ammo storage and longevity

my fathers S&W Chiefs Special was kept loaded with defense ammo for over 30 years in his dresser drawer, I took it to the range to fire the old ammo and two rounds were duds

had good primer strike but they wouldnt ignite

ammo does expire / go bad

my guess, most ammo will last at least 30 - 40 years if stored properly

but I wouldnt expect it to last much past that, not something to hand down to your great grand kids, it will be too old, possibly unreliable?

Ive bought new 30-6 ammo at gun shops that went bad in 20 years, it had a greenish residue and whatever was used to make it degraded? it was repackaged in new boxes, but I think they use surplus gun powder, they were all duds.
 
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My wife finally convinced me that there wasn't any threat over Y2K anymore and it would be ok to use my Y2K stash :D :D...

& - I'm only half kidding.

I shot up 100 rounds of .45 acp on Saturday that I bought for Y2K - just in case the demand drove up the price.
On Wednesday, we both went to the range and shot up a few hundred rounds of .22lr from "the stash".

All of it's just been sitting on a bookshelf in the computer/spare bedroom.
 
would the US military go to war with surplus ammo left over from the Vietnam War?

I doubt they would trust it if it was that old, even if stored properly

they probably test it and know how long it can be stored before it shouldnt be used or should be sold as surplus.
 
dad's revolver loaded for 30 years

Tailgator

just lightly oiled, not enough to get in the primer, his room did get lots of humidity and since he was a heavy smoker and left the bathroom window cracked open most of time even during winter.

he may have sprayed a little WD40 on it and wiped it off once a year
 
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WD-40 could be the cause. In the event he sprayed it on an open revolver cylinder or a loaded pistol magazine with rounds loaded, then the WD-40 could of killed the primers over time.
 
I have two boxs 45/70 that's at least 75 years old,it's the old two piece box,shoots like it's supposed to. One box is black powder and one smokeless
 
The longevity of ammunition depends on two things, the quality with which it was originally prepared, and the storage conditions is has lived through, since.

During the early 1970s, I fired a quantity of 1918 US military ammo, both .30-06 and .45 ACP. The cases were a dark brown. There was no visible corrosion.

ALL fired normally. NO case failures. Had some Israeli stuff made 79-80 that had 7% fail to fire and 11% of the fired brass was cracked.

I have some 1897 6.5x55 Swede ammo that has some of the brass cracked at the shoulder, some 100+ years after being packaged on stripper clips. Most likely due to powder degradation.

And, its a fact, that while black powder is incredibly stable inside loaded rounds, smokless is not. Some is, some isn't.

Even with proper storage conditions, it is POSSIBLE for the powder to breakdown, releasing nitric acid fumes, which attack the brass, and in extreme cases cause it to crack.

How long does this take?? no one knows with certainty, because of the differences in powders used and the way they are made. Some last a century and more, some go bad in a few decades. Storage conditions absolutely play a big part in this as well.

Modern militaries don't bother to test old ammo to see if it is still good, they just go by a pre determined date, and sell off anything too old.

I have reloads that I made, with no special care taken for longevity, going on 40+ years old now. Last time I shot any of them, performance was identical to what they did when "new".

I've got a few hundred rounds of "Tet offensive" ammo for my M14 (M1A) in an ammo can. I have complete confidence in the LC65 headstamped ammo working perfectly when/if I ever need it.

Sometimes, you do get ammo that doesn't last. It happens. Of course, you won't know it until after the fact. Decades of proper storage doesn't worry me, at all.

Unknowns do.
 
Had some shotgun shells been sitting in my garage for well over 10 years. Temperatures ranging from below zero to well over 100 degrees. Took it out to the desert today and it worked perfect.
 
Thank you for that link 243winxb.

Going to the SAAMI site helped me lose what little respect for them that I had still remaining...and no, that's not a joke.

If you found them stating ammo shelf life was 10 years, I bow my head to your search skills, being much better than mine. I waded though dozens of pages, finding nothing relevant to the shelf life question, before giving up, disgusted.

For me, it was like "the answer you seek is on the second from the bottom branch of a maple tree. Here's a roadmap, showing how to get to the forest..."
:(

Wandering lost in those woods was, however, an enlightening experience....

I have no doubt that a shelf life/storage life of 10 years is something that SAAMI would recommend.

In my opinion, SAAMI seems to be about 2 things first and foremost. #1 safety, and #2 what is best for SAAMI and its members. And, I am not certain about which order those two are placed in....

I believe SAAMI would recommend a shelf life of 90 days, IF they thought they could get the public to accept it...
 
I am pre-mid life, so I don't have any ammo that is too old... but I've never had any issues. I had some pretty gross 22 that sat in my car, then my garage, then I found it and it was 100%. I wouldn't trust old crusty ammo with my life, but I feel just fine shooting it on the range!
 
just lightly oiled, not enough to get in the primer, his room did get lots of humidity and since he was a heavy smoker and left the bathroom window cracked open most of time even during winter.

he may have sprayed a little WD40 on it and wiped it off once a year
Click to expand...

mr bolo: I'm a little surprised. Like someone else said, maybe the WD40 was the problem. Glad he didn't have to use it defensively. The reason I asked was that my dad would oil his revolver quite heavily and then wrap it in an oil-soaked rag on the shelf. I always worried about the ammo, but it ignited every time, even under conditions that I considered less than ideal. Sounds like your dad and mine were two peas in a pod in that way.
 
The two most important considerations for ammo storage is constant temperature and humidity. (Should not have to mention it here but ammo must be kept dry also).

I store thousands of rounds in my house. Ammo is kept in its original boxes and those boxes are loaded into plastic storage boxes with good, tight fitting covers. The temperature and humidity is kept at a constant setting all year round. The plastic keeps out the dirt/dust and dog dander.

The one place not to store ammo is in a garage that is not temperature controlled.

Every one of my of my magazines are loaded and in my very insulated, protected safe. My safe also is constant temperature and humidity controlled.
 
I've never had ammo go bad, and I never store ammo where it is damp or hot. Years ago an LEO friend told me of a case where an elderly woman used a revolver for home defense, firing one round which made the attacker flee. The gun had sat loaded, at the bottom of her underwear drawer, untouched for over 50 years since her long deceased father had given her the gun for her safety.
 
i have a huge cellar full of old ammo, mostly US milsurp. Recently inspected all that stuff.

My .45/70 military ammo made in 1880-1900 started having misfires in the mid 1960s. None of it fires today.

None of my .30 caliber (Krag) military ammo fires.

Most of the .30 caliber (.30-06) made during WWI was deteriorated badly and was recently destroyed. Kept samples with rare head stamps.

One lot of .30 caliber (.30-06) manufactured in 1942 was deteriorating. Cases were cracking and corroding. The powder had that acrid smell. That ammo was destroyed.

Recently fired rounds from all remaining lots of US WWII ammo on hand. All rounds fired.

My Japanese 6.5mm and 7.7mm ammo is highly unreliable.
 
Military ammo from anyone's wartime production should be considered "iffy" and that from defeated nations really "iffy", especially now that so much time has passed since WWII.

As I said earlier, I shot a batch of WWI ammo in the 70s, and all was good, but that's 40 years ago, now...

The WWII stuff that was the "good standard" still in the 60s and 70s is almost another half century older now.

And, I'm pretty sure the care that made ammo last a long time, wasn't a priority for wartime production, where the ammo was expected to be used or lost within a short period of years.

Japanese Ammo is notoriously unreliable, even when it was relatively new, and none of it is new anymore. I remember a Tales of the Gun episode, maybe 10 years back, now, they did Japanese WWII guns, and had all the common machine guns, pistols and rifles, and even the rare SMG. And they were using Japanese WWII ammo.

Every single gun had a jam or a misfire, except the bolt action Arisaka.


The big thing with milsurp ammo is that there's no way of knowing how much care went into making it long term stable, and there's no way of knowing what it might have "lived through" in storage conditions, before we got it.
 
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