Is this ammo corrosive?

[Nowhere Man]

I purchased an SKS rifle which included some ammo. A friend says the ammo could be corrosive. It's 7.62 x 39, white tipped steel case. My old eyes won't let me see if the headstamp on top says bxh or DxN. The bottom says 81.

Here's pics. Thanks, Dave

 

[sharkhunter2018]

The headstamp reads "bxn" with "81" being the year it was manufactured.

Being Czech surplus, I would assume it to be corrosive.

 

[cracked butt]

If its combloc, its best to assume that its corrosive.

 

[Nowhere Man]

crap.....Your not telling what I wanted to hear.
Guess I'll be doing a better job at cleaning.

Thanks, Dave

 

[sharkhunter2018]

I'm not particularly fond of cleaning gas operated semis after shooting corrosive ammo. With all the corrosive 5.45 I have, my AK74 is enough. That's about as complicated as I want to go with semis and corrosive ammo.

I burn plenty of corrosive through my Mosins, but being a bolt gun it's simple.

As long as you know what to do and do it right, you won't have any problems.

 

[fatelk]

Czech short-range practice rounds. Will these cycle the action in an SKS?

IIRC, the bullet is hollow and weighs less than half what a normal bullet does, but still high velocity, reasonably accurate and lethal to 100 yards or so.

Yes, they are corrosive. Personally corrosive ammo doesn't bother me. Way back when I used to shoot a lot of corrosive through an SKS, and never had a problem. They are simple to take apart. I would just clean the bore, chamber, bolt, gas tube and piston in the kitchen sink with hot water and dish soap, dry good and oil lightly. Maybe a little WD40 down the barrel, then a dry patch before a little gun oil, to remove moisture.
Of course I was single back then; nowadays my wife isn't real crazy about gun parts in her kitchen sink.

I haven't shot an SKS in years, but used to figure that was just what you had to do because all I could get was corrosive. Corrosive ammo is just not as scary as some people make it out to be.

 

[Nowhere Man]

These are round nose bullets. They have some kind of paint on the tips. (don't know what that is either)

They were fun to shoot and cycled just fine. Light recoil. Much less than the Sapsan 124grn hunting loads I shot.


Dave

 

[sharkhunter2018]

Many of the Combloc nations colored the tips to say what type of ammo it is. The system was pretty much universal all around.

For example, Hungarian surplus 7.62x54R with a solid yellow tip would be heavy ball (roughly 180 gr. bullet) with a lead core.

Hungarian surplus with a silver tip and a yellow ring under it would be steel core heavy ball.

In the case of your ammo though, I'm not sure since it is training ammo not the standard ball cartridge. If it were standard ball ammo, it would most likely mean it was steel core. The silver tip is probably meant to indicate it is training ammo.

 

[Sheldon J]

My son ruined his SKS, bought some ammo that the gun show vendor claimed was not corrosive.... it was!!!

 

[fatelk]

I have some that look the same, except in 7.62x54R. They have the same round nose with white paint. The bullet is a copper-washed steel jacket with a hollow core, yes just an empty steel jacket. The bullets only weighs about 50 grains, IIRC.

Very low recoil, but high velocity. I'm sure they would be a lot of fun to shoot in an SKS; similar to the plastic core East German training rounds you could get cheap a decade or so ago. I wish I had bought a ton of them.

Be careful with them. We thought that, being training rounds, it would be OK to shoot a swinging metal target meant for .22's. They sliced through that metal like it was hot butter.

 

[GBExpat]

Is this ammo corrosive?

Yes, those cartridges sport chlorate (a.k.a., corrosive) primers.