The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

I find that pistol calibre cartridges (44 magnum) can be stored very space efficiently in boxes, but bottleneck cartridges less so (303 and 308). MTM boxes are great for the range, but also hold a lot of fresh air. Cardboard boxes from manufactured rounds are reasonable, but with homeloading eventually get dog eared. So what solutions have you guys found for storing rounds in your ammo safes? Depends of course on safe size, I have a couple of the medium B&Q's and one lockable top gun safe.

I use those lockable steel 'site toolboxes' to store my ammo. https://www.machineryhouse.co.nz/Toolboxes I have two of them, so not usually short of storage space. Don't know if these would be legal in the UK for that purpose, but here the firearms officer is happy enough with them.

DaveB wrote:I use those lockable steel 'site toolboxes' to store my ammo. https://www.machineryhouse.co.nz/Toolboxes I have two of them, so not usually short of storage space. Don't know if these would be legal in the UK for that purpose, but here the firearms officer is happy enough with them.

Thanks Dave, but I was looking more for "I put my 303's in such and such a box they fit in a treat" types responses.

I use an old 6 gun cabinet laid on its side. Holds a lot of 12g, .308, .223, .22, etc

I have never managed to fill it.

I raid the bins during the Imperial - hundreds of thousands of rounds of GGG packaging gets thrown away. The new boxes with plastic insert are more durable than the old cardboard slot ones. We use them once then chuck em. Also use a lot of the old RG 50 round plastics. Both the above pack well into a H83 ammo tin (or an MTM AC30, AC50).

Mostly, though, I load straight into MTM RM100 boxes. Key to this was buying a bigger gun cab then shelving out the old one for ammo.

Here are the GGG boxes compared with RWS ones:





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I can tell you that 15 7.62x54r rounds fit perfectly into a Dove soap box!.

I only reload 54r and I get loads of sheets of brown card from work and make my own 20 round boxes, I used a Hungarian box as a pattern.My milsurp ammo stays in the 20 round paper packs it comes in.

By careful stacking I can get 1000 54r and 600 .22lr in the top of the cabinet and 1000 7.62x39, a couple of bolts and bits and bobs in a seperate ammo safe.

TomH wrote:

DaveB wrote:I use those lockable steel 'site toolboxes' to store my ammo. https://www.machineryhouse.co.nz/Toolboxes I have two of them, so not usually short of storage space. Don't know if these would be legal in the UK for that purpose, but here the firearms officer is happy enough with them.

Thanks Dave, but I was looking more for "I put my 303's in such and such a box they fit in a treat" types responses.

Understood. I keep everything in in original factory packaging, even what I reload which goes back into saved factory packaging or into MTM plastic boxes when the factory packaging eventually falls apart. All of my small arms ammunition is in 20 or 50 round boxes (except of course shotgun ammo, which is in 25 round boxes). I do not know of anything more space-efficient than these packages. Let's face it, the factory is set up to make a profit, and wasting space does not contribute to that goal. They especially have to maximise space during shipment, and they obviously think their boxes pack and stack in a space-efficient manner. Last time I checked, it was around US$10-12K per 20' ISO container to ship across the pond, and I would think if there were a more space-efficient packaging, the ammunition industry would have found it by now.

You could use ziplock freezer bags? When my safe gets full with handloaded ammo in MTM boxes but I need more ammunition, I transfer the ammo where the boxes use up a lot of air and put them in freezer bags and labelled up. Saves quite a bit of room,just make sure they don't accidentally open up!

Load them into the magazines they're intended for and store the magazines. Gives you a longer lie in, in the morning/more time shooting, less time loading too

WelshShooter wrote:You could use ziplock freezer bags? When my safe gets full with handloaded ammo in MTM boxes but I need more ammunition, I transfer the ammo where the boxes use up a lot of air and put them in freezer bags and labelled up. Saves quite a bit of room,just make sure they don't accidentally open up!

You need a bigger safe if it gets full that easily...............

This is what I use.............

https://www.powertoolsuk.co.uk/van-vaul ... gJ03vD_BwE