Corrosively Speaking, Watch Your Ammo

American Handgunner, Nov-Dec, 1999 by J.D. Jones

I have read on many occasions all 308 ammunition, military or commercial, is non-corrosive Wrong. Much of it is corrosive and unless the firearm is degned soon after shooting corrosive ammo, it can cost you a new barrel-and in the case of gas guns, a lot more.

Some ammunition is loaded with a very hard military primer designed to prevent "slam-fires" in automatics and may give failures to fire in some guns.

You may encounter a hang-fire which is a round that does not ignite proper. Sometimes a click-blam occurs a moment after a hang-fire goes off. That ammunition should not be fired it can be risky.

If you get a misfire with any ammunition, it's best to wait at least 10 seconds-longer is better-before trying to open the gun and eject the unfired cartridge.

Some `military surplus' ammunition is simply ammunition loaded for the U.S. market. From the accuracy standpoint, if you get military ammo to group consistently under 2" at 100 yards with any firearm, consider yourself lucky.

Most military ammunition is loaded for "fast and cheap" engineering parameters with minimal attention paid to uniformity. Pull a few bullets and weigh the powder charges. I don't find a 2 gr. to 3 gr. variation in 308 unusual.

Shot to shot varigtions of over 100 fps aren't' unusual either. This inconsistency of assembly-plus the normal variations in bullets, cases and sometimes primers with a lot of age-contributes to mediocre accuracy.