Corrosive ammo and cleaning habits...

N

Nubcakes

New member
Recently I have come into possession of a large quantity of military surplus 7.62X39 cartridges. I am 99.99% sure this ammo will be corrosive.

With bolt action rifles I know you can pretty much just clean the barrel after shooting and call it a day. However I was wondering what else you should clean if you shot corrosive ammo out of a semi-auto firearm such as a SKS, AK, or CZ52. I imagine the gas tubes should be cleaned, but what about like; the firing pin assembly?

I did a quick search on the forums and did not find quite what I needed.

Thank you for time
 
Clean everything . Than you won't have to worry. It doesn't take that much longer to clean it all ,to be on the safe side.
 
So basically everything that may have had gasses explosed to it? Damn, thats gonna be a pain to disassemble the whole bolt on my SKS every time I fire it...
 
use hot soapy water to disolve it.
get the water just as hot as you can and it will heat up the metal and dry it when you are done.
the heat from the water will help it to evaperate off before it has time to rust.

Ed
 
Corrosive ammo is ammo that has salts in the primer. These help preserve the primer but leave a corrosive residue on the inside of the barrel and other parts of the gun. The residue attracts water and is very aggressive. If its left alone with much humidity, it will cause rust within 20 to 30 hours.

Corrosive ammo will typically last longer than non-corrosive ammo, BUT requires you to clean the gun shortly after every time you go shooting with it.
 
Corrosive primers contain the following chemicals: Potassium Chlorate, Antimony Sulfide, Lead Sulfocyanate and a small percentage of TNT.

The Chlorate salts are the ones that absorb water from the air and cause rusting.

The soap and water clean up is the best way to get rid of the salts left over from firing.
 
I guess what I am asking is WHICH parts exactly need to be cleaned. If you say all parts, you are implying that even the stock and bayonet need to be cleaned, in which case you're not helping.

Also, if I need to clean "all internal parts" does this mean I have to take down and disassemble the entire firearm until its all loose nuts, bolts, screws, pins, and misc parts and clean each individual part?

I am going to be using this ammo purely on an SKS and maybe an AK clone. So if you could tell me exactly which parts to clean that'd be great.
 
Nubcakes;
Sadly, when they say "all of it", they pretty well mean all of it. You must remove the corrosive salts from every place that they are deposited. This means the barrel, bolt, gas system, trigger area, magazine, receiver. With a semi auto, the hot gasses are almost everywhere.

Roger
 
Not as bad as it sounds.

You will find that the hot soapy water works really well, with a hot water rinse,blow dry with hair drier. Your ready to add grease/oil where needed.

Do it all the time to my blackpowder guns, only way to clean them.
 
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