A neighbor of mine has about 500 rounds of .223 and 5.56 ammo that he bought cheap from a sketchy guy back during Covid. The neighbor said about 8 of every 10 rounds fires correctly, and one round stuck in the chamber and went off (thankfully into the ground) while he was manipulating the charging handle trying to dislodge the round. I took a couple rounds home to investigate, and the measurements are all within spec except just above the shoulder the case body is about 2 thou greater than max according to the Sierra AR-15 load data (Sierra shows 0.354 and the two I measured were 0.356 and 0.3555). When I pulled the bullet (Hornady collet bullet puller), there were 22.2 grains of a ball powder behind a 55gr FMJ bullet. The Lee manual lists LOTS of powder for .223 with 55gr jacketed bullet and there are very few where 22.2grains of powder is within the min/max range. Inspecting the primers, it looks like some were rammed into place with the crimp from the previous firing not removed. And they guy said he saw some where the primer was “sticking out”, but he couldn’t find one in the box to show me. The neighbor is afraid to shoot the ammo and he’s afraid to sell the ammo, but wants to get rid of it almost as badly as his wife does. I told him I’d ask my “Backfire Brothers” community for advice. So, do any of you have advice on what to do dispose of this ammo or what can be salvaged from it SAFELY? Keep in mind I have the Hornady collet bullet puller, I’m novice at reloading for AR-15 (about 300 rounds using range brass), and my children are brass goblins (they sold $60 worth of brass to the salvage yard last week). What can he/I do with this ammo?
I have often wished that our local sheriff’s department would do similar with ammunition to what our local hospital does with its yearly turn in your expired or non-needed medicines day.
Maybe he could contact them and see what they had to say.
I have taken some of my crap ammo to a local gun range where they will dispose of it appropriately.
Only way I know of to safely dispose of it is to pull all the bullets. That’s be a LOT of work with 509 rounds though. Hopefully someone else will have a more effective solution.
It’s time consuming, but pull the bullets, dump the unknown powder into a milk jug. Save the bullets, add some engine oil to the powder, punch out the primers and also soak them in oil, then dispose or properly reload the cases if they are any good. After an appropriate soak time in the oil I simply put it in my burn pile and burn them. Once the powder and primers are oil soaked they simply burn without any exploding, but use caution anyway.
Oooh, I like your idea, but have one safety question. Can I safely punch out live primers using my decapping/depriming die or is there a chance of detonation? Some of these primers were seated before a crimp was removed.
If you go slow there should be minimal chance of detonation, primers are pretty insensitive to anything but a firing pin by design. Use eyepro.
I have punched out many primers over the past 55 years and never had one detonate. Primers detonate when the firing pin hits the cup and crushes the priming charge. When de-capping you are pushing from the opposite side of the primer, not crushing the priming compound against the anvil. The de-capping pin hits the base of the anvil and apparently does not crush and cause detonation. I consider it safe, but since I cannot control the circumstances or techniques used I would exercise caution and always wear eye protection. In addition, make sure there is no powder or live primers anywhere in the vicinity of where you are working. The priming compound is still flammable and will burn if exposed to fire or flame, thus I would also drop the ejected primers directly one by one into an oil bath. Another method is to drop the cases into a oil bath and then discard the entire case, primer and oil safely.
- pull the bullets
- collect all the powder and dump it in the flower beds or scatter it in the yard (fertilizer)
- pop the primers
- then reload, give components to someone else who reloads or toss
My local Sheriff will actually send a deputy to come pick up ammo for disposal.
Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Today my kids and I were reloading some range brass .223 and had 5 rounds (all the same head stamp) that seating the bullet ended up crushing the shoulders. We did what Steve_M and Tabby said and it worked flawlessly. Re-used the bullet and powder, popped and ditched the primers, threw the brass in the recycle bucket. I’m confident we can disassemble the ammo from the neighbor using the same techniques.