Not quite reloading, but I guess it is somewhat related. I was gifted yesterday with a large plastic tray filled with older military ammo. It had obviously been laying out uncovered for a while and is slightly grungy to the touch. There are about 150 rounds of 50s era 7.62X51 LC Match and half that amount of WCC on linked belts. A little of it has dark coloring around the heads but nothing corroded too badly that I would worry about it.

My question is, how would y'all clean it? I've heard the old arguments about cleaning loaded ammo in a vibratory cleaner and how it can rub the coating off the powder. However, this ammo is clean enough that it wouldn't take much to get it shootable. Probably a couple of hours max. Would y'all risk it?

Fine steel wool works well.

Or just take a old towel and wipe it down.

Clean or dirty

I recomend you seat the bullets about. 025 deeper or until it "pops"

"slightly grungy to touch" sounds as though it has picked up some sort of greasy/dusty sort of grunge in storage. Soak a cloth in a little camp cooker fuel and cup five or so rounds in the cloth in your hand at a time and rub cloth and cartridges between hands will clean off any grunge on cartridges that would effect case grip in the chamber. I do this when reloading to clean off the case lube. If there is no bad corrosion then your old ammo is good to shoot. No need to have shiny like new.

I was given a 3# coffee can full of what may have been .30.03 ammo from WWI. Being a kid with an '06 and little money. I fired some. One hissed at me and the bullet stuck up high in the barrel. Gunsmith nearly scrapped my rifle over it. He gave me advice to: "pull the bullets and dump the powder and replace the primers with fresh". So I did. And never had a problem with the rest. It's possible that I reused the powder. This was back in the late '50s. Sometimes I can't recall everything exactly that far back. (or what I had for breakfast maybe)

I sure wouldn't fire them in a gun without doing that. IF the powder is good, reuse it. Looks and smell test goes a long ways with powder.

Once pulled down and primers punched out "go easy" and they'll push right out without any danger. Then you can clean and inspect the brass for corrosion damage.

George

I use the Lee Case Length Gauge lock stud system in an electric drill with Nevrdull. It does the job in a nick of time.