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taco
April 19, 2001, 07:49 PM
This weekend I won a $100 bet with my friend.

My friend is always afraid of getting his carry ammo wet (from rain, sweat, etc) because he believed the powder or the primer would get wet and would not fire. I on the other hand never worried about this because I believed all center fire ammos are waterproof enough not to be effected by something like rain.

Last week we decided to test this and made a bet. We filled a cooler with 3 gallons of distilled water and put in it 150 rounds of various 223Rem, 38 special, 9mm and 45 ACP factory ammo along with several of my lead cast and jacketed reloaded ammo in 38 Special and 45 ACP. This cooler was put in the back of my car for 3 days while I went about my normal daily drives.

On saturday we took all the ammo out of the cooler and drip dried it over night. On sunday we went out to our local rock pit and shot every ammo and guess what... every round fired without any problem including my reloads. We shot every round over the chrono just to check the velocity and every round was within normal range.

Easy $100 bucks and enjoyable too.

We are going to try this again but next time we are going to put all the ammo in a chum bag and sink the ammo in my lake to about 30-40 feet to see if the higher pressure will penetrate the primer pocket or around the bullet. I'm betting all the factory ammo will fire but I don't know about my reloads.

woodyjr
April 19, 2001, 09:21 PM
Very interesting test, I will be looking forward to the lake test though.

Apple a Day
April 20, 2001, 06:07 AM
Cool. Looking forward to the test results. ;)

tony.s
April 20, 2001, 04:49 PM
Has anyone done a similar test with .22s? I've heard rimfires are more sensitive to water.

Drundel
April 20, 2001, 10:13 PM
tony.s:

I have, well kinda. I had a box of .22 (bought with in the last year) that was very dusty and dry so I thought I would spray a little Rem oil in the box. Big mistake. Had numerous under power loads and a few squibs.

My dad and I each bought boxes at the same time his ammo worked just fine. Lesson learned.

griz
April 21, 2001, 09:23 PM
I tried a similar test with reloads. I was just curious, no money involved. Loaded about 50 rounds with jacketed and around 25 with lead bullets. I had three misfires after leaving them in for two days.
I have sent 22 LR though the washing machine a couple of times and none of them would fire. And last, I dunked three shotgun shells in a creek (yes they were in the gun) and fired that ammo to see if it would work. It was only wet for less than a minute but one failed to fire and one blooped.