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Head-Stamp Date(s) for Non-Corrosive 8mm?
trstone
Member Posts: 833 ✭✭✭✭
On those occasions one sees super-cheap surplus 8mm Mauser ammo---which almost invariably turn out to be old military loads---after what date (or year) on the headstamp can one be sure that it's non-corrosive? I was offered some cheap 1943 stuff that was billed as "non-corrosive", but I'm pretty sure it would have had to have been. Is there a reliable "cut-off year" for which one can safely assume the ammo is NC?
Comments
Mobuck
Be very cautious when buying some of the current surplus ammo out there. I have seen several companies advertising non-corrosive ammo with certain older dates. Yet those countries were still making their ammo with corrosive components for 20-30 after the date that they claim their's was made (non-corrosive). I know it is a selling point for those distributors. A lot of people won't buy it if they know it is corrosive. Some western European manufacturers started making their ammo non-corrosive long before the eastern European companies did. Chinese ammo was still corrosive into the 1980's.
Anyway, just be cautious. Some of these places either don't know or don't care what they are selling, but it is your bore that you risk if you treat it like non-corrosive, when it is in fact corrosive. That having been said. If you clean your gun with the proper bore cleaner, you can use corrosive all the time. In most cases, that is all your military rifles have ever seen and many can be as much as a hundred years old and still have a perfect bore. All they had to do was clean them after using them. If you follow the same guidelines, you won't have a problem with corrosive ammo.
"...hit your enemy in the belly, and kick him when he is down, and boil his prisoners in oil- if you take any- and torture his women and children. Then people will keep clear of you..." -Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher, speaking at the Hague Peace Conf