Amunition shelf life?

[Georgetownboys]

I recently dug out my glock 9mm and let my boys pop a few rounds between hunts. When I first bought this thing 15years or so ago it never had issue ejecting spent rounds etc. when using factory loads. This past week I shot maybe 10 rounds and at least 3 of them failed to fully eject. These rounds have been on the shelve in a closet for 10 years now.

I got home tore down the gun cleaned it, but found no real areas of concern as to why the slider was not coming back as freely as it might need to.

So. . .do these rounds or have these rounds possibly lost some of the zip thus reducing pressure on firing?[X(][:-]

[Vapodog]

My experience with ammo is that assuming it was made right day one, it'll be fine for forty (or more) years.

Aquire a new box of ammo and see if this fixes the problem. If it does then you have your answer.

[Nomercy]

Any reputable manufacturer's ammo should be stable pretty much indefinately, as long as you keep your ammo dry and from extreme variations of temperature, there's no reason to believe that it would degrade that quickly.

Example: My lil'lady's brother has a pre-64 Win. 70 featherweight in .270, his great grandfather reloaded and bought ammo like a mad man, he died in the early 50's-his grandfather hunted with a different gun/cartridge, and his dad never hunted, so about 3000rnds of ammo were passed on to this kid along with the gun, he's shot them on every deer he's taken with me-they're pretty tarnished, but they've all shot fine-truth be told, he had more trouble when he bought a box of new ammo to "refill" during a hunting trip than he ever has with the 50year old ammo.

Did you clean and oil the gun BEFORE you went to shoot? Leave a well oiled gun in a closet for 10yrs without touching it and it won't be functioning well when you get it out, if fact, I'd say you're lucky that it wasn't fairly rusted.

One other thing I might ask, did you do any loading of the chamber directly, i.e. dropping a round in and closing the slide over it? If so, you may have broken or chipped the extractor claw, which would give you unreliable ejection.

[Georgetownboys]

Nomercy. . .thanks for your input. . . .the gun had been stored in a dry rust free location. . .so lucky for me no evidence of any rust issues. No I did not go for the manual stuff a round technique either so that should rule out a chipped extractor. I will inspect that when I get home. It is now clean and freshly oiled so I will put a few rounds throught this weekend between hunts and see what gives.

Thanks,

[Deerslayer_37]

i went duck hunting for the first time last year and was using some steel shot that my dad had from 10 years or more ago and it functioned fine. i think some of the old paper cartridge shotgun rounds may go bad, doubtful on pistol or rifle though.

slayer

[A5Mag12]

Most metalic cased cartridges will out live the guy who bought them.

[trailer]

I"™ve had shells over 20 years old and have used them with no problems.

[marmax]

If the rounds were in a dry location they will last several decades with no problem [:-]. However I have seen guns that were stored have problems. The guide rod spring may be relaxed and need to be replaced. Other than that the oil that you originally stored the gun with will actually gum up after the petrolium base in the product evaporates. Glocks are notorious for NOT rusting []. You could store that gun in a wet basement with no oil and probably not have a drop of rust .
Check these things out and get that Glock a rockin.

[Quilly]

i found that on my old rem 7600 with tarnished shells they were a bit harder to " shuck " out after firing. i guess some tarnish remover would do the trick. but me i just buy new ammo and use the older tarnished stuff for practice shooting

[Ridge Runner]

my guess would be dried lube in the chamber causing the rounds to stick.
RR