of something in less than a week if you have the right chemical on your metal thatll increase oxidation.. look at how rust bluing occurs in which in just a few days you create an even layer of rust over the entire piece of metal.. so not impossible.. besides, if i pay money for something i like to keep it in pristine condition as long as possible by avoiding things that may accelerate some kind of destruction.. i dont know any gun that shouldnt last 50 years with regular (meaning normal, average cleaning habbits as opposed to boiling hot water and windex in every nook and cranny if you so much as fire one round)

most guns i own ill clean the barrel out with some solvent, dry patch, a little lube and do internal parts less frequently to get the build up off where those parts rusting isnt a risk needed to be considered
 
for the record. I shoot corrosive surplus in my mosin nagants. I have never once given them hot water and windex. I use good ole fashioned CLP and clean like you would anything else. not a spec of rust in either of them.

no special treatment is required, just another myth that the internet picked up and ran with. kindof like how you can't shoot bullets that weigh more than 160 grains in an M1 garand even though US penetrators were 169gr and every garand loading manual has data up to 180grs.

I completely agree that if you buy something nice that you should not have to worry about it being unserviceable. if you are so concerned, don't shoot corrosive ammo. I have made the mistake of shooting corrosive surplus out of a 1903A4 sniper and forgetting about it. 6 months later I removed it from the safe to find the entire bore was bright brown. ran CLP patches through it for half an hour and it was back to normal with no pitting or measureable loss of accuracy.

that is how corrosive the compounds in corrosive ammo really is. it's not blueing chemicals, its plain salt... it doesn't come in a glowing green vial and eats through asphalt if you drop it.
 
jason, no offense, but you just don't know much about shooting corrosive ammo. If what you say is true, then nothing from WWII or earlier would exist today except for the M1 Carbine. All firearms used in the Spanish American, Boer wars & WWI used corrosive, the vast majority of arms in WWII, and the bulk of arms in Korea, and half the arms in Vietnam used corrosive ammo. All commercial arms in the early 20th century used them, too. All arms from the Civil War, War of 1812, Napoleonic wars, Revolution, and others would have as well.

The reality is that corrosive ammo is not a big deal nor does it destroy firearms. I have saved many a Mosin with navel lint bores from guys who shot them and then forgot about them. Months later I'm cleaning them. The bores may become frosted, but that rarely affects accuracy.
 
"nah.. you can rust the hell out of something in less than a week if you have the right chemical on your metal thatll increase oxidation.."


Based on some 40 years of empirical experience, I'll call my opinion a good one and your supposition uninformed. You always have days, often weeks, and sometimes months before it's an issue, depending mainly on relative humidity of where you reside. In the Mojave you could probably go years. Just drop a mop on a weighted string thru the bore when you are done shooting and you've covered 99% of it.



"what about the image people paint of AKs being dragged through the mud and dirt for months at a time with no proper cleaning.. what bullcrap.. 1 week of that with corrosive ammo and the gun would be destroyed"


Uhh... no. I just had the chance to shoot about 500 rounds thru a 1960 manufacture Chinese Type 56-1 (Milled AK-47) that was a war relic from Viet Nam. It's owned by a military organization that has it in their study collection. The rifle had zero finish, gross pitting externally, the sling loop was literally rusted off, and the stock looked like it had sat in a muddy stream for years. The bore and piston looked like new. It went 500 rounds full auto ranging from 3 shot bursts to multiple mag dumps without a hitch. There's a reason they chromed the important bits.



Willie

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The whole corrosive is blown WAY out of proportion, especially with an AK. You would have to try very hard to ruin an AK with corrosive ammo. You also don't need to worry about every nook and cranny. Rinse the thing out with some water after you shoot and you will never have a problem. Your barrel is not going to disintegrate if you don't fully detail strip and expertly clean every piece within hours of a range trip. I've only used non-corrosive ammo in one gun of my collection. The others have all seen extensive use with corrosive ammo and I've never had a problem. It does not take that long to clean and you don't need to go into panic mode that you're running out of time after shooting. They make very few guns that are easier to clean than an AK.
 
1 week of that with corrosive ammo and the gun would be destroyed
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OK I bought an SKS when they were dirt cheap. I didn't care a whit about it getting messed up. I figured I'd just buy another one. So I didn't clean the barrel or anything else for "years". I shot thousands of rounds of corrosive ammo through it in those days. It does not have one speck of rust anywhere now and I've had it 20 years. I'd say it was probably at least 5 years before I ever cleaned the bore in that rifle. I'd look down the bore for signs of problem and I never had any. The rifle has worked dang near perfectly for over 20 years. I don't think it has ever malfunctioned when it wasn't caused by bad ammo (immediately stopped when I went back to good ammo) or me making changes to the rifle (ended as soon as I put the original parts back in the rifle). Even at that it probably hasn't malfunctioned more than 25 times since I owned it. I bought a couple of boxes of ammo that had some issues. Maybe 5 or 6 rounds mis-fired from those boxes. I changed the firing pin after having the trigger fixed by Kivaari. It had some issues with failures to eject after that. I put the original firing pin back in and it worked perfectly again. What's even stranger is I eventually put the modified firing pin back in and it worked perfectly. It's still in there. I'm sure all the SKS people here know about changing firing pins to prevent slam firing. It was a well known problem to use the modified firing pins (they have a spring mounted on them to keep them pushed back so they won't get stuck forward and make your SKS into a full auto. The original firing pins slide back and forth in a channel and operate on momentum.

So I don't think a week of corrosive ammo is going to kill an AK or an SKS. I've shot thousands of rounds of the stuff especially when it only cost $104 a case (1440 rounds). I bought so much of that stuff that I still have quite a bit of it.

I'll be glad to post photos of my SKS including shots of the bore showing that it isn't rusted or pitted. It still shoots as accurate as it ever did too.

I actually think the gun powder residue protected the bore from the corrosive primers. I can't say that for sure. I just know the rifle is still in great shape. And I've looked at a lot of used SKS's that didn't have pitting or rusting problems but they did have gunked up powder residue everywhere. I've seen them with so much gunk you couldn't get the bolt to work. But I never saw any rust anywhere on them. Checking the bore would have been tough but there was exposed metal in the chamber etc. and there was no rust or pitting on any metal I could see. I've seen some that were rusted but they were also rusted on the outside so clearly they were left in a bad environment.
 
If I'm going out to the range where I'll be shooting quite a few rounds, then shooting corrosive ammo makes sense to me.

If I'm only planning to shoot a round or two, such as dispatching feral or sick animals or confirming zero, I'll just use noncorrosive ammo.

Getting rid of the corrosive salts takes about the same amount of time whether you shoot one round or a thousand.
 
ash, no, i dont shoot any corrosive ammo so youre right on that.. even my mosin nagant all i use are hand loads

heres another question though.. for those of you that have used the nitride or nitro carburized or melonite or whatever the hell theyre calling it now barrels.. how do these stack up to chrome lined in terms of corrosion resistance?
 
For me, even for my Mosin, I'd rather shoot noncorrosive ammo and go several range sessions without cleaning than shoot corrosive and have to clean it each time. Unless you shoot a lot of rounds, the cost difference between corrosive surplus and noncorrosive steel-case is only a few dollars per range trip.

As to the AK and noncorrosive ammo, Wolf and others make noncorrosive AK ammo in 5.45x39mm, but you may have to mail order it or get it at a gun show since it is less common. (And 5.45x39mm is perhaps the best caliber there is for an AK, in my opinion.)

The AR doesn't have to be cleaned religiously, either; I shoot Wolf noncorrosive in my AR and clean it every few range sessions, and even then it's because I want to rather than have to. You can keep an AR running for thousands of rounds by simply squirting some oil in the gas vents from time to time, and perhaps squiring some on the outside of the BCG every once in a while. It doesn't have to be spotless, or even clean, just lubricated once in a while.
 
You know all those 'sewer pipe' Mausers and Enfields? Why all those Garands got rebarreled?

Corrosive ammo did ruin those barrels in field conditions.

BSW
 
and I'm sure that it had nothing to do with the thousands of rounds that were put through them.
 
You know all those 'sewer pipe' Mausers and Enfields? Why all those Garands got rebarreled?
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Well that or all kinds of other abuse we have no way of knowing about. A lot of those things saw post-war service in really remote areas where they may never have been cleaned. There's certainly plenty of non-sewer pipe rifles as well and they also shot corrosive ammo, so I'm not sure we can really say it was just the corrosive ammo that caused the sewer pipe bores.
 
While I won't argue with those who use Windex and/or water to clean, I've fired thousands of rounds of corrosive ammo through a Norinco SKS using only normal cleaning procedures, and have neer had rust or corrosion issues even living in the humidity of South Dakota. The idea that corrosive ammo is going to destroy a gun is in a word overblown.
 
well if im going to give corrosive ammo a chance, its not going to be the AK ive put a lot of time and effort into making it perfect in my eyes.. probably not my M38 mosin nagant either.. i guess im too attached to my rifles to risk it... id have to find something really crappy if i was going to risk it

hmm.. im going to try some surplus in my M38 with only regular cleaning habbits (i clean after a day of shooting, or even after a stripper clip or two) and see what happens.. if it eats my barrel out ill just replace it with a .311 barrel of identicle contour.. i wouldnt mind the excuse to make some non-bubba improvements as mine was made during WWII so they didnt exactly put much care for quality control into them.. tool marks all over the original barrel and bolt surfaces
 
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Corrosive ammunition is only corrosive if you are lazy and don't clean your firearms soon after use.
The savings in cash can easily justify using corrosive ammunition and not being lazy.
 
actually.. found my M38 has a few very light spots of surface rust.. kind of makes me angry because i knew i was going to be moving to a new state and may not see it for a while, so i oiled it up extra thick to prevent this.. aw well, it should come off easy and its only on the outside surface of the barrel and only in a couple small patches
 
How difficult is it to water wet a couple of patches and run them thru your bore at the range?
If you are feeling particular pull a brush thru between the wet patches dry it out and get an oily patch in there and you are set.
Following that I have never had a worry about shooting military surplus corrosive even in gas guns.
Anyone use black powder?
Same cleaning goes for them.
 
Anyone use black powder?
Same cleaning goes for them.
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I went from a collection of mostly WW2 surplus firearms (and a few AKs), all of which saw diets of exclusively corrosive ammo for several years with absolutely no damage, to a collection of mostly blackpowder shooting rifles. No surprise here that I still have had no trouble with corrosion. You're absolutely right, it's not rocket science and it's not difficult. The dangers of corrosive ammo are hugely exaggerated.
 
its actually not the bores i was worried about.. bores are probably the easiest to clean and part of a routine that occurs after every time i shoot.. its just getting the residue into the action, amongs the trigger parts, maybe inside the firing pine hole in the carrier, or under the extractor.. those areas where im more concerned about since those arent areas regularly cleaned or inspected

but.. probably not even able to get enough moisture into these areas to form rust even if the salts did get in there
 
Reloading Steel 7.62x54r?

Originally posted by: jason41987
ive reloaded countless steel 7.62x54R cases..
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How do you reprime them?

All the steel 7.62x54r I've seen has had .254" Berdan primers and I haven't seen those available for 15 years or more.

I've saved 7.62x54r cases for years on the off chance that they'll eventually import the primers for it again, but if you've got a workable method with currently available components I'd love to hear it.
 
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Willy,
The brass Albanian cases they were converting in the link you provided have the "standard" western size .217 Berdan primers.

I don't understand why anyone would go to all that trouble to convert them when the correct primers are readily available, especially converting Albanian brass, which I've found to be pretty much 5th rate at best.

I was just hoping that jason41987 could tell me how he reloads the steel cases with .254" primers since I've never come across a practical method of doing so since I used up the last of my RWS .254"s.

I actually like reloading steel cases since you never have to trim, just load twice and toss 'em!
 
well, there are a few good methods for decapping berdan primers, and you can reprime them with more berdans.. another method you can use is to remove the primer, either drill out or swage the anvil out to drill a center flash hole in the center, and then i found a method on youtube that involves using a primer pocket swaging die and some brass tubing that gets swaged into the pocket and trimmed to convert the primer pocket size for standard large rifle primers.. so in short.. bushing the primer pocket

after that you can decap and reprime as normal.. and i only have one 7.62x54R rifle, so theres really no need for me the resize the cases, although ive been resizing some of the same cases over and over again and you can get a few reloads out of something you would have otherwise thrown away

i have no idea to the size of the 5.45x39s primer pocket dimensions, might be even easier to do with that.. but who knows

another added benefit of reloading steel over brass is you can pick up all your empty cases with a magnet
 
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^^

Jason: You can't buy primers of the right diameter. In your fantasy world, are you making your own?



Willie

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