Week Long 22 Rimfie Water Immersion Test

S

Scottman

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Jun 24, 2007
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Ammo for kits and long term use

I always kind of wanted to know how waterproof normal 22 ammo was so I decided a week ago to start a little test. Also, as a personal study of the 22 rimfire ammo on which ammo is probably best to keep in survival kits and store for long term use. What's worth your currency when the chips are down.

I put generic federal 22 long rifle ammo and some remington in red cups for a week.
I also put the same ammo with nail polish around the seal where the bullet meets the case. Into the red cups they went fully submerged into water.

here's the not coated with nail polish rounds after a week


And the coated rounds after a week of being submerged


Went to the range today. The coated rounds all fired. The not coated rounds were all duds. Conclusion: remington and federal 22 ammo is NOT waterproof on it's own lol. The coated rounds I fed into my bolt gun. Probably wouldn't be the best for a "match tight chamber".



One of the many men I have lots of respect for Ed Harris. He has an excellent article here http://shilohtv.com/?p=7155 Basically without directly quoting from another site, CCI ammo uses a different process in the manufacturing of its ammo that cheap generic 22 ammo does not. CCI ammo is also "fully waterproof" because it's dipped in paraffin dip. It also means that unlike normal generic ammo that bullets won't dry out over time, moisture/air won't work it's way into the case.

Even the CCI Blazer ammo is manufactured this way. This stuff is around 1.50 to 2 dollars per box of 50. It is the best bang for your buck for long term storage for the reasons given in the link. Like any solid lead bullet it is dirtier shooting than a jacketed one. That's what cleaning kits were made for.

CCI 22 ammo gets my vote for putting it into kits.



Conclusions: "22 ammo is not waterproof"?

Well it depends...
Keep your ammo dry: in a container. But realize that some companies use better manufacturing processes resulting in more durable ammo for long term storage and kits.
Coat normal ammo with nail polish if you have a manual action and not a "match grade tight" chamber. If needed.
Buy CCI ammo :thumbup:


I put my money on CCI ammo for long term use and for kits. We pulled out my uncles 10/22 this spring that hadn't been shot since 1985 when he stopped hunting. There was two- 100 round boxes of CCI ammo-mini mags if I remember. Functioned flawlessly.
 
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Thanks for the info. I wonder if you could put too much nail polish and it cause a jam?
 
scottman great info i appreciate people whom take the time & effort to learn this stuff & then pass it on.
dennis
 
Discovery channel IIRC did a thing showing the CCI factory making rimfire ammo from raw materials, to finished product a few years ago.

Really was very interesting, they take the ol' .22LR pretty serious and go all out to make a top notch product.
 
Nice post! Glad I am stocked up on all kinds of CCI goodies for my CZ.
Got to love the Ole .22LR
 
Wow! Did you do the dunk test on that muzzle loading .22 too?

But seriously, if you're going to take the time to paint them with nailpolish, wouldn't it be faster/easier/better to just dip them in parafin. Use good hot parafin so it goes on thin and wipe the wax off the bullet before it cools. No jams then.

Off topic. Be really careful when melting parafin. I saw the scariest video of a small parafin fire. Guy picked up the cup of melted parafin and carried it to door to throw it outside so it wouldn't catch anything on fire. When he threw it, it exploded into a fireball that burned him pretty bad. Seeing that made me extra careful.
 
Not complaining, but wouldn't your review been more complete if you had shown a test of the Blazer as well, under the same conditions, confirming your research?
 
:) sure will do. or any of you can. I was going to but only had 5 rounds of cci cbs left and I have pests around. and I don't pull ammo out of caches unless it's rotation time. I have gone caving with cb shorts and they worked the next week- after a swim into the cave.

many ways you can do anything guys.....

I'll start the test today when I pick up some ammo dudes.
 
lukus said:
Wow! Did you do the dunk test on that muzzle loading .22 too?

But seriously, if you're going to take the time to paint them with nailpolish, wouldn't it be faster/easier/better to just dip them in parafin. Use good hot parafin so it goes on thin and wipe the wax off the bullet before it cools. No jams then.

Off topic. Be really careful when melting parafin. I saw the scariest video of a small parafin fire. Guy picked up the cup of melted parafin and carried it to door to throw it outside so it wouldn't catch anything on fire. When he threw it, it exploded into a fireball that burned him pretty bad. Seeing that made me extra careful.
Click to expand...

Yeah--melting wax of any kind can be risky business. Make sure you use a double boiler!
 
So, you concluded that CCI was the best, and claim that it is waterproof, but you didn't include it in your dunk test?

Did I miss something?
 
thanks for taking the time to do this and post about it - that's some good info :thumbup:

interesting rifle - what is it?
 
"fully waterproof"

CCI ammo because of it's manufacturing process, personal experience with the ammo. I've already stated that I have not dunk tested it yet for a week, but have swam with it on my person for a long swim in cave. I have said I will dunk tested it for a week, it would be cool if everyone tests there own gear so that you feel confident in it. That to me is gear testing.


It's a stevens junior- boy's rifle.

-Scott
 
:thumbup: Nice job! for those of us .22LR philes this is good info.

It's nice to know my boxes of federal will be duds if they are submerged unprotected...(I keep my hoard in GI ammo cans...)

I have a decent amount of CCI laying around too. I wonder if CCI MINIMAGS are water proof too...? (thats what I normally stock in BOBs & car kits..) But, I usually store them in plastic freezer zip baggies in my kits...

thanks, know I feel a compulsive urge to go buy more .22LRs...(can you ever get enough :confused:)
 
only one way to find out!!

nice thing about 22's is you can find waterproof containers easily because 22's are so small. Easy to spread out the weight while on a trek.


nope, 22 is the backbone of a gun inventory
 
Generally speaking as a gunsmith and long time shooter and hand loader, good brands of ammo will 'keep' for as long as 50 years and still fire but there are some no-no's. It must be kept dry, reasonably cool, and not subjected to extremes in temperature. If you cache ammo, bury it deep enough so it's below the frost line and won't undergo temp extremes. I cache mine in large diameter PVC pipe with the glue on caps at each end and some silica gel dessicant in there with the ammo. A car trunk or unheated garage or shed is not a good place to store ammo.

As for dunk tests, I've been in and out, mostly in, rice paddy water in Nam for days at a time while packing both 223 and 45 ammo with zero misfires from moisture seeping in. I also recall a time in Colorado when the wife and I took our brood of kids fishing in the high country. The kids ran through a dozen sinkers each in short order from too much casting and snagging their lines. All I had left was 357 mag cartridges from my gunbelt so I tied those on the kid's lines and they fished all day with them in icy water up to 40 or 50 feet deep. I was curious at the end of the day so I gathered up the eight or ten rounds that had survived the kids and they all fired with no problems.

I also recall a documented case of a Brown Bess musket being found in the attic of an old house in Boston which dated from before the Revolutionary War. The musket was in a bricked up hidey hole and had almost certainly been there for 200 years or more. One of the workers revamping the attic eared the hammer back, pulled the trigger, and shot a .75 caliber hole in the roof....!
 
As for dunk tests, I've been in and out, mostly in, rice paddy water in Nam for days at a time while packing both 223 and 45 ammo with zero misfires from moisture seeping in.


Was this military ammo? They have sealants around the primers and bullets to prevent moisture penetration.
 
I have a box of Winchester Super X Hps that I bought 2-3 months ago for chipmunks/pests around the house. I had them in a plastic container out on my porch. None of them will fire now . They were not in the rain but just from the slight condensation in the container . Just wondering,,I put some uncooked white rice in my salt shaker to absorb moisture so it wont clump up. Might that work also for caching ammo?? Ill give it a try.
 
Three day test of cci blazer. 4 out of 5 fired. still more in the cup with a couple cci cbshorts and longs too for the week test
 
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