Corrosive Ammo -not good

[The_Matrix 105]

First time using corrosive ammo on my new rifle and it turns into a rust bucket. I sprayed Windex, use water to dissolve the salt and still rust on some spots. Its a pain in the a** to bring Windex and water every time I go shooting. Unfortunately, I still got over 3,000 rds left of 5.45X 39. It was cheap for $150 for 1080 rds, but its a pain to clean. Next time, I will spend a little more on non-corrosive ammo.

[docwalt 1]

A brand new rifle??? And it started rusting right away?????

Corrosive ammo is not that bad as people make it out to be, otherwise you won't be

seeing any surplus rifles. An easy hot water cleaning is all you need, then follow

up with regular cleaning and oiling. Forget the Windex. That's for windows and

that crazy Greek guy in the movies.

[Pew Pew Plates 358]

If you want to part with any of it cheap, I'll take it all! Seriously, I shoot corrosive 5.45 (used an entire crate so far), 8mm mauser, 7.62x54r, 7.62x25, and 30-06. Never had one speck of rust. I never used windex either, and never cleaned on the range. Something went wrong...

 

BTW, AIM surplus has the 5.45 cheaper than what you paid, $119 per 1,080 if you get 2 tins (1 crate) incase you feel like buying more for some reason lol

[djg0770 481]

Something went wrong...

 

Operator error?

[Pew Pew Plates 358]

Operator error?

 

 

Has to be. Nothing would make a rifle more prone to corroding without proper cleaning and nothing would make one batch of ammo more corrosive than the other.

[tbtrout 141]

Did you clean the water out and oil it when you were done? I shoot corrosive with no problems.

[Jon 264]

I shoot only corrosive through my Mosin. Never had a speck of rust.

[GRIZ 3,369]

I sprayed Windex, use water to dissolve the salt and still rust on some spots. Its a pain in the a** to bring Windex and water every time I go shooting.

 

Part of the problem may be how you're cleaning. At the range? i think the rust is being caused by the Windex and water left in your gun. There are a few things you need to try. First, cleaning a semi auto after firing corrosive ammo is hard because of all the nooks and crannies (gas tubes, pistons, etc.), but you can still do a thorough job.

 

Clean at home. I have never seen a gun turn to rust within a couple of hours. It can happen but only in really high humidity. Field strip the gun. Detail stripping is not required[/u]. Forget the Windex. No magic ingredient and it is mostly just water and nothing works better to remove the salts. Use hot water (hard to do at the range). Hot water will dissolve the salts better and will evaporate faster. You can add a bit of detergent if you want to hold the salt in suspension. After you're done with the water cleaning you need to remove any water left in your gun

. AFAIC nothing does this better than WD40. That's what it's made for. Conventionally clean removing the WD40 and any other gun with Brake Kleen or Gunscrubber.

 

Lube well and you should be fine. It sounds more complicated than it is.

 

I shoot corrosive in bolt actions all teh time and have no problem.

[Jon 264]

I wait till the night after the range. I use windex on all surfaces and after letting it soak in, i wipe it all off, and clean the gun like normal with hoppes #9. Some say #9 is sufficient in itself, so perhaps the redundancy has helped keep my gun spotless.

[GRIZ 3,369]

Some say #9 is sufficient in itself

 

Hoppe's No 9 will remove corrosive salts. Your redundancy is contributing to your success.

[Pew Pew Plates 358]

Since this turned into a how to clean thread, this is my procedure for AK type actions:

 

Take rifle apart, including lower handguard. Clean bore as normal. Put rifle in slop sink, take stiff bristle brush and with hot soapy water, scrub the whole stripped reciever/barrel. Pay attention to the gas block and gas hole. Rinse, blow with compressed air. This is important. WD40 sucks. After you blow it out for what seems like an excessive amount, you lightly brush oil into the rifle with another brush (nothing takes oil like a good park job!). Grease rails.

 

Clean bolt like normal. Shake it front to back. If firing pin rattles, its good. If not, punch out firing pin retaining pin and clean channel with pipe cleaners. Failure to do so can stick pin foward and lead to full auto/slam firing.

 

Clean bolt carrier like normal also. Im anal retentive and polish the piston every time too. Thats optional lol.

 

Gas tube: Put front end in hot water, wet the inside. Brush the crap out of it with a 12ga bore brush and rinse then dry. Brushing wont harm it, dont worry. Its a tube, not a precision cylinder like a garand. DONT OIL.

 

brush whole thing over with oil and store.

 

By the way, all this windex voodoo about nuetralizing salts is crap. I dont care if the salts are dead or not, I just want them removed. Hoppes wont make the salt less corrosive, but when you wipe them up onto a rag, they arent on the gun, thus, they will not rust the gun. Pretty simple really.

 

Heres my nice and oiley SAR-2 (with blocked mag). I use cheap 3 in 1 oil for the outside. WD40 evaporates and gun oils expensive. Rubbing it with a rag wont do it, parked finishes are nice because you can really work oil into them. I take a bristle brush and work the oil into it. Goes from light matt gray to gloss black. This is important since you just worked all traces of oil out of the metal when you washed in the sink.

[FFDP82 4]

I regularly shoot corrosive 5.45 and 7.62x39 and it's the only ammo the gun runs on.

 

Field strip the rifle. Remove the gas tube.

 

Pour water down barrel, gas tube, and wipe gas piston with wet rag.

 

Drip dry, douche barrel, gas tube, and gas block with WD40

 

Re-assemble rifle. I rarely spend more than 5 minutes cleaning it.

 

I do not even clean the bolt face or anything rear of the breech. In fact I have owned the rifle 11 months and have not cleaned any part of the receiver, bolt or bolt carrier yet. Once every couple range trips I slog a little more grease on.

 

Don't think I'll clean the receiver anytime soon either. I currently do not even own or use any gun-specific cleaning/lubricant products for any of my guns. For oil I mix transmission fluid and oil treatment. For solvent I use WD40. For grease I use LucasOil Red N' Tacky.

 

Rifle runs just fine, no rust.

 

If you want to sell your corrosive ammo, I know a good home for it.

[NJ609 22]

If you want to part with any of it cheap, I'll take it all! Seriously, I shoot corrosive 5.45 (used an entire crate so far), 8mm mauser, 7.62x54r, 7.62x25, and 30-06. Never had one speck of rust. I never used windex either, and never cleaned on the range. Something went wrong...

 

BTW, AIM surplus has the 5.45 cheaper than what you paid, $119 per 1,080 if you get 2 tins (1 crate) incase you feel like buying more for some reason lol

 

lol when you told me you threw your guns in the bathtub to clean the corrosive stuff out I was like WUT?!?

[Guest schutzen-jager]

hot water is sufficient - do first cleaning with in 5-6 hours of shooting - reclean again after 2-3 days + oil -

i use mixture of equal parts peroxide , isopropl alcohol , + murphy's oil soap for cleaning - ed's red for oiling -

[djg0770 481]

Ingredients in windex = water and ammonia plus blue food coloring

 

Ingredients in urine = water and ammonia plus some salts

 

Maybe this is why they say you can pee in an AK to clean it...

[kenw 293]

Ingredients in windex = water and ammonia plus blue food coloring

 

Ingredients in urine = water and ammonia plus some salts

 

Maybe this is why they say you can pee in an AK to clean it...

I didn't know "they" said that. Interesting.

 

I don't have an AK, but I will gladly volunteer to piss on someone else's if the need should ever arise. Just the kind of sharing, helpful guy I am.

[tbtrout 141]

That is disgusting Ken.

[Krdshrk 3,877]

No problems with surplus corrosive 7.62x54R in my Mosin. What gun was this in?

[kenw 293]

That is disgusting Ken.

After everything that gets said here, about so many other objectionable and disturbing subjects, you find that disgusting? I am surprised.

[tbtrout 141]

After everything that gets said here, about so many other objectionable and disturbing subjects, you find that disgusting? I am surprised.

LOL, it is the visual that is disturbing mostly, mostly.

[GRIZ 3,369]

WD40 sucks.

 

For some purposes it does, but to displace water its great.

 

 

blow with compressed air

 

You missed the part where I said to blow the WD40 out with Gunscrubber. Air will work but if you don't have a water trap on the air line you'll leave moisture from the air tank on the gun.

 

By the way, all this windex voodoo about nuetralizing salts is crap.

 

Ingredients in windex = water and ammonia plus blue food coloring

 

As I said there is no magic to Windex. The only reason windex works is because its mostly water. I believe it no longer contains ammonia but still is mostly water. Ammonia is a gas. What we refer to as ammonia is household ammonia which is ammonia gas suspended in....ready for this....water!

 

Juilian Hatcher details in "Hatcher's Notebook" under "removing corrosive salts" how this magic of ammonia came to be. In short, they found nothing better than water to remove salts but many found it

"objectionable" to clean their firearms with water. I mean we try to keep water out of our guns! Chemists looked for an answer and the chemical makeup of ammonia is similar to water and household ammonia is mostly water. So they told everyone to clean their guns with household ammonia, after all it is a cleaner (and they don't realize its mostly water) and it smelled bad enough to be able to clean guns. Ammonia doesn't do it better but was accepted as more politically correct to gun people.

 

One of the problem with preventing rust after shooting corrosive ammo is all the wonder lubes and cleaners on the market. Yes they are improvements over all the old stuff (Hoppe's #9, old formula GI bore cleaner, etc) but the difference is they were designed to remove corrosive salts. The new stuff isn't.

 

Best article about it is at:

 

http://www.surplusrifle.com/reviews2006/alittlesalt/index.asp

 

You'll see nothing does better than water and many of the wonder cleaners don't work at all.

[JonF 79]

If you'd prefer a more modern and way way to clean corrosive residue, get some M-Pro7 cleaner as its rated for cleaning up corrosive primer residue. Since its a detergent type cleaner (foaming action) and not strictly a solvent type (hoppes), it is able to dissolve the corrosive residue quite well. I used to do the water routine, but ended up with the occasional rust bloom if you aren't super meticulous about making sure all the water is cleaned out afterwards. Since i use MPro-7 for all my guns, old and new, I now clean my milsurps like i would any other after a shooting session and have not had even a single rust bloom since. I do make sure to let the barrels sit a bit longer with the chemical applied to make sure the salts and carbon is well dissolved and may use more patches than for modern guns with modern ammo but thats usually because the old corrosive ammo is quite dirty and takes more patches to get fully clean (and i shoot a lot of it since its so cheap). I also give the bore and bolt a quick spritz with an aerosol can of EEZOX since its a great protectant and rust inhibitor.

 

All in all, cleaning up after corrosive ammo doesn't take me much longer than non-corrosive with using more modern solutions and products available today.

[FFDP82 4]

Yes, you can in fact piss down the bore and gas tube to clean salts. I know someone who actually did this once, just to confirm.

 

I'm sorry but there's really no need to name all these fancy tools, processes and special cleaners.

 

Water

WD40

Oil/Grease

 

WD40 stands for Water Displacer - if there's any firearms related application WD40 would be good for, this is it. WD40 displaces water and prevents rust like nothing else.

 

It's really that simple. Only in America do we spend $$$$ cleaning a rifle made for communist peasants. Mikhail is facepalming right now

[tommy3rd 132]

I didn't know "they" said that. Interesting.

 

I don't have an AK, but I will gladly volunteer to piss on someone else's if the need should ever arise. Just the kind of sharing, helpful guy I am.

And if he wants gallons of piss, I have access to it. Just say the word.

[The_Matrix 105]

OK guys, here is the details:

---Brand new Arsenal SGL 31---

Shot 120 rds, finish by 2PM--

 

I sprayed with Windex b/c I did not bring water with me to the range to wash away salt. ( I will next time)

 

At 7:00 PM, I inspect rifle and saw rust in muzzle brake, parts of barrel, gas tube, BUT no rust on Bolt, carrier, etc.

 

I boiled water and pour on the rusted areas.

 

This I believe is the problem as well...I did not properly dry the gun right away.

 

With the water, rust developed on the cleaning rod, and front sight post.

 

I used a lot of gun oil on the rust areas and cleaned with a nylon brush and hope for the best.

 

As for people who want my ammo, I will only let it go for $135.00 for spam can of 1080 rds. I paid a lot for shipping. Stuff is heavy.

[matt6669 71]

OK guys, here is the details:

---Brand new Arsenal SGL 31---

Shot 120 rds, finish by 2PM--

 

I sprayed with Windex b/c I did not bring water with me to the range to wash away salt. ( I will next time)

 

At 7:00 PM, I inspect rifle and saw rust in muzzle brake, parts of barrel, gas tube, BUT no rust on Bolt, carrier, etc.

 

I boiled water and pour on the rusted areas.

 

This I believe is the problem as well...I did not properly dry the gun right away.

 

With the water, rust developed on the cleaning rod, and front sight post.

 

I used a lot of gun oil on the rust areas and cleaned with a nylon brush and hope for the best.

 

As for people who want my ammo, I will only let it go for $135.00 for spam can of 1080 rds. I paid a lot for shipping. Stuff is heavy.

 

you MUST clean with some type of gun oil AFTER using windex. Windex has ammonia in it which is damaging to metal if left on for too long. You were your own worse enemy not once but twice with your cleaning regiment. And theres no need to clean corrosive right after shooting. You can pack your stuff up and drive home and then clean, theres no need to clear at the range.

[Jon 264]

you MUST clean with some type of gun oil AFTER using windex. Windex has ammonia in it which is damaging to metal if left on for too long. You were your own worse enemy not once but twice with your cleaning regiment. And theres no need to clean corrosive right after shooting. You can pack your stuff up and drive home and then clean, theres no need to clear at the range.

 

X2. I usually wait 5+ hours before I clean my mosin after shooting corrosive.

[Pew Pew Plates 358]

OK guys, here is the details:

---Brand new Arsenal SGL 31---

Shot 120 rds, finish by 2PM--

 

I sprayed with Windex b/c I did not bring water with me to the range to wash away salt. ( I will next time)

 

At 7:00 PM, I inspect rifle and saw rust in muzzle brake, parts of barrel, gas tube, BUT no rust on Bolt, carrier, etc.

 

I boiled water and pour on the rusted areas.

 

This I believe is the problem as well...I did not properly dry the gun right away.

 

With the water, rust developed on the cleaning rod, and front sight post.

 

I used a lot of gun oil on the rust areas and cleaned with a nylon brush and hope for the best.

 

As for people who want my ammo, I will only let it go for $135.00 for spam can of 1080 rds. I paid a lot for shipping. Stuff is heavy.

 

 

Also, you cant just pour water over it, you got to brush/wipe the metal with it.

[JonF 79]

MPro-7

 

Cleans all your guns, both after corrosive and non-corrosive ammo, and be done with rust forever. A little squirt of Eezox (excellent lubricant and protectant) on bare metal to protect until next time and that's it. You've cleaned it, protected it and are now good to go with no extra steps beyond normal gun cleaning procedures.

 

Le Fin.

[The_Matrix 105]

Guys, Thanks for all your advice. I will be more careful next time...which is next Thursday!