(I’ve never even seen a real firearm up close, so please bear with me.)
This looks incredibly unsafe. Is that really how ammunition is made and shipped? I thought it came neatly stacked in padded boxes or something.
AFAIK, ammunition is boxed, loaded into stripper clips, or linked. But I’ve seen bags of reloads being sold, and my familiarity is with Western ammunition.
In order to go off, the primer (the ‘disc’ at the bottom of the cartridge) needs to be struck with sufficient force in a sufficiently small area. That is, it generally takes a good blow from a firing pin. Pointed bullets are not used in rifles with tubular magazines because there is possibly enough force from recoil to make the point of one bullet act as a ‘firing pin’ on the round in front of it. However, round-nosed bullets don’t seem to have that problem. It’s unlikely that being dumped in a box and transported would result in a discharge, nor dumping them on the ground as depicted.
I’d be more worried about damaging the round through such treatment.
Cartridges aren’t that sensitive at all- one would have to land point-first onto exactly the primer (back-end) of another to have any chance of an accidental firing. I’m not even sure if the force of a falling 7.62x39 cartridge (what was in the clip) is enough to fire a primer, even if the primer was struck just right. The powder in the cartridges is effectively insensitive.
Beyond that, most ammo that I’ve seen, commercial or military surplus has been packaged in some fashion- whether it’s 20 rd boxes at Wal-Mart or 20 round paper wrappings for milsurp 7.62x54R, it’s packaged. I suppose some could be loosely packed, but it’s not the standard. Most military ammunition is further packed in some kind of relatively impervious packaging, whether it’s the ubiquitous US ammo cans or the Eastern Bloc “spam” cans (literally like a spam can that you have to open with a key).
I had no idea. Thanks!
I’ve bought boxes of loose-packed .22 long rifle cartridges (500-550 bullets), so it is done to an extent. More commonly, a “brick” of .22’s contains 10 separate boxes of 50 rounds, all packed in orderly and tight.
ETA: Note that this caliber isn’t used in warfare.
Whenever my unit finishes its reserve duty, the guys just empty their magazines into buckets. Next unit signs for equipment, the armory gives them the buckets to fill up with before breaking out the fresh ammo boxes. I’ve never known a round to go off accidentally outside a weapon.
Bulk ammo is often sold loose like that. I don’t know if it leaves the manufacturer that way, but it’s not unsafe so I’m sure it does in some places. The .22 Ammo that Lazlo mentioned is less safe because it doesn’t have a primer and can go off if you crush the casing the right way, yet that’s one of the most common ways to buy it, a cardboard box of loose shells.
My thought looking at that isn’t safety, but efficiency. Packing them like that has to use up more room than is nessecary.
Yes, but that might be off-set by the cost in machinery and/or labor to package the rounds tightly in a box. Especially if the rounds are being produced outside the US for military usage by less-than-1st-World-standards armies.
I’ve bought lots of ammo loose like that over the years, and not just reloads. The last batch of .30-06 I bought was loose in the can.
It was loose in the can? Does it have a sister?
Note that the heaviest part of a round isn’t the cartridge but the bullet. The result of a misfire outside of a chamber (such as from throwing a round into an open fire) is that the cartridge goes flying.
Yes, I know this from experience.
Isn’t this rather dependent on the caliber and how heavy the bullet is for the caliber?
I have a memory of reading a document from the US military which listed cartridge weights. The 7.62 NATO is around 400 grains. Its bullet is in the 150-175 grains range, usually. Its powder charge is in the 40-50 grains range. That leaves its case at 175-210 grains.
Same for 5.56 NATO. The cartridge is around 190-200 grains. The bullet is typically 55-62 grains. The powder charge is 24-28 grains. That leaves 100-121 grains for the case.
Are civilian cases lighter than military cases for equivalent calibers?
What do the weight proportions tend to be for handgun calibers?
Fish Cheer,
I think you’re right that for normal quality ammunition in rich world countries, the rounds tend to be neatly arranged. It may be quite different when you’re making AK ammo in Russia and selling it to African militias.
Also, rounds are made to be quite safe to handle. A widely discouraged but also widely used technique for getting rounds out of a magazine is to use a second round to push the first round out of the magazine by applying pressure at the back.
A few people have mentioned reloads - what are those?
I’m guessing, from the context, it’s previously used casings with new primer/powder/bullet put in? I know some people make their own rounds that way, but do they sell them?
That’s exactly right. And yep, you can buy reloaded ammo. It’s usually cheaper than new loads.
Still, without a barrel to contain all those delicious expanding gasses, there is no force upon the bullet once it’s popped out of of the casing. I suppose it would different using a detonating propellant rather than a deflagrating one.
Although not all ammunition is packed that way in bulk a lot of time it is, even from the higher end manufacturers. Lake City which provides ammunitoin to the military and civialian market is a great example. You can pick up a box here (with pictures): http:// www.cheaperthandirt.com/AMM223C-5.html (remove space after http://)
I really learned a lot in this thread. Again, thank you all for sharing.
Summary: The cartridge goes flying but the bullet sits still. The force is minimal for all but the largest calibers.
The only way a cartridge could go off is if a small object whacks the pin; the chances of it going off from jostling are so minute, and boxes usually arrange all but .22 and shotgun shells in a rack.
You need a license to sell reloads for money I believe.
One of our customers is OLIN Winchester. While I don’t spend as much time there as ur Resident Tech, I’ve been there often enough, and I’ve seen giant tubs of bullets being trundled about the factory like that movie scene, but I’ve never seen anything go out the door like that. Not saying it doesn’t happen, with, say, lower end ammo, but everything I’ve seen is neatly wrapped/boxed, stamped, packed, crated and shipped in as space-efficient a manner as possible.
Hornady developed their LEVERevolution ammunition so that a spitzer bullet could be used in a tube-magazine lever-action rifle, so it’s distinctly possible as apparently very little impact is required if it’s applied in the right place.
Anyway, you can get loose bullets right now from a reputable company in a reputable brand. Winchester packs them like that in their 100-round White Box bricks. UMC’s 250-round bricks come with the 50-round trays, but once you use a tray up you’ll never keep the rest in their trays during transport so you may as well have a box full of loose ammunition.
It’s not a big deal. The chances of setting a round off are very small indeed when laid out randomly like that. And if one did fire, so what? You might have a few other damaged rounds, but it’s not going to set the whole box off and fire rounds in all directions. Bullets are directional in a gun because they are forced to go down the barrel. If the rounds are just sitting out in a box and one goes off it won’t go very far because the bullet and the case will simultaneously go in different directions, greatly dissipating the energy.