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"Molting" 22 Caliber Ammo

love2shoot

Dug into my safe yesterday and found stuff I'd forgot about and some things I forgot I'd bought. Pulled out a couple of 50 packs of Federal Lightning shells and found that they had molted or whatever to the point they wouldn't chamber. The bullets were white with "rust". I used a strip of emery paper to spin the bullet end in to knock off the fuzz letting it fall into a powder keg lid. There was a pretty good pile of grit in the lid when done. I removed the 22 cylinder from my Ruger to gauge the shells with. Anyone have this problem with 22's? Anyway to prevent it? The safe is in the house so it's temperature controlled and dry. I guess I should shoot more and rotate new stock in.

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Comments

7 comments

Date Votes
  • BobJudy

    Lead oxide and I hope you were careful with it because it is pretty darn toxic. More easily absorbed than regular metallic lead. Usually waxing or plating on the bullets controls it but like you I have a few older boxes around here that have gotten a bit fuzzy. To much ammo and not enough shooting. Bob

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  • Rocky Raab

    You have now also removed the bullet lube. Shooting them as-is would make for a really ugly bore. If they were mine, I'd wipe each bullet with some Johnson's Paste Wax on a cloth, or even lightly tumble them by hand in a waxed cloth bag.

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  • Geri

    Spray with hornaday one shot lube.

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  • JimmyJack

    Some of my old bags of shot get like that too.

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  • rufe-snow

    I've had problems in the past, specifically with Winchester Wildcat ammo. During the last .22 ammo famine, I wound up with a brick of it.


    Wouldn't work for beans in handguns. For some reason they loaded it with slower burning powder? That required a rifle length barrel, to generate enough pressure to activate a semi-auto mechanism.


    To make a long story short. I put a drop of Rem Oil on the top cartridge in a semi-auto pistol magazine. This seemed to improve the reliability, as compared to the standard Wildcat ammo.

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  • bustedknee

    Chinee lead!

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  • love2shoot

    I'm thinking Lee Alox. Put some on my finger tips and spin the bullet between them. PITA but should work.

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