5.45X39 Russian Surplus is corrosive

[Old Dog]

In the past I've posted about my experiences (up to the time I'd made those posts) about using Russian surplus in my S&W M&P 15.

Well, this Saturday I put 60 rounds through it and brought it home.  60 rounds from the same case of 1080 rounds that I've been shooting out of over the last year with no issues what so ever (I've let it go a month between shooting and cleaning with no sign of rust).

Well, I took it out of the case today to clean it and had trouble getting the bolt back.  There's rust on the bolt, rust on the carrier, rust on the locking lugs of the bolt where they contact the face of the chamber and rust in the flash suppressor.

Still cleaning it (drying now, in the sun, from the hot water bath) now.

It's corrosive, clean it like it is and check it again for the next 2 or 3 days afterwards to make sure you got it all.

I hope I didn't cause anyone problems by reporting that  the ammo was not rusting my rifle.  It finally did.  I'll clean it like its corrosive ammo from now on.

[AFTERMATH]

Sometimes, it seems, the environmental conditions are just right...  Which is bad.
I never had any problems untill I went shooting before work one day...  When I got home to clean it; it was rusty.
Now the once shiny bore is pitted.

[Garand69]

Sometimes, it seems, the environmental conditions are just right...  Which is bad.
I never had any problems untill I went shooting before work one day...  When I got home to clean it; it was rusty.
Now the once shiny bore is pitted.

I had a extremely accurate 1903 Springfield that had been converted to NM specs. The rifle was beee-yooo-ti-fullll! The Legion Shooting Sports Club I founded has their first "family fun shoot" and I knew we would be short rifles, so I brought it along. I asked one of the shooters if he wanted to shoot it...sure he said. I handed him the rifle and 50 rounds of lead mid-range handloads...........

I got busy with the junior shooters and never realized how long he had been shooting, or that he had started using ammo that I didn't give him........

The shoot was over, I wiped the outside of the rifle off along with the rest of the rifles, and headed home. When I got home I cleaned the rifles that were using corrosive. Got busy with work the next day, and didn't get the the Springfield until the following Sunday. Well I can honestly say that I have never seen the combination of rust lead and copper come out of a barrel before. I wanted to puke. The bore was junk and even the hand lapped bolt lugs were trashed with rust.

I immediatly looked at the bag of brass he handed me at the end of the day and there was my 50 shiny LC69 cases mixed in with about 200 DM42 A full third had nasty corrosion on the outside and many of those had split at the neck and then there was atleast 2 dozen duds.

I asked him why he shot that in my rifle.... "well, I didn't want to use up all of yours, why, is there something wrong?" I asked him where he got it.... "the guy next to me had it, when he left he asked If I wanted to buy it for $20"

Nope that has never happened again!, Still have the rifle, just haven't brought myself to rebarrel it because I know it will never be what it was.