Head-Stamp Date(s) for Non-Corrosive 8mm?

trstone · March 2003

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?

Mobuck · March 2003

I got some 8mm advertised as noncorrosive from SOG a while back. I've used some and sold some to friends and have found no problems after cleaning with Hoppes #9. I was told that this ammo was remanufactured in the mid 70's using noncorrosive primers by some European country.

Mobuck

lrarmsx · March 2003

In general there have been several companies that have been advertising "Non-corrosive" ammo from various countries from various decades. Unfortunately they either don't know or are just repeating what they were told by the company or importer that they got it from. Very few if any countries were using non-corrosive until the 1950's. Some countries were still using corrosive primers into the 1990's. Even some of the Russian stuff from the late 1990's was corrosive even though the boxes had "non-corrosive" stamped on them. With few exceptions, the 8mm, 7mm, 7.62x54, 7.62x25, etc... from the 1940's-1970's was almost all corrosive.

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.

jonk · March 2003

One note- when cleaning use hot soap and water to clean the corrosive residue from the barrel, then dry and clean as normal.

"...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

trstone · April 2003

I try really hard to take good care of all my rifles---I clean them as thoroughly as I can, using kerosene to remove any cosmoline and scrubbing with Hoppes, using specially-modified toothbrushes and Q-tips to get the chamber, receiver and anything else I can get to as clean as humanly possible, followed by a thorough oiling (and removing the excess.) I guess I "baby" my stuff something awful, but I look at each rifle as an investment of money I SHOULD have spent on more sensible things, and I try to preserve it all as much as possible---especially since most of my stuff is old(er) military stuff (SMLEs, Springfields, Mausers.) With that end in mind, I have a horror of corrosive ammo, especially since I've lucked out on almost all of my old military rifles, which have virtually perfect bores....

Head-Stamp Date(s) for Non-Corrosive 8mm?

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