Category: How To (How I Did)
You could call this a How To – but people often tell me I did it wrong – now to be fair you can’t really tell me I can’t do it that way, when the video shows I actually DID do it that way – so to cool down the hateraide – lets just call this HOW I DID
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How to Stencil Ammunition Cans for Ammo Storage
Buy at Amazon The other day I showed you how I removed the markings from old surplus military ammo cans. Today I will show you how we went about stenciling ammunition cans with our own markings.
As I scoured the internet for options I found that stenciling ammo cans was the most popular by far, and I even found a guy that will custom cut stencils. The cost was reasonable – about 2 dollars a stencil, but I decided to try my hand at cutting them. I got some clear plastic, a hobby knife, and a printout of the words I wanted to paint on my cans. Let’s just say this was a fail.
Next I tried to get a friend of mine with a vinyl scrapbooking stencil cutter. My idea was to resale common stencils like 5.56 and .40 S&W. My powers of persuasion were not powerful enough to get the stencils in bulk.
Next I just went to the local hobby store and bought some stencils. Spray-paint and stencils never work well for me and after turning my workbench a nice shade of yellow I threw the stencils in a box.
I then found that the military STAMPS the lot number – which makes a lot of sense. I then bought some rib type stamps, a stamp holder, pad, and yellow ink and decided to stamp my own cans.
½ letters work fine and you can get about 23 characters a foot
I chose ¼ letters so I could get more lettering on the locking end of my can (If I did it again I would stick with ½ inch) ¼ inch stamps is about 43 characters a foot.
If you go bigger ¾ is about 16 characters a foot and 1inch letters get you about 14 characters a foot.Some Common Dimensions
30 CAL AMMO CAN is 10″ x 7″ x 3
50 CAL AMMO CAN is 11.5″x7″x6″
SAW BOX is 12″ X 6 3/4″ X 8 1/2″
20 MM AMMO is 18 3/4 X 8 1/4 X 14 1/4
81 MM MORTAR BOX is 14 1/2 X 5 1/2 X 22 1/2My smaller cans I use for cast bullets so I stamped them “CAST and the caliber”. I use another for casting supplies so I labeled it “CASTING SUPPLIES”
For my 50 caliber cans I labeled them the following way:
800 ROUNDS
CALIBER and BULLET TYPE
BOXED or BULK
RELOADS or COMMERCIALStamping is easier for me than painting, and mistakes were easier to clean up.
But my pad was too large – I wanted to get a lot of room for letters, but ended up wishing I would have gotten a much smaller pad to make it easier to use even pressure.My letters were too small. They were just right for the ends, but could have been a lot bigger on the sides.
But my biggest learning curve was my ink. I wanted to use yellow like the original cans, but high quality yellow ink was expensive so I did not buy what I needed and the ink I got did not adhere evenly and was hard to see.
Next time I am going to use a high quality white ink.
I know that there are easier ways of marking your ammo cans – one guy said he colors in his stencils with a white grease pencil – others use tape and sharpies. Whatever works for you. But personally while this does not follow K.I.S.S. principles to the letter, I like how it turned out, and since I put a lot of effort into making good rounds, I wanted to store them in nice boxes.
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How to Remove Stencils from Ammo Cans: The Easy Way
Buy at Amazon When I figured out how to remove stencils from ammo cans, I wished I had learned it earlier. Up until this point I had repainted my cans to cover the markings. Now I can simply remove the stencils and keep the nice OD green paint.
Want to Store Reloads in Labeled Ammo Cans?
I have a few thousand reloads stored in various methods around my shop . Soon I got tired of seeing ice cream buckets full of bulk ammo sitting around. To fix this, I ordered several Styrofoam repack kits for my pistol ammo. Next, I packed the rounds neatly into little white 50 round boxes. After that, I wanted to have a good way to store them.
Luckily, I have several assorted military surplus ammo cans lying about. I find it interesting that 4 boxes of pistol ammunition will fit in the bottom of an .50 ammo can. Those layers of 200 rounds can be stacked 4 deep. This means in a single .50 caliber can I can securely store 800 pistol rounds.
My problem is that I have a lot more than .38 special rounds, and since all the ammo cans are marked with military stampings they all look alike. This caused me to start an internet search to find an easy way to mark military ammo cans.
You Have to Remove Markings Before You Can Re-Label
However before I could paint my cans, I had to remove markings from ammo cans. Most people tend to either sand and repaint their cans, or just paint over the markings with spray paint. That is the simplest solution, however, matching paint colors as you repaint several cans can be a problem, plus the cost of paint, and the fact that I wanted to do it a different way led me to discover that the markings are not painted on with stencils they are stamped on with ink.
You would be surprised at how easy some acetone paint remover (I used fingernail polish remover) and a rag will lift the stencils off the cans. The only thing you need to worry about is that with enough scrubbing you might be able to lift some green paint off also. In my experience this did not happen – but I imagine it could.
Once I removed all the markings and let the paint thinner dry I was ready for the next part which was actually marking the cans – Stay tuned for how I actually marked the cans…
