Thread: Casings considered ammunition?

Originally Posted by Ftx325

so how do you go about displaying live rounds should you have a collection of sorts ... or is that just a plain old no ? My daughter has started a collection of spent cases, she digs around at the range looking for calibres she doesn't have and asks everyone if they have any old cases she can have , She has around 10 calibres now. But we have also been given a few old odd rounds , such as military rounds fitted with wooden projectiles .... so I assume these need to be under lock and key as they are at the moment in my safe but she is not happy about that. Is it possible to display live rounds in a locking clear cabinet ?

Drill a hole in the side and empty the powder out. Then its no longer a live round. Put a drop of oil on the primer and that will deactivate that also.

Originally Posted by Ftx325

so how do you go about displaying live rounds should you have a collection of sorts ... or is that just a plain old no ? My daughter has started a collection of spent cases, she digs around at the range looking for calibres she doesn't have and asks everyone if they have any old cases she can have , She has around 10 calibres now. But we have also been given a few old odd rounds , such as military rounds fitted with wooden projectiles .... so I assume these need to be under lock and key as they are at the moment in my safe but she is not happy about that. Is it possible to display live rounds in a locking clear cabinet ?

Older military training rounds, ie inert, had wooden projectiles. Is that what you have?

Originally Posted by zimmer

Older military training rounds, ie inert, had wooden projectiles. Is that what you have?

I was told that they are live rounds @zimmer.
Still go bang for realistic training exercises but the projectiles in theory break apart so supposed no one actually gets shot.... that's what I was told by the guy who gave them to me.

+1 @Mauser308 Oil being almost instant death to primers along with handling them with your fingers also killing is an urban myth.

I tried oil soaked ones a few days later and all went bang.

I was test firing a fully suppressed pistol with its own special-purpose ammo at an Army base in China and asked if I could keep a live round for my collection. That was a big no-no (as was any photos of me shooting their selection of toys) but after several minutes of haggling with senior officers I was allowed to take a fired case, which I threw in the bottom of my checked baggage suitcase. Some eagle-eyed baggage inspector at Shanghai airport hit the alarm when he spotted it in the x-ray machine. It took 20 minutes of hand waving and head shaking before I was allowed to keep it. Bloody drongos!!

Originally Posted by Mauser308

There was a muzzle device that screwed onto the muzzle to shatter the timber projectile. In effect the piece of wood was there to allow the pressure to build up enough to provide a realistic recoil kick and allow a self loading firearm to cycle.

I dunno about that oil in primer trick, I would not be relying on that. I had a few primers that I pulled out of loaded rounds to recover the components, powder went to the roses and the primers which I didn't know what they were went to the mad scientist in me. Dumped them into various liquids for a few hours then fished them out and tried to make them go bang. All went bang. Have posted this before, but it seems that modern primers are really well sealed at birth and are basically impervious to liquids unless it's really alkaline or acidic. And then all bets are off as to what actually happens to the priming compound, it might just go bang by itself.

I wonder how they would like Universal Thinners on their sealant ?