I bought a bunch -not figuratively, but literally, over 3,000 rounds- of 8mm JS Mauser. I can't quite remember where it originated. Romania?, maybe, dated in the mid-50s. Every tenth round or so, it would misfire. If I recocked the rifle, the second squeeze would fire. All of the brass looked beautiful externally, and it came in sealed spam cans.

One day, out of curiosity, I decided to pull some bullets to investigate the misfires. I thought it was a head spacing problem, perhaps, but it happened regardless of which rifle I was using. To my horror, there were random, severely corroded places on the inside of the brass. The powder looked perfect, but it was as if something was left on the inside of the cases that caused corrosion. I had been shooting this stuff in surplus Mausers that had no gas dump to the magazine, in case of case-head ruptures. I immediately put an end to shooting any of that ammo.

Not being one to waste anything, I decided I'd start reworking it. I pulled twenty or so bullets and weighed the charges. The average of the charges came in around 42grn of some unknown sheet powder. I made a bunch of 8mm cases from the bucket of 30-06 brass I had laying around, worked up a load using the surplus powder and bullets, while using my primers and cases, and now I load up 100 rounds at a time when I get the desire to blast with a Mauser. It now works perfectly while also playing into my hobby of fiddling around at the reloading bench.

I also have some 303 British that is actually British WWII surplus. It works flawlessly every time. Moral of this post? Surplus ammo isn't all equal, no more so than new ammo is. Some can be quite good, and some can be dangerous. I would certainly purchase it again, being I paid less than 6¢ a round, but I'm way more cautious now with surplus ammo, particularly stuff out of Eastern Europe or Asia.