A friend of mine owns a gun store. Many of the area police departments are looking to dispose of ammunition that has been turned in. This ammunition would need to be disassembled and sold as scrap.
Most of the information I have found regarding demilling of ammo involves large-scale commercial type machinery. Are there any methods, machinery that could be used on a smaller scale to dispose of a few cases of ammunition at a time?
Factory loaded ammunition with original packaging? I would shoot it. Some one else’s lousy handloads? Demill…
Trying to save the components I would get a collet bullet puller. Save the primed brass and bullet. Toss the powder.
Provide a letter to the agency property custodian or their designee certifying that the ammunition will be/has been disassembled and components rendered inert. For most, that is all they are looking for to meet policy or statutory requirements. Shooting ammo of known origin is an acceptable disassembly method. Enjoy. For other questionable ammo, destroy according to available tech (soak, incinerate, crush, etc). Disassembling individual cartridges will be tedious and a net loss.
I pulled down a few hundred SKETCHY Israeli 5.56 rounds that Iraqgunz came across. That was no fun. A few at a time here and there with a press mounted bullet pulling die. Not fun.
I tried once to demil small pile of free sketchy ammo to recover comps. It was a total ass ache and definitely not worth the time to do by hand. I gave up and gave it to the local SO for disposal.
Best way would probably be to burn it in a pit and sell the remains to a recycler. I certainly wouldn’t shoot any of it…It may be in a factory pack, but god know it really is.