Comments on: The Hazards of Old Ammo — Watch Out for Internal Corrosion! https://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2020/08/the-hazards-of-old-ammo-watch-out-for-internal-corrosion/ from AccurateShooter.com Wed, 26 Aug 2026 16:26:38 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.26 By: Ned Christiansen https://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2020/08/the-hazards-of-old-ammo-watch-out-for-internal-corrosion/comment-page-1/#comment-57567 Tue, 27 Aug 2019 12:38:55 +0000 http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/?p=63098#comment-57567 I saw something similar last summer with some mid-seventies Remington UMC .223, 55 FMJ ammo. The shooter disappeared in a cloud of smoke; when I examined the gun, the case head had ruptured. I pulled bullets from the remaining 15 or so rounds and found very similar green corrosion inside. Some had actual chunks of it, others, the entire interior wall of the case was coated with green fuzz. On the outside the ammo looked brand new.

I would until then have agreed that old ammo is OK, but obviously that’s not always true. One thing we often don’t know about old ammo is how it has been stored. Like the .223 ammo above: was it in a container in the middle of the desert for decades? Was that the day the rats peed in the powder at the ammo factory and nobody noticed? I will continue to shoot older and surplus ammo but…. while striving to know something about its provenance. Fresh, recent ammo is preferable, certainly.

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