Indians For Guns

Came across an article in the June issue of the "Small Arms Review', entitled "Removing the Mystery from Corrosive Ammunition". Briefly, bullets were pulled and powder removed from cartridges known to have corrosive primers; the case was then placed on a steel rod, and the primer was detonated. After four hours the rods were wiped with different agents, then observed after 48 hours. Following are the results:
Rod #1 not cleaned: Corroded
Rod #2 Breakfree: Corroded
Rod #3 Windex: Not corroded, but developed slight rust from water in Windex after a few days.
Rod #4 Hot water: Not corroded, but slight surface rust from the water after several days.
Rod #5 Hoppes #9: No corrosion. (To my surprise, as my very old supply of it does not recommend it for corrosive primers, current bottles do.)
Rod #6 WD-40: No corrosion. (What do you know, I've been doing right!).
Rod #7: Non-corrosive primer followed by corrosive: Corroded

Hope this information is of use to the membership. Cheers.

That is indeed helpful. Thanks. I never knew hoppes would work.

I agree, that is quite an interesting and helpful post!

Fortunately I haven't messed with corrosive ammo in decades but one never knows when buying cheap russian or chinese ammo.

Quite a few folks, including myself, shoot large amounts of surplus ammo with corrosive primers in military weapons. Those of us who clean our weapons properly and promptly after such use don't experience any problems.

My own personal cleaning regimen is to give a good cleaning with Windex-soaked patches, followed by dry clean patches until the bore is dry. Then I use Hoppes #9 until the patches come out clean, again followed by dry clean patches to dry the bore. My last step is to run a patch with US military bore cleaner down the barrel. This stuff smells somewhat like kerosene and is oily.

I've never had a rust problem using this method and it is not significantly more complicated, difficult, or lengthy than cleaning with commercial ammo or my own reloads.

There are some sources of surplus ammo that are known for being of poor quality -- which perhaps might qualify as "cheap," since the price is seldom high for it. But my experience with surplus ammo, which is much less expensive than commercial ammo and quite suitable for practice, is in keeping with what I would assume to be true: that most nations supply their troops with reasonably reliable ammunition for obvious reasons: their military goals are to win battles and wars by killing opposing forces. This can't be accomplished by using inferior ammunition.

My favorite military rifle to shoot is my Finnish M39. For practice, I prefer to use Hungarian heavy ball yellow tip, which is loaded with ~170gr lead core steel jacketed bullets. I have found only one commercial loading that shoots better than this practice ammo, the 204gr Barnaul soft point. In my gun, the Barnaul and the Hungarian military loading is more accurate than the expensive Sellier and Ballot Hollow Point Boat Tail Match ammo. Thank goodness I have laid away a fair amount of this Hungarian heavy ball yellow tip (stamped 1953 manufacture).

I also shoot a fair amount of 7.62x39 and 9mm ammo which is made in Russia. This is steel case ammo (most of mine is Wolf Brand, but some is Barnaul and some is Brown Bear) that most people say uses corrosive primers. I don't know for sure, but I clean my guns as if it was corrosive and find no problems with bore corrosion at all. I will admit, however, that the two guns that are in 7.62x39 do have chrome bores.

I have a Polish Radom out of which I shoot 8x57 Turkish surplus. Some of this Turkish ammo is of spotty quality in that the brass cases can be subject to splitting. But it does go bang when the trigger is pulled consistently even though it is stamped as 40s manufacture. I've had no problems shooting it, either. Finally, I shoot Romanian military 7.62x25 from my CZ52, and it is corrosive primed also, with no corrosion problems.

My own conclusion is that there's no problem whatsoever with shooting corrosive primed ammunition, as long as one recognizes that a small degree of additional care is necessary -- a small price to pay, considering how economical and reliable surplus ammo can be.