Preventing cold weld on long term handloads

[TxWelder35]

Cold weld. This is my primary concern right now before I pound a couple thousand rounds together.

One load I’m doing for friend, Is going to be round 800 rounds of 204 ruger. Might take him a decade to shoot it all.

other load I wanted to put 1500 rounds of 77smk and 8208 together for long term storage.

I’ve seen in my 260 with ammo that sat for a year or so the bullets were definitely cold welded. Tried seating them .010 deeper and it deformed the bullet instead of pushing deeper. Had to break the seal with an inertia hammer before seating deeper.

what if the best most effect method to prevent this in large quanties of handloded ammo?

 

[Newbie2020]

I swab one shot inside the case neck with a q tip. It dries kind of waxy so it won’t stick to powder kernels.

@Dthomas3523

 

[TxWelder35]

I swab one shot inside the case neck with a q tip. It dries kind of waxy so it won’t stick to powder kernels.

@Dthomas3523

What if I sprayed it all over the bullets before loading them? That was one thought I had. 10/10 not going to do that to each individual case

 

[Newbie2020]

Yes. I’ve been told other guys spray it on bullets. Then let dry.

 

[Dthomas3523]

I’m now using a nylon brush with handle. Every 20-30 rounds I spray the brush with one shot.

Though I absolutely don’t know if one shot will prevent cold welding. My ammo doesn’t last long enough to find out.

 

[TxWelder35]

I’m now using a nylon brush with handle. Every 20-30 rounds I spray the brush with one shot.

Though I absolutely don’t know if one shot will prevent cold welding. My ammo doesn’t last long enough to find out.

Any reason to not spray the entire lot of bullets with one shot or a lanolin solution before I loaded them? I wouldn’t think that it would foul the barrel and would burn off

 

[E-Tool]

Problem i’ve never heard of before, why would tou want to seat bullets deeper after they’ve been loaded for a long time?

You just trying to prevent excessive chamber pressure?

 

[TxWelder35]

Problem i’ve never heard of before, why would tou want to seat bullets deeper after they’ve been loaded for a long time?

You just trying to prevent excessive chamber pressure?

One lot of ammo I had had worked up on an old factory barrel and put away. New barrel that load would have been jammed into the lands.

also done to break any cold weld in between the bullet and case mouth.

 

[alamo5000]

In my experience if you store the ammo in a proper way it's not a big deal. That however is only based on my eyeballs and no real testing. Unless it's ultra precision ammo it's not a big deal.

I will though in the next few days conduct a test using older-ish ammo that I have. I will seat maybe 10 rounds a few thousandths down and shoot them over a chrono and see if they produce any different results.

 

[TxWelder35]

In my experience if you store the ammo in a proper way it's not a big deal. That however is only based on my eyeballs and no real testing. Unless it's ultra precision ammo it's not a big deal.

I will though in the next few days conduct a test using older-ish ammo that I have. I will seat maybe 10 rounds a few thousandths down and shoot them over a chrono and see if they produce any different results.

That would be awesome. I would think on ammo that’s been sitting forever and cold welded that the SD/ES would be giant

 

[alamo5000]

That would be awesome. I would think on ammo that’s been sitting forever and cold welded that the SD/ES would be giant

I shot two different days with ammo that I rolled more than two years ago and both times my SD was mid 20's.

I put up a thread about it. The first string was 39 shots long and the second string was 20 rounds long. Both gave me mid 20's on the SD but the charge was thrown using a manual powder charge without weighing each one with that ammo.

If it was degrading over time that would mean back then I was starting with something better than an SD of 20.

 

[Bigfatcock]

 

[TxWelder35]

I shot two different days with ammo that I rolled more than two years ago and both times my SD was mid 20's.

I put up a thread about it. The first string was 39 shots long and the second string was 20 rounds long. Both gave me mid 20's on the SD but the charge was thrown using a manual powder charge without weighing each one with that ammo.

If it was degrading over time that would mean back then I was starting with something better than an SD of 20.

That’s actually what made me start this thread. ES over 100 is pretty large gap there

 

[alamo5000]

That’s actually what made me start this thread. ES over 100 is pretty large gap there

I would not draw too many conclusions from my first test simply because I was not weighing each charge and I didn't delete any errant readings. Also that first group you are referring had 39 consecutive shots in it. One outlier could cause a lot of errors in a sample that big.

That's also why I am redoing the whole thing as well, this time under more controlled circumstances.

After I've already shot the second control but not the second "new" ammo.

After I am done with that I will set 10 or 20 rounds back a little bit and see if it produces a different result.

 

[CK1.0]

Armor All Wash & Wax. I use it for all my brass wet tumbling. It leaves a thin layer of wax that helps with sizing and probably would work great for washing bullets that might sit for a while.

 

[gunsnjeeps]

There are a couple of good threads about this on the forum. I can't find the one I was looking for but I'll look again.

There are descriptions of the actual cold weld process.

Some folks recommend neck lube, usually graphite. I haven't noticed it but I usually let my brass sit for a while (couple months) between prepping it and loading it. While not intentional, I think this allows the brass to oxidize preventing any oxidation across the neck bullet junction.