Cleaning surplus ammo

[Wolf]

Recently i purchased some 7.62x25 1951 surplus ammo, seems like they have been recovered from sunken pirate ship.
i did some googling and some people tumble them for around 20 min to clean.
Is it really safe to tumble loaded ammo? Any suggestion on how to clean it?

Second question anybody knows where to get brass and bullets for reloading for 7.62x25?

 

[maple_leaf_eh]

Tumbling loaded ammo is generally considered a bad idea. The powder grains are the shape they are for a reason. Tumbling anything will knock the edges off those grains; dust burns differently than solids. The second thing is primers are stable, but banging anything against them is generally considered a bad idea. The last thing to consider is the tumbling will push some bullets deeper into the cases depending on how the mouths are crimped.

To clean loaded ammo, try one at a time wiping them with a slightly scratchy pad. Remove the physical contamination so the chamber and magazines feed smoothly.

To answer your other question, 7.62 Tokorov is fairly common in bulk boxes of military surplus. You just need to keep asking around. But .30 Mauser is the opposite.

 

[Ryan500]

for the price of surlpus x25 i would personally just find some othrer ammo that was not brought up from a ship wreck, check frontier they have 1000 round packs for like 150 or 2280 for twice that.

 

[daBear]

You wont have a problem tumbling the loaded ammo. How do you think the major manufacturers polish their finished product? This one has been debated many times before, almost as many as the Glocks and the Kaboom thing, neither of which is factually substantiated..
dB

 

[762shooter]

I've cleaned surface corrosion off of surplus ammo with a brass wire wheel in a drill press. Worked well, fairly fast.

 

[Winnipeg Toymaker]

it may be time consuming, but i put the old ammo in my hand spun trimmer and with steel wool, spin the shell until I am happy with the results. It does a great job and ammo looks like new.

 

[Wolf]

Thanks for the info, i would try cleaning one by one. Brush on a drill sound like a good idea.

 

[blacksmithden]

I've tumbled loaded 44 mag cartridges before to get some of the Lee liquid alox off my cast bullets. Never had a problem.

 

[PETERDREHER]

I purchased some 7.62 x 25 for my TT-33 a couple of months back from an Ontario supplier. It sounds like its the same stuff. Brass cased on stripper clips, 40 round boxes(2 kinds of boxes) ? Same date/country too. Almost all rounds have various degrees of black on them. I was concerned too, but all responses I got on the form said to use them as is. (They were not stored correctly/airtight) I've shot about 150 to date with no issues. I would purchase them again if newer steel case is not available.

 

[Wolf]

Thanks PETERDREHER, mine are same. Two different type but both are dated 1951 for pistol, they are Czech Republic. Brass casing

 

[tokguy]

Mine eats that corroded stuff the same as clean. And I was leary about it at 1st too. I'm thinking that the russian military hardware is designed to operate in conditions that other guns would become a club in.