9mm ammo long term storage

[Guest Big-A]

I was looking at some bulk ammo to buy for long term storage. Between wolf and silver bear. I know wolf is dirty ammo. What about silver bear ? Is this ammo as dirty as wolf or dirtier ? I was looking at a 1000 rds to put up and wondered which would be best. Thanks AL

[Garufa]

The brand of ammo is irrelevant. How do you plan to store your cache?

[kb4ns]

The brand of ammo is irrelevant. How do you plan to store your cache?

This. Every round of ammo I've ever shot had exploding gunpowder in it. Makes for a dirty gun regardless.

[Jonnin]

silver bear isnt as bad as the brown bear, but its still not exactly clean either. Its pretty good but depending on the caliber you may have to clean your gun some, every 100-200 rounds or so depending on how grumpy your gun is about gunk.

[G27]

Silver Bear isn't bad stuff at all. Ran close to 1500 rounds through my AR without cleaning it, zero issues.

For long term storage, hard to beat an ammo can with a good seal.

[Guest Big-A]

Thought bout buying 900 rd tin or just a 1000 and put it in a ammo can in the safe. Do you know a good way to store

[Oh Shoot]

All my gun, in every caliber, seem to get dirty no matter what brand I shoot.

Since there is still WWII ammo that is quite viable, I'm not sure anyone can exactly estimate how long contemporary ammo might last, as long as moisture and excessive heat is avoided. Might still go boom in 300 years.

- OS

[1gewehr]

I've run many thousands of rounds of Wolf through submachineguns and pistols. It has not been a reliability problem in any gun I've used. Keep the ammo cool and dry and it will outlast you.

[gregintenn]

Stick it in the bottom of your closet. As long as it isn't subjected to extreme heat and doesn't get wet, it'll outlive you.

[Dave Shooter]

An airtight ammo can will limit oxygen and thus oxidation. As previous post said avoid extremes of temperature and humidity.

We shot an old assortment of military 45 ammo a while back. Headstamps were 1917 and 1928. Had two failures to fire out of 50 w 1928. The 1917 ammo all fired and cycled a 1911. Fired cases looked like swiss cheese. Current non-mercuric, non-corrosive priming ought to last without making cases brittle. The non tox, lead free primers seem to have poor shelf life; had some misfires w factory lead free 38 specials in stock gun. Ammo was only couple years old.

[Jonnin]

I do not care for long term storage. Instead, I recommend that you use a grocery store approach: buy ammo, put it in the back of the shelf. Take ammo to shoot, pull it off the front of the shelf. You always shoot the oldest ammo first this way, rather than constantly replace your shooter ammo while having a 20 year old stash in another room. However I do replace my defense ammo every 8 years, just to be sure its fresh and to handle any unforseen political nonsense (I do around september of presidential election years). I have yet to see ammo fail due to old age. I have shot paper shotgun shells and WW1 ammo, even a few pieces of pre depression ammo. All you really have to do is keep it dry. Thats it, nothing magic. Drop in a bunch of chem to keep it dry (moisture absorb packets or whatever you like) and replace them once a year. If you plan to bury it, put it in many layers of plastic, the innermost totally sealed with moiture packs at each level. Do not use biodegradable plastics. That ammo should be usable 200 years from now.

[K191145]

This. Every round of ammo I've ever shot had exploding gunpowder in it. Makes for a dirty gun regardless.

Gun powder doesn't expload, it burns.

I guess it wouldn't hurt to add some Desiccant packs of some kind in the ammo box. I saw R. Lee Ermy on Mail Call shoot some WW1 era ammo from a Pederson device attached to a Springfield 1903, every round fired and there were no malfunctions. After seeing that I stopped worring about old ammo. When me and my nefew shoot Mosin Nagants, most all of the ammo was stored in a sealed can made in the 70's or earlier and have no problems with it.