Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Cold Weld

A number of years ago I inherited a bunch of Norma factory 10mm ammo dated from the 1980's when the 10mil was gaining ground.
I shot a few dozen rounds in my G20 and noticed strong variability in recoil pulse as well as a couple of split and bulged cases. Assuming higher than normal pressures due to welding I decided to pull bullets and save the cases/primers for reloading.

Initially I went with an inertia bullet puller but many of the bullets were so stuck I broke the first puller and then began developing tendinitis in my wrist working with the second from the continuous pounding to get the bullets to move. I switched to a home made collar and plyers setup in the rock chucker and this worked better but was amazed how stuck many of the bullets were. So far have had about a 20% rim failures via tearing off the cases due to the bullets being so stuck.

I've reloaded some of the factory pulled brass with the factory primer and most of the primers wouldn't fire either, so whatever caused the bullets to seize screwed up the primers as well.
Keep in mind this was Norma factory ammo purchased and stored in the original boxes in dry Colorado climate for over 30 years before coming to MT. My only theory for outside intervention would be if the ammo was stored on the floor of a garage during winter months where cold/warm temp. exchange might cause condensation to occur creeping into the cartridges.

So yeah, cold weld is thing as far as I'm concerned.

Interesting topic and one more thing for us Loonies to obsess over. I can’t think of any of the hundreds of thousands of rounds I’ve fired that exhibited signs of cold weld. I’ve fired stuff from WWII without any problems, in fact most of the tracers still lit in 1942 mfg 30-06. 30 carbine from WWII and 45 acp. I don’t doubt that it’s a real thing, I just doubt that many of us will ever have an issue with it.

I went ahead and order the Redding graphite lube to put inside the necks before seating bullets.

I still had sticky rounds after a year or so, in some cases, using the graphite lube. For sure my very clean case necks were a contributor. I have have recently gotten the sense that hornady one shot applied inside all the case necks might prevent sticky bullets a little better than graphite. Others might disagree.

I'm still trying to figure out how to get case lube off without cleaning the cases in some manner...

Oh gosh....look out for that Lottery Jackpot!!!

So would using nickel cases eliminating this from happening?