A very basic guide to military surplus ammunition
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A brief overview
There are many reasons why people get into shooting military surplus guns. They are amazing ties to living history, they are fascinating from a technical standpoint, they tend to be big, loud, and obnoxious, and it never hurts that the guns themselves, at least for entry-level milsurp, tend to be fairly inexpensive.
It also doesn't hurt that the most common military calibers usually have a lot of military surplus ammunition available for them at a fraction of what modern commercially made ammunition costs. When you're a shooter on a budget, being able to buy 800 rounds of comm-bloc 7.62x54r for about what you'd pay for 200 rounds of new .308 really does make a difference.
There is, however, a lot of misinformation and odd bits of "wisdom" floating around out there that makes military surplus ammo sound alternatively like the second coming of the Gun Christ and the sort of trash that only a fool would feed his gun. The reality is some where in between. I, personally, think that surplus ammo makes great plinking ammunition and is funner than hell to shoot, but that it's not of high enough quality (usually - more on this later) for really serious long range target shooting.
First off, though, the question that is always first on people's minds.
Won't military surplus melt away my barrel? Isn't this stuff corrosive?
Time to get down to basics. The short answer is that there is no such thing as "corrosive" ammunition, but that some ammo can leave behind residues that promote rusting. For every center-fire cartridge made since the advent of smokeless powder, ranging from the humble .380 all the way up to artillery, there are four main components: the bullet, the casing, the powder, and the primer. Bullets, casings, and powder may be different from cartridge to cartridge but they all do more or less the same thing and do it in the same way. Primers, however, have undergone some pretty significant changes in the last hundred years, resulting in all of this "corrosive ammunition" confusion.
How about a little history and science? Never say I didn't teach you anything.
Way back in the beginning of the development of center fire cartridges the primer of choice was a mercury fulminate compound. This was based on the percussion explosive that had been used in musket primers for almost a hundred years. This worked pretty well in Western Europe but was very prone to degrading and breaking down in tropical conditions, leading to ammo that wouldn't fire. It also spewed mercury dusts and residues everywhere when fired, leading to all manner of health issues for people who were exposed to it over long periods of time, like soldiers.
Eventually mercuric primers fell out of favor because of these problems, leading to the development of primers using potassium chlorate (KClO3). It was used as an oxidizer in the primer compound, providing the oxygen which allowed combustion to take place in a (ideally) hermetically sealed primer. When fired the chemical reaction involved in the primer's burning removes the oxygen from the potassium chlorate, leaving behind potassium chloride (KCl), a salt (table salt, as a comparison, is sodium chloride - NaCl). This salt is left all over the inside of the barrel as a residue. These salts deposited inside the barrel attract water from the air, producing a film which causes rust. This is why ammunition using these primers is referred to as "corrosive," since rust is the result of corroding iron based metals. This is also why the ammount of time it takes a barrel to start rusting varies wildly depending on where you are. If you're in a very dry area like the Nevada desert it may be weeks, or even months, before rust starts to appear. If you are in a very humid area, like the Gulf Coast, it might happen in the time it takes you to drive home. Potassium chloride, like all salts, is highly water soluble. Remember this, it will be important in a bit.
Modern primers tend to use lead styphnate. This compound creates no salts upon combustion, removing the rust problems caused by potassium chlorate based primers. It is also much more stable than the old mercuric primers, reducing the problems those had with degradation. There are some heath concerns with its use, however, mostly surrounding lead exposure over long periods of time, especially in enclosed areas like indoor ranges. When you hear about "lead contamination" at rifle ranges usually the culprit isn't the bullets (which create large, localized deposits which are very hard to dissolve into the soil) but the powder residues which are far easier to inhale or dissolve into the local groundwater. Because of this there's been some work in the last few decades with other recipes for primer compound, using potassium nitrate, barium nitrate, and more recently bismuth oxide.
That's interesting, but the real question you all want answered is how this will affect your precious, one of a kind Soviet Mosin. Remember how I said that salt deposits in the barrel, combined with atmospheric moisture, are the source of the rust problem? Remember how I said that KCl, like all salts, is very water soluble? The best way to get these troublesome salts out of your barrel is to wash the out with water. The british military used this technique for hundreds of years (there are similar salt-related problems with black powder) and made pouring boiling water down a rifle's barrel part of their standard manual of arms for after-shooting maintenance. (Why boiling water? Because water heated to boiling will evaporate off of the metal very quickly, leaving behind no wet traces to cause yet more rust).
For the milsurp shooter this means that the most effective way to prevent rust after shooting old, corrosively primed ammunition is to run a few cleaning patches soaked with any kind of liquid through your bore after shooting. There's all manner of old wive's tales out there about needing to spray Windex or some other ammonia sollution down there to "neutralize the acids." This is nonsense. Windex does help prevent rust, but only because it's about 90% water and the salts are being washed out. A couple patches of regular Hoppes #9 will work just fine for taking them out also.
Let me repeat this one more time for clarity: If you clean your gun after shooting it "corrosive" ammunition will not hurt your firearm. Make sure to include the gas system (if you have one) in your cleaning.
That's great! So how accurate is this stuff?
The short answer is "accurate enough." You won't be shooting one-hole groups at 300 yards, but you'll shoot well enough to have fun. Let's talk a little about what makes accurate ammo accurate.
The big thing that makes "good" ammo is consistency. With most guns, especially ones that are built for accuracy, the single biggest cause of poor shooting (mechanically speaking) is ammo that's loaded inconsistently. Changing the powder load even a little changes how the gun shoots and where it impacts. If every round is made perfectly identical than, theoretically, you should be able to shoot to the true potential of the rifle.
This is why so much surplus ammo is of dubious accuracy at best. When they were cranking out millions upon millions of 7.62x54r rounds they weren't paying all that much attention to getting in exactly so many grains of powder. It was a mechanical fill system that was based on a timer, so there can be quite a bit of variance between the loads of five sequentially manufactured cartridges. When you buy match ammo a lot of what you're buying is precision in the measuring and manufacturing and quality control.
Because of this you can be aiming at the exact same spot under ideal conditions (shooting in a vacuum for example) where you should put them in exactly the same place, but the different powder loads will cause the bullets to strike in different places.
As a concrete example, m1903 usually groups in at around 2.5 MOA with old Korean surplus. If I feed it some nice, modern commercial ammo, however, it groups just over 1 MOA. Good milsurp can shoot well too, however. Swiss GP11 is basically match grade ammo and preforms as such.
This is why hand loads are not only cheaper then buying new ammo, but generally much, much more accurate.
Remember how I talked about corrosive primers? That doesn't affect accuracy in the slightest. There is old, corrosive primed match ammo out there which shoots amazingly, but you still have to clean your gun afterwards.
For most applications that you would use a milsurp rifle for your average, communist manufactured surplus ammo will do just fine. Even the crappiest surplus rifle ammo out there will let you group 3 MOA as long as the rifle is in good operating condition. When it comes to finding out what's good ammo and what's bad the internet can be your friend. Look around surplus rifle boards, ask about whatever ammo you're interested in, and see what people say. It can also be a whole lot of fun to buy up different types and see what shoots well in your gun. I, personally, keep a small log book of the different types of ammo I use and how they shoot in each of my guns (I track manufacturer, year, and country of origin.)
So what's this I hear about Pakistani ammo blowing up my gun?
Ah, this subject, often also referred to as "can brown people make ammo?" Simply put about 90% of the bad reputation enjoyed by ammo made by Indian, Pakistani, and other non-western nations is pure, undiluted racism. Search the internet for information on Pakistani ammunition and you'll see a lot of gems like "If you can't drink the water, don't shoot the ammo," "I don't trust Indian engineering when it comes to my guns," and other sentiments much less oblique in their distaste for people with non-white skin.
Like most rumors, however, there IS a tiny kernel of truth to this. A number of years ago (I think it was the late 90s) a batch of improperly manufactured Pakistani .308 got into the surplus market. It was loaded too hot due to error in the factory and should never have been exported in the first place. A number of semi-automatic guns were damaged by it, including some FALs and G3s which had bulged out receivers. This problem was restricted to a few lots of a single batch of ammo released for export. The bad lots were identified and pulled from circulation, but the damage had been done. Many people with expensive rifles (understandably) simply avoided Pakistani made ammo for a while to ensure that they did not damage their guns. By now all this ammo is long gone and the risk doesn't really exist any more. Over the years, however, this incident has merged with a lot of the racist garbage that you see on many gun boards to place all non-western ammo under suspicion.
Ask yourself this question: do you think that Romanian, Bulgarian, Czech, or any other 50's era Communist manufactured ammo will blow up your gun? The ammo produced in Pakitstan and India in the 60s, 70s, and 80s was made under conditions no worse than post-war Eastern Europe, and I would bet it is actually made much better sine they used old British equipment. The only real difference, as far as the ammo's reputation goes, is that Romanians are white and Pakistanis aren't. I personally shoot lots of Pakistani .303 out of my Enfields and have never had a problem.
Don't misunderstand what I'm saying, here. Pakistani and Indian ammo isn't excellent by anyone's definition, but it is at least as good as old Communist ammo. It's decently accurate, decently cheap, and decently well made. Don't use cartridges that appear visibly deformed and you should be fine.
Is there anything else I should know?
Surplus ammunition is just that: surplus. It was made to be used by a military, over 60 years ago in some cases, and was not made (generally) for laser-accurate precision. It was stored god knows where and under god knows what conditions for decades. Inspect every round before you load it into your gun. If it looks deformed or just "wrong" go ahead and toss it. Sometimes the primers are a bit funky, so if it doesn't fire the first time go ahead and try giving the primer another strike. And, above all else, clean your damned rifle.
Also, if you're into reloading most surplus ammo isn't easy to reload. The primers used in modern reloading setups are different from what was in military use for most of the 20th century and they will not fit each other. That said, there are places where you can buy huge bags of old soviet primers which WILL let you reload military cases. The cases generally aren't of the best construction (only being designed to be fired once) so your results may not be that good. Generally, milsurp ammo isn't worth reloading. If you get into reloading spend the money on some good components.
Surplus ammunition is great stuff and the only thing that lets me go to the range as much as I want to without utterly destroying my bank account. Use some common sense and it is just as safe, if not (usually) as accurate, as modern commercial ammo. Shoot it, have fun with it, and be safe with it.
There are many reasons why people get into shooting military surplus guns. They are amazing ties to living history, they are fascinating from a technical standpoint, they tend to be big, loud, and obnoxious, and it never hurts that the guns themselves, at least for entry-level milsurp, tend to be fairly inexpensive.
It also doesn't hurt that the most common military calibers usually have a lot of military surplus ammunition available for them at a fraction of what modern commercially made ammunition costs. When you're a shooter on a budget, being able to buy 800 rounds of comm-bloc 7.62x54r for about what you'd pay for 200 rounds of new .308 really does make a difference.
