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an older fellow, a friend of mine has a bunch of ammo up in his attic that's been there for 20 years through heat and cold. I'm pretty sure it would be dangerous to use it, so how do you get rid of it safely.

Appreciate any help,


Crash

Do the cases look damaged or corroded?

I have plenty of milsurp ammo that has suffered heat and cold for more than 20 years. I all still fires. May have lost a few FPS, but still is reasonably accurate and safe to fire. heat and cold are NOT your enemy. WATER is your enemy.

If it's not corroded and not sitting in oil its good. If you want to dispose of it you can give it to a Volunteer Firedepartment. for training. You can also pull the bullet with a pair of pliers and pour the powder down the drain

Liberty wrote:If it's not corroded and not sitting in oil its good. If you want to dispose of it you can give it to a Volunteer Firedepartment. for training. You can also pull the bullet with a pair of pliers and pour the powder down the drain

Poor exploding fishies ....... Is sewer gas explosive too?


I take it to the local Police dept to donate to use for their range practice in case they don't practice often due to budget/ cost of ammo so they don't end up like New York PD shooting 5 bystanders to try to hit 1 bad guy.

Crash wrote:an older fellow, a friend of mine has a bunch of ammo up in his attic that's been there for 20 years through heat and cold. I'm pretty sure it would be dangerous to use it,...

Why is old ammo dangerous? I'll take a stab at answering my own question.

The most likely problem is a squib that doesn't clear the barrel when fired, right? A careless follow up to a squib blocked barrel could cause the gun to explode.

If the brass is weak, it may fail when fired allowing the charge to leak in unintended directions. Is that a problem even if the brass is supported all the way around while contained in the chamber? I guess the brass might change shape enough to get stuck and fail to eject.

If those are my only primary concerns, visual round inspection and slow shooting should allow some test firing.

Yes, no, quit?

Acronym 08/06/2017 08:36:16

Please forgive my pragmatism.

I've never seen a box of ammunition with an expiration date.
Also, some of my hunting ammo was loaded in 1980. Never had a problem.
Happy Trails!
Nick

Liberty wrote:If it's not corroded and not sitting in oil its good. If you want to dispose of it you can give it to a Volunteer Firedepartment. for training. You can also pull the bullet with a pair of pliers and pour the powder down the drain

Twenty year old factory ammo isn't really that old and will probably shoot fine.
I used to shoot a lot of WWII surplus ammo and never had a problem.
If you decide to pull the bullets gun powder contains toxic compounds.
I would burn the powder rather than throwing it down the drain.

I shot several boxes of 357 mag. bullets through my revolver this year that were about 35 years old with no problems at all. However ,they were stored inside the air conditioned house that whole time.

If you gave to my VFD for "training" we would probably just take it to the range and "train" with it.

Unless it was reloaded/handloaded ammo. Would not trust that, but not because of the age.

I don't believe hot and cold in an attic would really affect it.

(For that matter, I don't think soaking it oil would either - have deliberately done that and even the cheapest budget ammo (with presumably the least QC) fired just fine after wiping it off altho it did leave a little blue smoke behind).

If you're in Houston I'll come by and pick it up. I will have a tedious task of going round and round. Any bad rounds I'll take to the local police department for disposal .

I have factory ammo that is over 50 years old, some was kept in non-climate controlled storage and some .22 LR was even submerged for a couple of days during Allison. Even the .22LR still shoots fine. Military ammo is exposed to all sorts of conditions and I have manufacture dates as far back as the 1950's. As some others have stated if the cases are not damaged corroded it's probably fine to shoot.

While I agree with most of the posters that it’s probably OK to shoot I believe your original question was how to get rid of it so I’ll only address that. Besides the earlier mentioned options, I think most LGS will take it (I know Carter’s Country will). I know my FFL will take it as well.