Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Is my AK ammo Corrosive?

I've acquired several full cases of 7.62x39 military ball ammo and would like some assurance that is non-corrosive before firing it in my AR. Is there a corrosive vs non-corrosive date of manufacture? The head stamp on one case has a 23 at 12o'clock and a 69 at 6 o'clock and another has a 101 and a 73 and is copper plated. Any help would be appreciated.

If it is berdan primed it quite likely is both show a date of manufacture of either 1969 or 1973 from what you posted. If you shoot it make sure you clean it after each range session and make sure to lightly oil the bore.

Both of those head stamps are of Chinese origin. The top number indicates the factory that produced the rounds, the bottom number indicating the year of manufacture. IIRC, all the Chinese ammo prior to 1991 was corrosive, and your lots were made in 1969 and 1973, and those are corrosive primed rounds. The copper washed rounds you have are worth some $$$, they are steel cored rounds and were banned from import in 1994.

Windex, w/ammonia neutralizes corrosive salts. Benefit of Windex also is the soap in it softens the carbon fouling some milsurp leaves in the bore, gas passages, and so forth. Swabbing w/iso alcohol neutralizes the ammonia. Follow up with oil lube to protect metal that was cleaned.