Farmboy73

I sure am glad I signed up for this forum! I went through my 1 DAG battlepack and found 76 bad cases! Some of them might be ok, but if the corrosion looked at all strange, I pulled them. I'm not going to risk either of my FALs or my M14 I'm building on a maybe. Luckily my other 2 battlepacks (forget who they're from) were perfectly fine. Thanks so much for this info!!

MesaRifle

I recently took possession of some old "British Em-pie-ahhh, ewlde chep!" loaded .303 ammo that has some of those blue/purple corrosion "lesions" on the outside. In the past I"ve just 000 wooled them off!

Boy am I glad I saw this thread. Now I'm going to pull a bullet or two and slice open some of those cases before my old buddy Lee and I go out to the range. I"'l try and photo it if I find anything nasty!

Thx!

Remmy

Finally got a chance last night to pull my DAG's and inspect them.

DAG93M0416
Two full, unopened battlepack's. Out of 400 rounds I had 178 with some type of corrosion. You could see almost all corrosion was in the areas where they were touching the box. After #000 steel wool I was able to save 101 of those. Some of the corrosion was minor but I wanted to arrest any further damage. Some had multiple vertical areas approx 1".

So I have 77 that were really bad, had pitting, and/or the pink corrosion. Here's what I find funny. These DAG rounds were produced in 1993 and the cardboard boxes themselves were in mint condition. The cardboard looked like they came right off the production line, yet I had 177 corroded rounds. Then I have Portuguese rounds from the 70's and when I opened the battlepack the cardboard was all brown and warped from moisture. When I took the rounds out they were all perfect. Not a single spot of corrosion. So I guess the Germans used some pretty acidic cardboard?

I do not have the means of storage nor the tools to tear these 77 bad rounds down for their components. Any suggestions on proper disposal methods? Or anybody want these bad rounds to break down?

And thanks OP! You have done a great service to all shooters who have seen this post. Your pictures are priceless and who knows how many injuries you may have prevented.

svandamme

I pulled mine with a kinetic bullet puller... i lit up the powder on a dark BBQ evening last summer.. and the cases with primers i disposed off at the range in the misfire bin..

barnetmill

Oil on the case and in the chamber may increase the thrust against the bolt face. As you state its presence the bore may increase pressure. There were some machine guns that required some sort of oil of the rounds. Oil in the chamber of an M1 garand will not hurt it.
Best advice is to keep the chamber clean.

WolfAmongSheep

I have some MEN-93 that also had some surface pitting/corrosion that I bought back in 2008 to use with my FALs. I ran all the ternished ammo through a tumbler with some media and it all looked fine afterwards.

I fired about 100 rounds of it through my M1A over the weekend and it all functioned well and produced decent accuracy.