water damaged ammo

[mickbr]

I took some water in the basement and some 38 special remingtont UMC factory ammo probably sat in about 2 inches of water for 2 hours without my realizing. Water was cleared but only recovered ammo from the wet packets 3 days later. Verdict gents? Is it likely to fire, misfire, hangfire. Better off pulling the bullets and saving them for another load?

[wvfarrier]

I would disassemble it. Too many opporunities for issues

I will say that I had a similar incident a few years ago. I ran all the ammo through my dehydrator on a 95° for 24 hours and it all fired afterward

[2ndovc]

I've brought home a considerable amount of ammunition from water losses that has have been exposed to various amounts of water and so far, most of it has fired without issue. I had some Rem. 22lr and 9mm "white box" that were under water like you described and were sitting in the dampness left behind for a few days before the mitigation crew got to that part of the basement.
The .22s fired about 60% of the time while the remainder just went click on a dead primer. The 9mm Winchester ammo fired with no issue through the two boxes.
I also had some Rem. .410s that were sitting in a wet plastic shopping bag for about a week. This was about 400 rounds and I'm still shooting them. These were never submerged, water came from above via frozen pipes but the bag had water in it and all the cardboard was saturated, but so far no issues and I'm about out.

jb

[JimT]

Shoot 'em. Keep the ones that don't fire and pull those. I have shot ammo that was subjected to moisture .. ammo that was not stored well and ammo that was 60 or 70 years old and no one knew how it had been kept. Most of the time it worked.

[marlinman93]

They'll either fire or not, but if they wont there's not any chance those that don't would cause a problem. I would listen for squib loads as you fire, just in case that happened, but doubt it will.

[44shooter]

Try them. It’s not like they are premium bullets. If you start getting misfires or especially hang fires or squibs, pull the bullets. You may want to cull some brass afterwards either way if there is significant corrosion.