The Cartridge Collecting Thread

[Sturgeon]

Cartridge collecting is a hobby of mine. Today, I reorganized my modest collection, and decided to document it while doing so with my light box. Since I often post images of my new acquisitions, I figured I'd make a thread for it here instead of cluttering up the small arms thread.

 

 

[Sturgeon]

My latest batch of acquisitions:

.303 Magnum, .333 Jeffery Flanged, .303 British Mk. II, 5x57mm Sturtevant:

 

 

 

.303 British Mk. II again for some reason, 7mm Mauser 139gr FMJ, 8x59RB Breda Ball, 8x59RB Breda AP, 7.5x54.5 GP90/23, 7mm Mauser 173gr RN, 8x56R Steyr, 8x50mm Lebel Balle M:

 

 

 

.30 Winchester Center-Fire 170gr FMJ, 6.5x54R Vostok, .303 Magnum again for some reason, 7mm Remington Magnum, .333 Jeffery Flanged again for some reason (I didn't do a great job setting up this lineup...), .338 Lapua Magnum:

 

 

 

5x57mm Sturtevant (again), 5.56mm XM855, 5.56mm XM777, .25-45 Sharps, 7.65x38 Swiss with bullet alongside, 7.5x38 Swiss, 5.6x39mm Russian, 5.6x39mm Russian (Lapua):

 

[CrashbotUS]

Dang, I had some 25mm and 30mm casings I'd have given you had I seen this thread before my wife chucked them. 

[Sturgeon]

Looky looky what I just got in the mail: http://i.imgur.com/KXJFYbh.jpg

[Meplat]

Looky looky what I just got in the mail: http://i.imgur.com/KXJFYbh.jpg

Okay, I'm guessing it's not one of the odd bronze tipped sporting rounds from the 60's~80's, and it's not a SLAP for sure..

 

What is it?

 

Oh and did the junk I sent you ever show up or should I release a pack of coons infected with dysentery in the local Fed-Ex terminal?

[Sturgeon]

The package got to me, I thought I sent you a PM about it.

As for what that is, a hint: Headstamp is "WCC 14".

[Khand-e]

Oh and did the junk I sent you ever show up or should I release a pack of coons infected with dysentery in the local Fed-Ex terminal?

 

Don't you do that everyday anyway just to keep them in check?

[ApplesauceBandit]

Combine poor lighting and crappy phone camera, and you get a mess.  I'm too lazy to strive for anything better, which includes replacing that brunt out light in the ceiling fixture.

 

I don't know if you can even call two a collection, but I may as well post it because Sturgeon only posted baby-sized ammo.  Pictured here is a 40mm Mk3 round the American's made, which I nabbed a while back from an antique store.  I've got a 30mm casing from a GAU-8 laying around somewhere, but it's likely in a box packed away somewhere right now.  Only other rounds I have that are special to any degree and not pictured are half a dozen or so .32 S&W long and a .454 Casull.  I'm still a bit too young to have the disposable income to buy odd ammo for a collection, but one of these days, that will be less true. 

 

Not ammo, but I did grab some googles that were used in the "Late 40s" with the American nuclear program, complete with the tin it came in and the contract number from the same antique store as the 40mm round.  IIRC they were for doing thingies with various isotopes, not for watching bombs go off.

 

 

 

 

.50 BMG, nugget food, and .22 LR placed by it for a sense of scale.  Spoilers won't work, so deal with it.

 

 

 

 

I entirely forgot this section is called "Infantry Tools & Tactics"

Edited July 21, 2016 by ApplesauceBandit

[Sturgeon]

My fancy lighting setup is achieved with $20 worth of foamboard and cloth from Wal-Mart and two desk lamps, and my photos are taken with a phone two gens old, so it is something anyone can do.

[Sturgeon]

Welp. Just spent over an hour hacking up one of those rounds and photographing it. Post to come later.

 

[Meplat]

The package got to me, I thought I sent you a PM about it.

As for what that is, a hint: Headstamp is "WCC 14".

 

Well damn, guess I missed it.

Oh well, they'll manage the feces..

[Meplat]

Don't you do that everyday anyway just to keep them in check?

Sure, but I had an especially "irregular" pack for special occasions.

[Sturgeon]

Just augmented my light box with two extra lamps and high-lumen LED bulbs today. Here's my setup, which cost me probably $60 for everything:

 

Those are a few panels of foamboard, white duct tape, a small bit of white semi transparent cloth for both the windows and infinite background, and four el cheapo brand desk lamps with 40W equivalent LED bulbs.

For a camera, I use my LG G3 smartphone. It takes photos like this:

 

As a raw it's kind of dark, which is sort of something you have to live with when using a phone camera, but once you run it through a photo editing program (I use Paint.net currently, about to upgrade to PS), it doesn't look half bad.

I built this light box as a bigger version of the one in this tutorial:

It's light, compact, quick and easy to set up and take down, and super, super cheap. Mine handles items as large as large handguns, and due to its design can even take detail shots of rifles. All in all, it's probably the best $60 I've ever spent for work, and has really helped improve the quality of my articles.

[EnsignExpendable]

Best lightbox I've seen was one of these with two lamps.

 

[Sturgeon]

Best lightbox I've seen was one of these with two lamps.

 

 

An $85 chair that doesn't even diffuse light, doesn't fold up, and has no convenient lamp mount? No thanks.

[Sturgeon]

YES! I figured out why my XCam LG app wasn't working. I was so mad when my OS updated and it stopped working. Now my photos will be much nicer!

[Sturgeon]

Got some new acquisitions just before I left for vacation today (so no pics yet). They are:

Colt .30 Salvo Squeezebore

6x35mm KAC/TSWG

XM645 flechette with compressed fiber sabot

Winchester Long Neck .30-06 Duplex

Winchester .308 Magnum Exp

.30-18 Browning

.30 Blake

[Sturgeon]

My latest acquisitions:

 

Winchester Long Neck .30-06 Duplex, .30 Blake, Colt .30 Salvo Squeezebore, Winchester .308 Magnum Exp, XM645 flechette with compressed fiber sabot, 6x35mm KAC/TSWG, .30-18 Browning

 

 

 

 

.404 Jeffery, .333 Jeffery Rimless, .280 Ross with an early tipped bullet, 4.2 Line Berdan, 11.15x58R Werndl, .32 Winchester Special, .25-36 Marlin, 8mm Nambu

[Sturgeon]

[Sturgeon]

Collecting cartridges in a humid environment is a little bit of a challenge, because brass tarnishes easily and steadily. So you buy some lovely looking (and sometimes irreplaceable) cartridges, and they begin to tarnish and eventually they look like you fished them out of a river.

What do you do? Well, I looked online, but didn't find a solution that seemed to be exactly what I want (most dealt with corrosion, which is another problem that needs more drastic solutions). In this case, especially, I was trying to clean up a round of plain-tip FN 5.7x28mm SS190, the only one of its kind that I own, and it has a blue neck sealant that I obviously wanted to preserve.

Most of the remedies I found involved acid of some kind, so I got some tarnished 7.62x39mm (which also has neck sealant) to test out some methods. I found that alcohol removes the neck sealant, so don't use that! The one that ended up working was a hunch on my part, that being lemon juice from my home bar. And it worked great! Very little effort with a worn out toothbrush soaked in lemon juice removed all the tarnish and didn't harm the neck sealant at all! Huzzah!

Here you can see two 9mm rounds, both from the same box of ammunition, both had been sitting around for a while. The tarnish had started to get ugly on both of them, and they also exhibited unsightly fingerprints from oil. The one on the right I cleaned with lemon juice:

[Khand-e]

Collecting cartridges in a humid environment is a little bit of a challenge, because brass tarnishes easily and steadily. So you buy some lovely looking (and sometimes irreplaceable) cartridges, and they begin to tarnish and eventually they look like you fished them out of a river.

What do you do? Well, I looked online, but didn't find a solution that seemed to be exactly what I want (most dealt with corrosion, which is another problem that needs more drastic solutions). In this case, especially, I was trying to clean up a round of plain-tip FN 5.7x28mm SS190, the only one of its kind that I own, and it has a blue neck sealant that I obviously wanted to preserve.

Most of the remedies I found involved acid of some kind, so I got some tarnished 7.62x39mm (which also has neck sealant) to test out some methods. I found that alcohol removes the neck sealant, so don't use that! The one that ended up working was a hunch on my part, that being lemon juice from my home bar. And it worked great! Very little effort with a worn out toothbrush soaked in lemon juice removed all the tarnish and didn't harm the neck sealant at all! Huzzah!

Here you can see two 9mm rounds, both from the same box of ammunition, both had been sitting around for a while. The tarnish had started to get ugly on both of them, and they also exhibited unsightly fingerprints from oil. The one on the right I cleaned with lemon juice:

 

Lemon Juice contains Citric Acid, which you may remember as a purifying agent in one of my other recent guides.

 

It's surprisingly effective for how gentle it is.

[Sturgeon]

Lemon Juice contains Citric Acid, which you may remember as a purifying agent one of my other recent guides.

 

It's surprisingly effective for how gentle it is.

 

Right, that was my theory. Turns out it worked splendidly!

[Sturgeon]

Collecting cartridges in a humid environment is a little bit of a challenge, because brass tarnishes easily and steadily. So you buy some lovely looking (and sometimes irreplaceable) cartridges, and they begin to tarnish and eventually they look like you fished them out of a river.

What do you do? Well, I looked online, but didn't find a solution that seemed to be exactly what I want (most dealt with corrosion, which is another problem that needs more drastic solutions). In this case, especially, I was trying to clean up a round of plain-tip FN 5.7x28mm SS190, the only one of its kind that I own, and it has a blue neck sealant that I obviously wanted to preserve.

Most of the remedies I found involved acid of some kind, so I got some tarnished 7.62x39mm (which also has neck sealant) to test out some methods. I found that alcohol removes the neck sealant, so don't use that! The one that ended up working was a hunch on my part, that being lemon juice from my home bar. And it worked great! Very little effort with a worn out toothbrush soaked in lemon juice removed all the tarnish and didn't harm the neck sealant at all! Huzzah!

Here you can see two 9mm rounds, both from the same box of ammunition, both had been sitting around for a while. The tarnish had started to get ugly on both of them, and they also exhibited unsightly fingerprints from oil. The one on the right I cleaned with lemon juice:

 

Oh, and by the way, this method removes annealing marks, just FYI.

[Sturgeon]

The sort of awesome thread titles you get over at IAA Forums:
 

[Sturgeon]

Just a little bit of today's haul:

 

St. Louis-made M2 AP; got four boxes of this stuff for testing.

 

A stripper clip of Japanese-made 6.5 Arisaka on the left, and a stripper clip of 6.5x55 Swedish surplus. I got my hands on quite a lot of the 6.5x55, so I should have some good fun shooting my m/96 coming up. These Swedish clips are amazing, BTW, probably the best stripper clips I've ever used:

 

A partial box of 4.6x36 CETME/HK, made for the HK36 experimental rifle

 

Some miscellaneous rounds: Egyptian-made 12.7x108mm API, 8x63mm Bofors ball, 8x63mm Bofors AP, 8x63mm Bofors tracer, Chinese 7.62x54mmR API, 7.62x54mmR Heavy D Ball in three different cases, Egyptian 7.62x54mmR blank, East German 7.62x54mmR training round, Chinese 7.62x54mmR blank, 7.62x51mm SLAP-T, .357 Magnum metal piercing bullet, 5.7x28mm black tip SS190 AP, 5.7x28mm L191 AP-T, 7.65 Longue in both bare steel and lacquered/bimetal.