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So the failure of the Monarch GREEN CASED 9mm a few weeks back got me itching to check older odd ball manufacturing ammo we have in storage.
We shoot a boatload of Wolf in 7.62x39 and see few problems with the newer stuff, in 5 to 10K rounds a year I would know if there is reoccurring problems with this ammo. Shoot a little less of 9mm, with most of that being the Winchester "bulk pack" 100 round boxes, Tula and some Blazer here and there.
Where the question marks started coming in was when I started opening up ammo cans in deep storage. "Kopp" brand 7.62x39 I believe that was German from back in the day. The color of the box stuck out to me as something for some reason I only remember finding a little bit of. Only about 500 rounds of it that I could find, so that came out and some fresh Wolf went in it's place.
Storage-
I must admit that not all of my ammo has been stored "gingerly" over the years. I honestly had no idea of the moisture and humidity factors that would come into play in a sealand container. Remember that thread with pics a few years ago wherein I cleaned one out completely, vented it six ways to Sunday and added new flooring and a roof to it? Small price to pay overall when you find 10K of ammo you originally paid $70. a case for that was (then) worth about $3K wherein the cardboard cases were holding moisture.
So "more than a few" of part of my ammo stash was immediately transitioned to training ammo. Of the 10K of x39 in question, it was mostly the old white box E. German x39. Some of the rounds upon inspection I was legitimately scared to cycle into my rifle- large accumulations of rust around the base of the primers, on the casing themselves. I think their is another old thread with pics. You know I can't remember a SINGLE ROUND not firing from that lot? Contrast that to the newly manufactured green case Monarch 9 I was complaining about in the last range report..... MEDIOCRE!!!
The "Kopp" x39 functioned flawlessly as well as some Chinese commercial boxed stuff (only about 100 rounds of that) that had a weird coloration on the casings from storage- almost a dulling type effect that was more transparent on some cases but was NOT how it came originally. However this ammo showed NO signs of rust on the primer or the rimmed part of the casing as a fair amount of the E. German ammo has.
Bulgarian 30 round mag-
Previously I reported that we had been using a lot of the $7.99 Bulgarian 30 round Polymer mags (NOT Circle 10) from www.sgammo.com
Did have one failure finally on those magazines. During some "movement" drills, the first round fired and I got a click on the 2nd. Worked bolt and nothing, pulled mag and the spring had went to pot with the next rounds laying low in the magazine. Being it was in the middle of a drill, I ditched the mag and went to another. Later I retrieved the Bulgarian mag, marked it with an "X" on the side, smacked the bottom (this often gets the spring back into position) but the smack did nothing.
It is now relegated to be painted red and used as a training mag for H2H involving rifles, dry work, etc. Course you could probably cannibalize the parts if necessary.
So 1 failure out of perhaps 30 of those mags in regular rotation. Decent ratio for an $8. mag IMO. However if you want to go polymer with your AK mags, the best seem to still be the Bulgarian Circle 10 mags from K-var and the US Palm magazines. Have seen one failure in a Circle 10- that was left on the range in high grass, ran over, and maybe had seen the business end of a bush hog. :)
.45....We off da hook....
That's a movie reference Protus probably won't even get :)
So in going through deep ammo storage, noticed some similar rusting/pitting issues with some .45 PMC Crying shame, that crap wasn't cheap in 98 and it's not cheap now either.
Since I hadn't shot any quantity of .45 in well over a decade, we brought about 300 rounds to the range- all except one plain jane looking box of reloads (origin ???) - were corroded.
To a round, it all shot just fine in a Series 80 Colt 1911 using 10 round Shooting star mags. The boy hadn't shot .45 before and so I gave him the better looking ammo to shoot. Having been through a round blowing up a pistol before, I didn't want to chance it with him so I shot the crappy looking ammo. I expect that will put me in the running for Father of the Year award.... LOL
We shoot a boatload of Wolf in 7.62x39 and see few problems with the newer stuff, in 5 to 10K rounds a year I would know if there is reoccurring problems with this ammo. Shoot a little less of 9mm, with most of that being the Winchester "bulk pack" 100 round boxes, Tula and some Blazer here and there.
Where the question marks started coming in was when I started opening up ammo cans in deep storage. "Kopp" brand 7.62x39 I believe that was German from back in the day. The color of the box stuck out to me as something for some reason I only remember finding a little bit of. Only about 500 rounds of it that I could find, so that came out and some fresh Wolf went in it's place.
Storage-
I must admit that not all of my ammo has been stored "gingerly" over the years. I honestly had no idea of the moisture and humidity factors that would come into play in a sealand container. Remember that thread with pics a few years ago wherein I cleaned one out completely, vented it six ways to Sunday and added new flooring and a roof to it? Small price to pay overall when you find 10K of ammo you originally paid $70. a case for that was (then) worth about $3K wherein the cardboard cases were holding moisture.
So "more than a few" of part of my ammo stash was immediately transitioned to training ammo. Of the 10K of x39 in question, it was mostly the old white box E. German x39. Some of the rounds upon inspection I was legitimately scared to cycle into my rifle- large accumulations of rust around the base of the primers, on the casing themselves. I think their is another old thread with pics. You know I can't remember a SINGLE ROUND not firing from that lot? Contrast that to the newly manufactured green case Monarch 9 I was complaining about in the last range report..... MEDIOCRE!!!
The "Kopp" x39 functioned flawlessly as well as some Chinese commercial boxed stuff (only about 100 rounds of that) that had a weird coloration on the casings from storage- almost a dulling type effect that was more transparent on some cases but was NOT how it came originally. However this ammo showed NO signs of rust on the primer or the rimmed part of the casing as a fair amount of the E. German ammo has.
Bulgarian 30 round mag-
Previously I reported that we had been using a lot of the $7.99 Bulgarian 30 round Polymer mags (NOT Circle 10) from www.sgammo.com
Did have one failure finally on those magazines. During some "movement" drills, the first round fired and I got a click on the 2nd. Worked bolt and nothing, pulled mag and the spring had went to pot with the next rounds laying low in the magazine. Being it was in the middle of a drill, I ditched the mag and went to another. Later I retrieved the Bulgarian mag, marked it with an "X" on the side, smacked the bottom (this often gets the spring back into position) but the smack did nothing.
It is now relegated to be painted red and used as a training mag for H2H involving rifles, dry work, etc. Course you could probably cannibalize the parts if necessary.
So 1 failure out of perhaps 30 of those mags in regular rotation. Decent ratio for an $8. mag IMO. However if you want to go polymer with your AK mags, the best seem to still be the Bulgarian Circle 10 mags from K-var and the US Palm magazines. Have seen one failure in a Circle 10- that was left on the range in high grass, ran over, and maybe had seen the business end of a bush hog. :)
.45....We off da hook....
That's a movie reference Protus probably won't even get :)
So in going through deep ammo storage, noticed some similar rusting/pitting issues with some .45 PMC Crying shame, that crap wasn't cheap in 98 and it's not cheap now either.
Since I hadn't shot any quantity of .45 in well over a decade, we brought about 300 rounds to the range- all except one plain jane looking box of reloads (origin ???) - were corroded.
To a round, it all shot just fine in a Series 80 Colt 1911 using 10 round Shooting star mags. The boy hadn't shot .45 before and so I gave him the better looking ammo to shoot. Having been through a round blowing up a pistol before, I didn't want to chance it with him so I shot the crappy looking ammo. I expect that will put me in the running for Father of the Year award.... LOL
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