Old ammo safe for barrel?

D

dbramley

Guest
I bought a bunch of old ammo, some eley and some federal match, it appears to me the wax on the eley is dried up and cracking and the lead of the federal match feels dry. I would like to use it for practice in my anshutz sling rifle but don't want to harm the barrel.

So is it ok?

Thanks,

Dan
 
Old ammo......?

I have 25 year old Federal ammo plus other old Rem stuff. They all shoot like new. Just keep your barrel clean. No harm will be done.

Have fun!
Ted
 
I was given some Eley Tenex from a deceased estate a while back
It was old...like in the original orange paper boxes with the bullets all jammed in together.
The bullets had a bit of a whitish tinge to them, but the brass still looked very good.

I took these out to the range and put them through my Lilja barrelled Hall, and they shot almost as good as current issue stuff.
I was secretly hoping that they would not shoot outstandingly, as there were only half a dozen boxes!
No miss fires at all, and some five shot groups in the two's at 50 meters.

Age unknown but probably from the late 1960's.

Brendan Atkinson
 
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Thanks Brendan, I was just concerned without lube or wax it could damage barrel. I appreciate your advice.

Dan
 
Re-lube old rimfire ammunition

I clean off the old dried up lubricant with a little Hoppe's No.9 on some tissue, wipe them all off again with clean tissue, then apply 50/50 beeswax and mutton tallow with just a half BB size bit on my fingertips.

I picked up about 250 boxes of Eley, Lapua and R-50 that is probably 30+ years old. At first I thought it was corroded, then realized that the lubricant was just really, really dried out. On one of these forums I found a string of questions and answers like this; best was the observation that Eley advertises their lubricant as beeswax and tallow.

I ordered beeswax and mutton tallow from CVA black powder supplier. Checked melting temperatures and slowly did the 50/50 mix on the stove top. Filled one pellet tin that will last forever. Knife blade to scrape up little pieces and apply with my fingers, it gets pretty soft just from finger temperature.

Recliner chair, movie, cloth towel and five or ten boxes at a time (fingers get a bit tender but not bad). It really does go pretty fast, but I spend more time in the recliner chair than I do at the range anyway.

This old ammunition is by far the best I've ever shot in the Anschutz. No way I could afford this much top of the line ammo, I'd still be screwing around with CCI standard and Federal 711 and wondering what I was doing wrong all the time if I hadn't tried this old high end ammunition: not a single FTF or flyer and group sizes are less than half.

I know this would not be usable for competition, but from what I can tell it is just as good as some of the new Eley Tenex and Eley Match I have purchased recently.

Hope this helps, I do see bunches of old match quality ammunition for sale on various websites. If the price were right (half price or less) I'd probably give it a try.
 
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