Just curious, how all the guys in the US with their AK's shooting 7.62X39 deal with this corrosive/non-corrosive issue, .... or does the US have NON-corrosive for them (but not for export) ? Anyone know ?
IIRC, steel core pistol ammunition is unimportable into the US due to their laws. Why am I talking about pistol ammo, you wonder? Because 7.62x39 M43 surplus is considered a pistol round in the US due to a company down there (Olympic arms, I believe) making a 7.62x39 AR-15 "pistol" in the 1990's despite an extreme amount of protests from gun owners telling them not to. After they did that, the BATF (a**holes to the highest degree) classified ALL 7.62x39 M43 as steel core pistol ammo and banned it from import. In the US, they get cheapo ammo in this caliber as well, but it's not corrosive and while the casing and powder is surplus, the actual bullet itself is not. All the 7.62x39 ammo from the company known as Wolf is an example of this. I am sure there are others, too, I just don't remember them off hand.
Because of this, making a 5.45x39 "pistol" is a very taboo subject in the US as they can still get cheap and decently performing corrosive surplus in that caliber, designated 7N6 in Russian usage. If someone were to make a "pistol" in this caliber it would become unimportable as well, leaving AK-74 owners in quite a tough spot for a while until Wolf or something started sending them cheap-ish 5.45 that the ATF overlords deemed acceptable for the peons.
No nation is immune to government idiots who love making stupid gun laws.
This basically makes corrosive 7.62x39 M43 surplus somewhat of a rarity to our southern neighbors as the stuff imported before the ban has been mostly all shot by now, although still sealed spam cans of it occasionally turn up on sites such as gunbroker for a somewhat inflated price. I think an exception to the import ban on 7.62x39 M43 is the Yugoslavian M67 ammo, which is corrosive, as it's a bit different, but I'm not 100% sure on that. If it's considered importable into the US, than I would imagine they guys with AK's down there clean their rifles much like we do, with water or Windex. Corrosive ammo isn't some unheard of thing in the US, as corrosive surplus 7.62x54r, 5.45x39, 8MM Mauser from Yugoslavia, and as I said possibly Yugo M67 7.62x39 and other calibers are all importable and very popular in the US, so the awareness for cleaning after shooting corrosive ammo in the US is quite similar to here in Canada.
A thing to keep in mind is that all this corrosive ammo was
issued in Communist countries for years, and you don't hear too many stores about AK's and SKS's rusting shut from former troops now that the cold war is over. While cleaning appropriately after shooting corrosive is very wise, it's not the end of the world if some surface rust appears on your rifle. Just attend to it before it turns into pitting.
There's no reason we couldn't import this Wolf ammo for ourselves, but there isn't much point considering it'd probably cost a bit more to do than surplus, and we already have decently priced non-corrosive steel cased stuff here from MFS. Another thing to keep in mind is that in some of the dryer states, such as Arizona, there isn't really any moisture in the air for the corrosive salts to actually harm your rifle. A video gaming friend of mine from Arizona has an AK-74 that he shoots nothing but corrosive ammo out and has never cleaned once that doesn't have a speck of rust on it due to the dry air.
But yeah, as I, and everyone else said, the ammo in OP's pic is indeed corrosive. Whoever said it wasn't was, intentionally or not, being misleading. I had 1440 rounds of the stuff with the same headstamp and it was mildly corrosive. Some of the least corrosive surplus I've ever shot, but still corrosive. Good news is it shot very well for surplus and is quite inexpensive: I love surplus ammo for reasons such as this. As for the fudd saying there's no more corrosive ammo in Canada, I'd love to refer him to
every case of surplus ammo in this caliber I have ever bought and tell him to run it through whatever x39 rifle he owns, if any, and not clean it as if it were surplus. I think he'd end up regretting that after a week or so. Especially for a spam can of Polish ammo I had a while ago, YIKES! I think I've seen salt that was less salty than that ammo.
