Salvaging Ammo Parts and Age

[usabaker]

Bullets? Use a serious bullet puller like the RCBS "collet" type. ....used as fertilizer on the garden as desired. Primers? Two things:

Firstly: "Popping" primers is noisy and NOT to be done indoors; LEAD residue and all that. Furthermore a LOT of older (pre 1950 "military") primers are CORROSIVE. REALLY old stuff may also be Mercuric primed, both Boxer and Berdan, but this is also often indicated by the COPPER primer cups that are not attacked by the primer mix like brass ones.

Secondly: NEVER "pop" primers in rimless cases. ... As for ""neutering" primers, "oil' is slow, diesel fuel works, but it takes time.

Bruce, Thanks for the extensive right-up. I always use RCBS Collets to remove the bullets from the cases, the plastic kinetic puller it's WAY too much work and I only use it for one or two that I need to disassemble. The only brass I might salvage that has corrosive primers might be the US 30 cal. stuff and then only if the cases show no degradation. But regardless if its foreign or domestic I soak them in a bucket of water and ammonia for a night or till I get around to them. Then I run them through one of my rifles. It's rare when I get a discharge, but that may be as Jim said: "Most pre WW2 primers have died a natural death long ago."

I've never had an issue with shoulder set back on any or the rimless that I've popped primers on so what you wrote was a surprise to me, guess I've been lucky.

I only buy the old military salvage ammo so that I can reload to -near- era correct ammo using the bullet. This is the first time I've ever gotten a boatload of modern'ish reloaded ammo and never in 300 Win Mag.

Thanks again for the help and write up.

---------- Post added at 09:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:43 PM ----------

nless it's in nice, clean boxes or a specialty round (colored tips: armor piercing, tracer, frangible, etc) then no.

None of the above for this lot.

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