Steve Jackson Games Forums - View Single Post - Iron Content of Rifle Ammo (SS109/M855, M59, M61, M80, M855A1, etc.)

Anaraxes · 04-21-2019, 07:09 AM

You could coat the bullets in something less permanent than zinc -- say oil or cosmoline. That should still do for relatively short-term storage. (The Vatican may not have a requirement to archive millions of rounds for decades.) If necessary, the rounds could be cleaned before action. They won't rust a lot in hours or days.

Or depending on the coating, you might just skip that step. Cosmoline might strip off in the barrel and melt what doesn't strip when a bullet is fired (it has a lot of waxes in it), or a thin coat of the right kind of oil might not prevent the target from absorbing the iron to get poisoned. (That would get into a lot of details about the bioactivity of iron in supernatural creatures.)

04-21-2019, 07:09 AM	#32
Anaraxes Join Date: Sep 2007	Re: Iron Content of Rifle Ammo (SS109/M855, M59, M61, M80, M855A1, etc.) You could coat the bullets in something less permanent than zinc -- say oil or cosmoline. That should still do for relatively short-term storage. (The Vatican may not have a requirement to archive millions of rounds for decades.) If necessary, the rounds could be cleaned before action. They won't rust a lot in hours or days. Or depending on the coating, you might just skip that step. Cosmoline might strip off in the barrel and melt what doesn't strip when a bullet is fired (it has a lot of waxes in it), or a thin coat of the right kind of oil might not prevent the target from absorbing the iron to get poisoned. (That would get into a lot of details about the bioactivity of iron in supernatural creatures.)