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Posted: 7/20/2009 11:05:19 PM EDT
| Ok, my highly educated wife left the water running and overflowed the sink. It then leaked through the tile floor into the basement and into my open ammo trunk. I had 10 fully loaded AR 15 mags that were fully covered with water and around 2000 rounds of 22 LR. The 5.56 ammo is all high quality military. What are the chances of it being ok? I know most of the smart asses will say go shoot it and find out. I am just asking if others have had this prob. and the ammo was ok. Any help will be great. Thanks. |
”High Quality” & “Military” seem odd when used in the same sentence…
I have submerged USGI 5.56 underwater to a depth of head to waist 3 feet for about 3 minutes. This happened several times a week and most of that ammo, 420 rounds, was used up over the next 3 months. No special action was taken, not even shaking out the magazines. Multiply this over an INF company and your talking about close to 50,000 rounds similarly exposed. No one ever reported a dud round. |
| Well, having suffered a house fire, my friends and I tried to salvage as much ammo as possible. Even though the salvaged ammo was dried and put in a dehumidified room for a year before being shot, there were still duds. It was .22lr, .357, 9mm, .45, 5.56, 5.45x39, 7.62x39, 30-06 and 7.62x51. While the dud rate varied (7.62x51 Israeli and reloads were the worst, followed by factory 7.62x39), I had duds in every caliber that had gotten wet. I didn't pull apart any dud .22lr, but in other calibers either the primer wouldn't go off and/or the powder had all clumped together from having gotten wet. My recommendation is to keep the ammo that got wet separate from other ammo and when you use it, use it for practice (not for serious use such as hunting or self defense) and take a cleaning rod with you to the range. That way any duds won't be a big deal. The fewest duds were with military 5.56 (1 out of about 300rd salvaged). |
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It will be fine! Even WD40 getting into ammo is a proven myth. Water will not harm it. I'd say the above is true, IF the exposure time was very limited. Box-O-Truth did a test and found that after even 5 weeks soaking in wd-40 and other oils all rounds fired just fine. Water is no different. Here is a link......intresting read: http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot39_3.htm |
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Be careful with .22LR that has gotten wet. I've soaked a bunch on purpose for a few days. Some of the non-waxed cheapo rounds not only were duds but they would often lodge the bullet in the barrel when the primer still went off but didn't ignite the powder. It was hard to tell from the sound if it was a squib or not. I had two "oops" incidents firing with rounds lodged in the barrel. Good thing it was .22 and not .338 Lapua.
FWIW, NONE of the wolf Match or Match Extra were duds. Not one. They were coated with this oily film that helped I think. The necks are always pretty tight too. |
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The “Box -O-Truth” results were applicable to that small lot of ammunition that was tested. Results with other ammunition or test substances could possibly render different outcomes. The test that was conducted was certainly interesting but a much wider selection of ammunition from multiple sources and test substances would be more convincing. Perhaps in the future someone with lots of time on their hands and lots of ammo from a wide range of sources will do a larger scale test.
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The “Box -O-Truth” results were applicable to that small lot of ammunition that was tested. Results with other ammunition or test substances could possibly render different outcomes. The test that was conducted was certainly interesting but a much wider selection of ammunition from multiple sources and test substances would be more convincing. Perhaps in the future someone with lots of time on their hands and lots of ammo from a wide range of sources will do a larger scale test. I did a test of my own on over a dozen brands of ammo. I fully submerged them in WD40 and after 3 months all ammo fired as it should.....not one dud. I think it is a total myth. |
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Water won't harm centerfire ammo. Leave it in a glass of water overnight, accidentally run it through the clothes washer, etc, and it will work just fine. .22 ammo I'm not as certain about. A lot of .22 ammo has pretty shitty crimps. I think that's mainly why. How many times have you been able to wiggle/twist the bullet on a .22LR round |
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All I can say is that I guarantee I had lots of duds from the ammo that got wet from the fire department fighting my house fire. Like I said, Israeli 7.62x51 and my reloads were the worst, perhaps no sealing of the primer or steam from the fire fighting. By "lots of duds", I mean 80% of the Israeli and 30% of reloads. 7.62x39 factory (steel case Russian and brass case Lapua) ammo was about 4% duds. .22lr varied from no duds with CCI Stingers to about 10% with others. I did (and still have more to do) lots of bullet pulling to salvage what I could. So, my recommendation, based on my experience, still stands to use water soaked ammo for practice and load/buy new for more serious purposes such as hunting, competition shooting, or defense.
Note: I just thought of another possible factor. I was not allowed to do much salvaging until the fire inspectors were done, so all sat for a few (less than a week) days from out in the open to buried in rubble to in ammo cans with some water in the can. Further note: ALL primers for reloading salvaged (wet boxes, partially burnt boxes), after leaving them in a dehumidified room for a year, have been fine! I wanted to toss them, but friends said NO. There were ~7,000 primers of all makes and styles (no shotgun though) salvaged. |
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