Congratulations Chuck!Originally Posted by Chuck Haggard
Congratulations Chuck!
Yes, congratulations! What are you planning to do now?
I'm not in LE, and I'm only 28, but when I retire from healthcare, I plan on avoiding people as much as I possibly can while still hanging out with my friends. The way LE is now, I seriously have my hat off to anyone who is in it and is still a people person!
I ran an inadvertent uncontrolled experiment on ammunition sealing. My house burned and the fire department got everything wet with very dirty water.
After everything dried out externally, I testfired a magazine of each. No or one misfire, I saved for practice, more and I pulled them down to reclaim bullets and brass.
Real USGI .45 ACP out of the 1960s with asphaltum neck seal held up fine.
US factory loads were very variable, some shot, some didn't.
When pulled down, most of the duds had dry powder but corroded primers.
You know that Sellier & Belot ammo with the pretty red stuff around the primer and case mouth? Awful. I pulled bullets, dumped soggy powder out of about 1/3 of them, cleaned and dried bullets and brass for reuse.
Remember Academy Sports selling 9mm aluminum Blazer for $3.87? Dangerous. The boxes and the full case looked barely wrinkled from damp. A few of the bottom boxes had a white powdery buildup but no pitting. I was kind of ignoring the split cases of the majority that fired at all but then had a BRIGHT flash out the ejection port and picked up an empty with a large hole burned through just ahead of the extractor groove. There was a matching score in the chamber. That polished up well enough to not affect extraction but there is still a divot looking back at me every time I clean the gun. I pulled the rest of that case and a half for the bullets.
Reloads with jacketed bullets were a dead loss, if 1/3 fired it was a lot.
Reloads with cast bullets were a lot better, I still have two large baggies good enough for plinking that I will be working my way though this season.
.22s held up amazingly well. I had a couple of the most exposed boxes ruined but most are fine, I can go a box without a misfire.
Very interesting! Especially the .22. I had left some CCI Stringers outside by accident once (a box of 30 left or so). They were very poorly represented.
Interesting since they seal TAP T2 from what I recall.
I like my rifles like my women - short, light, fast, brown, and suppressed.
Not only do I remember it, I still have two cases of that stuff; but it was $3.86 here, for some reason. Eighty-three bucks and change per case, OTD. I was buying a case of it per pay period... if I'd only known...
Very disturbing re your report. You think the aluminum case was corroded/weakened at that blow-out point by the water?
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I recall the older Blazer having issues with corrosion, before they got the coating right. I'd guess if the coating was breached, or it's older stuff from before that time, corrosion was exactly the issue.
In my experience the Blazer that we have now is really good training ammo, if it's well stored. We probably ran 4-5 million rounds of the 124gr 9mm through our program back when that ammo was consistently getting our ammo bids.
We ran a huge amount of the 147gr TMC ball, and the only issues were with the squirt guns; the MP-5's fluted chamber did NOT like the aluminum case.
Never saw any corrosion problems; the stuff was kept in an outdoor magazine with no special dehumidifiers, etc. That magazine was out of direct sunlight, however.
The time frame we're talking here is early-to-mid 90's.
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Our ammo was/is stored in a caged area in a large Morton building type garage at our range. No temp or humidity control. Ammo generally doesn't get to sit more than a year at any one time.
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