Tucking away magazines for the uncertain future…..
Tuck ’em into an ammo can, seal it up, stencil a number on it, update the spreadsheet and off it goes. See you at the boogaloo, my little friends.
Putting away for the Rainy Day
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Tag Archives: Deep Sleeper
Gun storage
Someone asked me in email about what I do, if anything, to package guns for the Deep Sleep. It’s probably a disappointment to most folks who are expecting some sort of long list of ritual greasing, packaging, preserving, etc., but….I really don’t do very much.
Any gun I’m packing away is a gun that probably has a history of ruggedness, durability, and survivability. I’d package up a nice blued Colt Python a lot differently than I’d package up a Glock. Because the guns I’m putting away are usually mil-spec in terms of material and finish, they are already enjoying a head start on being resistant to the threats posed from long term storage.
Really, for most guns all I do is clean them thoroughly, lubricate them normally, pack them into a quality hard case with dessicant, and thats really about it.
I’ve handled guns that have sat around for fifty years in closets, under beds, in attics, hidden in barns, etc, etc. These were guns that were not given any special treatment nor stored in any purpose-built gun vault. Problems encountered have been:
- Rust – This is usually the most obvious problem. It can be a light freckling all the way to full-blown rust. The cause is, obviously, moisture. The source could be just the ambient humidity in the air, like if you live in Florida, or from an environmental scenario such as leaving the gun leaning up against an object like a furnace duct or other feature that has high temperature swings. The solution is to store in a case that is as airtight as possible along with a handful of dessicant. Most of the guns that I pack away for Der Tag are guns that are already pretty rust-resistant…Glocks, parkerized guns, etc… so I can give them less consideration than, say, a nicely blued Rem 700 or something.
- Bore obstructions – Be honest…do you always, religiously, without fail, check the bore of a gun that has just come out of storage before you shoot it? Most people do not. I’ve seen plenty of barrels with cobwebs in them, old cleaning patches, and on at least one occasion a mud daubers nest. Some folks say you should plug the bore of the gun with a foam ear plug to prevent anything from getting in there. I worry that traps moisture inside the barrel. I clean my bores thoroughly, run a lubed patch through, then follow up with a few dry patches, and leave it at that. And I always check for obstructions when pulling a gun out of storage.
- Dried grease – On older military guns (SKS, Mosin Nagants, Mausers, etc) guns were preserved by using copious amounts of grease…not oil. SKS rifles were notorious for having huge amounts of grease saturating them, this method preserves things beautifully but it is an enormous task to get all that grease out of a gun. I’ve had guns that, literally, sweat grease out of the stock when they heat up and this is years and years after I initially got the gun and cleaned it up. Grease that has dried up forms a crusty, hard residue that requires nothing less than sitting around for hours with a heat gun, rags, and dental picks to clear up.
- Dust mixing with oil – overlube a gun and the oil pools and starts collecting dust, which becomes a sludge, which eventually becomes a caked on mess. I lube a gun thoroughly and then use a rag to try an wipe off the oil I just applied. This leaves just enough to keep the gun safe without overdoing it.
Virtually all of these issues are resolved by using an airtight purpose-built gun case. The $9 Flambeau or Plano gun case is not good enough. Spend $200 and get a Pelican or Hardigg case. A lot of cases, at half the price, claim to be ‘as good as’ or ‘just like’…they are not. When you have to pull your genuine Belgian FAL or pre-ban HK93 out of the rafters, that is not the time to find out that your bargain case that saved you $50 had a crappy O-ring gasket and one side of your rifle has a nice orange sheen to it. The one good and cheap(er) alternative is when it comes to handguns – a genuine US GI ammo can, with good seals, is a perfect container for pistol rug, with dessicant, holding your preferred handgun.
The next question is probably “What else do you store with the guns? Ammo? Tools?”
Storing ammo with the gun is a bit iffy, IMHO. Why? Because the well-oiled gun is in an airtight case. Leave some ammo in there and I suppose there’s a possibility of oil contamination rendering the ammo unreliable. Big if, sure…but if things have gotten serious enough you’re pulling Ol’ Painless outta storage then things are serious enough that the last thing you want is ammo of questionable reliability, no? As an aside, I pack ammo in perfect/good condition military ammo cans. Metal ones. Not the plastic ones that when dropped on a hard surface shatter like my dreams and hopes.
Remember guys, guns have only two natural enemies: rust and politicians.
Maximum Mini Mags
As I noted a few posts back, it looks like TAPCO is heading for the ‘no longer a going concern’ category of gun-related businesses. While I wont miss the SKS stocks and other crap, I will miss the Mini-14 mags. So….
Ordered these off GunBroker. Came out to $10@ which was reasonable. And, once I had received a tracking number indicating my order had shipped, I shared the auction link with you guys in case anyone wanted to grab some while they could. Well, apparently a bunch of you must have because when I go to check those same auctions the prices are up 20%. FYI, $12 is actually pretty close to what dealer cost was so theyre still a reasonable alternative to the $28 Ruger mags.
Ordered 25 because I only have the two Mini-14’s and they aren’t part of my plans.
I have another ten mags sitting around as ‘ready’ mags in case, thorugh some fluke, I wind up actually having to run the zombie apocalypse with the Mini-14, but the rest of these are Deep Sleepers.
A decent deal
It was one of those deals where you had to buy a significant amount of product in order to make the deal and get the good price. But…it worked out.
$0.15/round. Delivered. Farctory FMJ 115 Ball. And it’s off to the Deep Sleep.
I do a lot of reloading, but for end-of-the-world purposes I try to stock factory ammo. Why? Because if all the fiction novels and zombie movies are correct, and we are trading ammo like currency, no one wants a ziploc baggie of reloads from some yahoos garage that may or may not be loaded with fireworks powder. Factory ammo in factory packaging will be, IMHO, more desirable than mixed reloads from someone who may not know the difference between Bullseye and IMR4350.
Mini-14 sights
Sp I picked up a couple Min-14’s here recently, and while they are so low on the ‘just in case’ totem pole that they don’t even come out as a quinary-level of backup, there are still one or two things I need to do in regards to their care and feeding before I put them away.
The Mini’s have never had decent sights. Ever. Thats why they made the ‘Ranch’ versions. So, when you Google ‘aftermarket mini-14 sights’ what do you think Google spits out? Yup. These guys.
I put a set of Tech Sights on my 10/22 a few years back and they are a very worthy improvement. They are, unfortunately, made in Taiwan but the market for good aftermarket Mini sights isn’t exactly known for breadth and depth.
Since I originally only planned on having the one lonely Mini-14 sitting in Deep Sleep, I’m going to have to order up another of the excellent Tapco Mini-14 mags. And then I should be done. Unless another stupid Mini-14 makes itself known to me at a too-good-to-pass-up-price.
Go deep
One is none, forty thousand is one.
It occurs to me that one of the better reasons for having a ‘group’, rather than being solo, is to have some folks to help you carry the damn ammo up and down the stairs. Whew.
This will be Deep Sleep ammo. For target and plinking I’ll use whatever is available at WalMart or wherever, but this stuff goes right in there with the Mountain House stuff. The only time I expect to see it again is during some enormous crisis or when I transport it to the Beta Site. And, for the record, each 40mm ammo can holds 8,250 rounds…or 165 boxes of 50. And they’re heavy….right at the limit of man-portability.
Inspection
Have a few (ahem) leftovers from the Mountain House group buy that are going into the Deep Sleep. I used this opportunity to adjust quantities of ‘broken case’ items. See, the boxes normally hold six #10 cans. If I have only five cans of, say, Diced Beef, that means that six-can box is short by one can…or, in other words, it’s a partial or ‘broken’ case. So, I used this opportunity to round out my broken cases. In the process it also gave me a chance to inspect things. Embarrassingly, according to the dates stamped on the box, the last inspection I made on these things was seven years ago. In reality I should probably inspect these things once every other year or so.
Why? Well, mostly just to check that nothing has started to rust or otherwise be compromised. Last thing I want is to be packing up one day to move to a new location, pick up a cardboard case and have a bunch rusted cans fall out the soggy bottom of the box. No, no, no,no. I did not spend this kinda money to just wind up heaving it in a dumpster someday because I didn’t take the time to do the things necessary to protect my stuff.
What sorta steps? Well, nothing terribly intricate. Everything is in a cardboard box, taped shut, the boxes are stacked at least two feet off the floor on wire shelving, away from electrical and water sources, and (in theory) routinely inspected for damage. If I really wanted to go balls deep on the preservation side of things, the guys at repackbox.com sell a kit for really going full Burt Gummer and protecting your investment. I might have to get that to try out and see how things hold up over time.
By the by, the oldest of the cans I have in storage are pre Y2k (in fact, they were purchased at a post Y2K sale) and the majority are about 14 years old. How have they held up? Pretty well. Labels havent peeled, can integrity appears solid, boxes show no damage….just a little dust on the boxes.
Rotate and replace – learn it, love it, live it
As I’ve posted before, about a zillion years ago there was a sale on oatmeal at the local Albertson’s. I went long on it and wound up with a five-gallon Gamma-sealed bucket full of vacuum-sealed packets of instant oatmeal. And there they sat. Quietly waiting. Until one day about ten years later when I decided to pull ’em out and get ’em into the rotation.
Well, that means that what came out of long-term storage must be replaced, no? As I was flipping through Costco’s little sales flyer I see that they have 52-packs of oatmeal on sale for $5.99. That comes out to about twelve cents per package of oatmeal. Being the curious sort, I checked the scale and the packages do weight the same. However, and this surprised me, the apple flavor oatmeal packages contain almost 25% less product than the brown sugar or cinnamon flavor packets. Interesting.
But the point is that in the course of around 12 years, the sale price of the oatmeal products has remained virtually unchanged. Which I found rather interesting. It also nice to see that my food storage program has been going on long enough that even somewhat-long-term stuff hasstarted getting rotated and replaced on a regular basis. Go me!
Anyway, these things will get packed a dozen to a bag and sealed up for the Deep Sleep. Oatmeal isnt anyone’s favorite food, but it is very difficult to argue against it’s convenience. Some boiling water, freeze dried fruit to mix in, and you’ve pretty much got a decent breakfast. In the Venezuela-of-the-future you could have oatmeal, fruit, eggs, bacon, and orange drink all out of a can you put away twenty years ago. Kinda comforting, that. Speaking of Venezuela…this was too good to not share:
The Deep Sleepers
Being a survivalist, you tend to ‘go long’ on stuff…a hundred rolls of TP at a time, canned goods by the case, socks by the dozen, etc. On a long enough timeline, all this stuff will get used. Some sooner than others. For example, the canned goods will probably get used up within a year or two, but some things, like the #10 cans of freezedrieds, are meant to never be used. They are a ‘only in case of apocalypse’ sort of thing. Some other items, like the bulk AR mags I bought a few weeks ago, aren’t meant to be used but rather tucked away safely for, probably, at least a decade or two.
Items that are meant to be put into long, long, long-term storage are referred to around these parts as ‘Deep Sleepers’. They are items that are not intended to be used anytime within the foreseeable future. And, honestly, probably not even after that.
Case in point, the recent stash of Magpul AR mags. I have no intention of using them. I have enough mags on hand to handle my needs for quite some time. So, this recent batch of Magpuls are Deep Sleepers. They are there as a ward against a new ban, in case the next civil war breaks out, or some other Very Bad Thing happens.
First thing we do is stuff them away into a clean, solid, ammo can with good seals. They’re arranged carefully and sealed up in the ammo can. Once the can is closed up, I put a couple loops of poly strapping around it. This serves two purposes – first, it makes sure the lid stays closed. Second, it keeps me from sneaking a mag or two out of there when I think “Ah, I’ll just take a couple from the stash and put them back later.” (Trust me…you are your own worst looter.) Once that can is sealed up it gets marked up with the contents and quantity on it..preferably on each side and top so I can see at a glance whats in it. After that, I write the contents on a ‘key tag’ and wire it to the bail on the ammo can. After that, the can gets tucked way back in storage and…byebye, baby…see you in twenty years. Once that’s done, the records (I use Evernote and Excel) are updated. In Evernote, this is tagged as “magazines”,”Deep Sleeper”, “Storage”, “AR”, and “MagPul”. I also make a note that this is an item that does not need to be periodically inspected.
That’s it. Right now, as I think about it, Deep Sleepers include stashes of magazines, clothes, freezedrieds, and a few other things. But, most importantly, I know what I have, how much of it I have, where I have it, and how well it is stored. Peace of mind.
