Long term storage of ammo *My solution*

[Hershmeister]

Just leave em in the crates!

[Hershmeister]

Like this

[Caster]

Leave them in what crates? This whole deal was for ammo I reload from brass I've picked up.

[dlm37015]

Storage of reloads. I wish I could load up enough between shootings for that. What I brought back home from a non-shoot weekend will be shot tomorrow.

90 hp tractor, my 32 hp ford keeps me going.

DLM couldn't deliver what I need.

you need to call before 530 on sunday afternoon by then its all packed up

[LI0NSFAN]

Caster- How many bundles did you get into an ammo can? I might just do this just to get more rounds in my cans. Factory boxes never fit right

[Guest Lester Weevils]

DLM, do you ever attend any Chatt gun shows? Maybe the Camp Jordan May 26-27 show? The bi-annual Camp Jordan shows seem about as good as it gets around here. Just wondering. It would be fun to shake hands and maybe buy some goodies.

[Caster]

Caster- How many bundles did you get into an ammo can? I might just do this just to get more rounds in my cans. Factory boxes never fit right

I'll try to let you know in a few days. I was hoping to get back to this sooner, but I have been making 308 brass for the last few days.

[dlm37015]

DLM, do you ever attend any Chatt gun shows? Maybe the Camp Jordan May 26-27 show? The bi-annual Camp Jordan shows seem about as good as it gets around here. Just wondering. It would be fun to shake hands and maybe buy some goodies.

no i have an agrement with another reloading dealer that i will stay away .i am looking at reserving the range at my club for a tgo shoot and swap meet so perhaps you can come over the hill

[Guest canebreaker]

".i am looking at reserving the range at my club for a tgo shoot and swap meet so perhaps you can come over the hill "

Keep us posted on this event.

[Caster]

i am looking at reserving the range at my club for a tgo shoot and swap meet so perhaps you can come over the hill

I'll be out next sunday, we need to discuss this a bit. This sounds like more fun than when the hogs eat up my twin brother!!!!! I'm certainly in!

[gjohnsoniv]

What about butcher paper Caster? You know, the brown paper you buy in big rolls? That might be a little bit cheaper and heavier than a paper bag. It would also allow you to vary the amount of ammo in each package.

[Guest canebreaker]

I picked up all the trays and boxes I could while working at the range. If I run out of boxes, I wrap them in typing paper. But that doesn't last long to empty

Edited May 2, 2012 by canebreaker

[Guest Lester Weevils]

no i have an agrement with another reloading dealer that i will stay away .i am looking at reserving the range at my club for a tgo shoot and swap meet so perhaps you can come over the hill

Thanks dlm.

If you organize a meet would like to know about it. Maybe could show up but it would be a freak of nature like a 100 year storm, as I rarely go anywhere. Might could show up as it sounds like fun. Went up to Nashville about four years ago so, though at one time I'd go to a convention there every summer. Might could get motivated to get out of town for a couple of days.

[dlm37015]

i am trying to get the club for a meet i would be fun

[Mark A]

David, I think a shoot and swap meet sounds great. At said swap meet would I be able to swap some cash for a few things I know you stock?

[JohnC]

So school me. I have just bought 1,000rds of 5.56 FMJ NATO. I also bought a bunch of MAPUL Clips.

Would it be wise to store the loaded clips, or unloaded?

If it's ok to store the loaded clps, what is the best way? Like your setup, wrapped in paper in an ammo can?

[Caster]

Not to be anal, but I'm assuming you meant magazine?

Load em. Be sure your plastic cap is in place as the cap takes the load off of the feed lips. I load ALL my magazines. You can leave them loaded a long time. Personally, I rotate mine by taking the ones loaded longest to the range with me. I load them when I get home and move them to the back of pile. As far as how to store the magazines themselves, toss them in an ammo can, whatever. Dry and out of extreme temps, you're good to go.

[gjohnsoniv]

I keep all mine in ammo cans.

[lshel]

I keep all my ammo in ammo cans, new factory and reloads. I shot some 44 mag last week that were reloaded in 1987 and 1991.

Accuracy and grouping was good and no failure of any primers.

[hipower]

My personal opinion, with any kind of reasonable precautions and storage; I don't think ammo will go bad. I just recently shot the last milsurp 45acp that my Dad bought in the early 60s. Figuring 1965 as aqusition date, conservatively at that, it was 47 years old+. Dad always said the milsurp he had was Korean War vintage. Felt like any 230 45I've shot at any time, and not issues at all. Also have shot some of his 38/45 target reloads from that era without problems.

The ammo was stacked on his old reloading bench in the garage, where it had been as long as I can remember in orginal paper boxes, and some, not all, of the reloads were in the typical plastic boxes used in the 60s.

No other special precautions were used.

But I do keep my ammo in factory boxes and containers until use. These I have stored in a Hazmat cabinet at the moment, and plan on putting heavy duty shelving in an old

StackOn brand safe I have for more secure storage.

[Caster]

Hipower is right. Reasonably stored, ammo will not go bad in ANY of our lifetimes. After that, who cares.

I've shot Turkish 7,92x57 from the late 30's that ran 100% and would leave a nice welt under your cheek and a purple oval in your shoulder pocket after 100 rounds or so.

I started this thread and endeavor, NOT for greater shelf life but ease of storage, use and dispensing. I wanted something cheap and repeatable and be OCD compliant.

I'm actually working on 9x19 today. Let ya'll know how it turns out.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

I'm ignorant of statistical behavior, but the only personal experience of ammo going bad was old .22LR ammo. Maybe overall .22LR ammo will last "indefinitely" but I've had a couple of bricks of .22 ammo that shot reliably years ago, and when I tried to use up the ammo recently it contained mostly duds. Even if that is unusual aging and most .22LR should last "indefinitely", dunno if special storage would have prevented whatever made those .22LR rounds go bad with age. One might suspect some kind of age-related failure in the rimfire priming compound, but even it that is true, dunno how to identify "what went wrong". The bad rounds looked fine externally. No obvious corrosion.

My bad old .22LR ammo was stored on the shelf in the bedroom of an air-conditioned house. Not shed or unsealed basement storage. Maybe whatever went wrong would not have happened in an airtight ammo can in a cool basement, or on the other hand maybe air or normal household temp/humidity didn't have anything to do with the aging? Plenty of chemicals and materials can break down over time even stored at ideal temps and protected from light and humidity.

Have several brands of old .22LR stored away in sealed ammo cans. Was usually smart enough to mark a date on boxes with sharpie before putting it away. Ought to dig out some old samples to test if it still goes bang. Hmm, reckon sometimes "value pak" .22 ammo is just "old stock" that never sold as the high-price stuff? Stuff that sits at the factory warehouse too long and they finally sell it off as value pak? Analogous to fish antibiotics which are human-quality antibiotics that got "too close" to the use-by date? Dunno. If .22 ammo can go bad with age, and value pak is repackaged old stock, then it might explain reports of a higher dud rate in value pak ammo?

Except for seeing some old .22LR turn into duds, the only other thing I've seen is that factory rounds and reloads stored in decent environmental conditions, but in unsealed boxes-- After a few years it doesn't look shiny any more. It would most certainly be safe to shoot, but have seen it get fairly dark mottled "light surface corrosion" just sitting on the shelf in the bedrooom. Just storing it sealed seems to prevent most of that. Admittedly many folks don't care about the looks as long as it goes bang, but otoh normal corrosion is a progressive slow process. First it gets dull. Then it gets a patina. Eventually you get streaks of green copper oxides on the surface. At which point it is possible the brass could start getting weak, because that copper is sposed to be mixed in with the brass alloy rather than sitting on the surface as oxides. Drawing on limited personal experience, am more thinking about the conditions you can find of handsome brass parts on old gear, such as handsome old telegraph keys or telescope mounts stored in the closet for decades. Eventually it can get to a state that it won't work too good any more, just from normal indoor air exposure.

Last year bought 2000 Rem 124 gn JHP bullets "on sale" for a great price. It will work fine and came in good condition except it is a fair bet the unsealed cardboard box sat on warehouse shelf quite awhile. No streaks of green, but it has a "dark brass" color mottled with gray/black surface spots (perhaps 10 or 20 percent of surface area). Not a complete antique patina but well on the way. For "pride of workmanship" will probably try to polish em up before reload and storage in sealed containers. It will shoot just as good unshiny, but on the other hand it will shoot just as good shiny as well, and it will look better.

Never tried tumbling jacketed lead bullets. Would a 124gn jacketed bullet be light enough to "circulate" in the walnut like brass does? They wouldn't be so heavy they just sit on the bottom and bang into each other? Any chance that tumbling might ding up jacketed bullets? Have read that the lead of jacketed bullets is usually pretty hard. Wouldn't want to tumble em if there is a chance it would hurt the performance in some way.

Edited May 6, 2012 by Lester Weevils

[Caster]

Definitive answer on 9x19 capacity.

It was asked how many will fit in a can, well, I'm out of 38 brass for the moment, but when I get back to it, I'll let you know.

Loosely tossed in a SAW can, I can get around 2,300-2,350 rounds of 9mm per can. Wrapped in brown paper as I have been doing through out this thread I can get 14 packs of 125 rounds each for a total of 1,750 rounds per can. The loss in can capacity from packaging them like this is an agreeable sacrifice. So much the better for the ammo too. Less likely to damage one another. Besides, you ever picked up an ammo can with 2,300 rounds of 9mm ammo in it? Well, for those of us with compromised spines, it's darn heavy!

The next neat little trick I will do for this project is getting the oxygen out. Oxygen is the enemy of all things long term. It is the great destroyer of stored goods. An ammo can is pretty doggone close to being a perfect hermetic seal. So how can we purge the oxygen? I have a great idea that I have already tested and it's perfectly safe. Also, it HAS to be one of the most effective ways to remove oxygen. Fire. A wad of aluminum foil formed into a cup thick enough to protect the contents from the heat and two or three wooden matches. Light them in the foil, set the burning matches in the can, gently shut the lid. When the oxygen is gone, so too will be the flame.

Store the can in a cool dry place and forget about it.

Edited May 6, 2012 by Caster

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Old electronic vacuum tubes used various metal compound "getters" to oxidize out and purge any remaining oxygen left in the tube.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getter

Dunno if there are any typical getters that would be any better idea than match heads.

Am tempted to think that if the ammo can is closed up on a dry day or in the house in the winter on a cold day when the house heater has dried the air, maybe the residual oxygen in a full ammo can is "no big deal" but dunno if that is true. After all the small amount of oxygen is used up for a little bit of corrosion, then there won't be any more to continue the process?

If you do metal work and maybe keep nitrogen or CO2 tanks around anyway, maybe just spraying in some dry nitrogen or CO2 before closing the lid, would work as good or better than a matchhead "getter", without having to set a fire inside an ammo can? Or maybe toss in a little chunk of dry ice and let it evaporate in the can before closing the lid? Communications wiring conduit is commonly pumped full of nitrogen because that chases out the humidity and oxygen.

Edited May 6, 2012 by Lester Weevils

[gjohnsoniv]

If you do metal work and maybe keep nitrogen or CO2 tanks around anyway, maybe just spraying in some dry nitrogen or CO2 before closing the lid, would work as good or better than a matchhead "getter", without having to set a fire inside an ammo can? Or maybe toss in a little chunk of dry ice and let it evaporate in the can before closing the lid? Communications wiring conduit is commonly pumped full of nitrogen because that chases out the humidity and oxygen.

That's what I was thinking, the dry ice is heavier than air so if you let it get down in there then it'll push all the o2 out.