IMR 4895 dust

[TXGunNut]

Anybody ever notice a very fine brown dust when pouring IMR 4895 powder? I have some that is probably a bit over 20 yrs old, thought I'd load up a bit while I was trying new loads in my .30-06. Don't recall seeing it before but haven't had the cap of for quite some time.

[mrawesome22]

Sounds like it's no good to me. I've never had dust in any of my powder. It almost sounds like the coatings have worn off which would dramatically change the burn rate. Careful with that stuff.

[Mal H]

If you are getting rust colored dust in the powder, then it has gone bad, and shouldn't be used for reloading. You now have a can of fertilizer, use it in your plants good health! Skoal!

[TXGunNut]

Guess I've got some bullets to pull. Thanks. Wasn't too optimistic about that powder anyway. Was almost a full can but it's probably the oldest powder on my shelf, made in 1989 if I read the date code right.

[DANNY-L]

I couldnt amagine powder that old I shoot them faster than I can load them.

[jaguarxk120]

The powder is releasing acids that were trapped during mfgr. They were not all removed during the washing process.

If you look in the can with a strong light you will see that the red dust is actually the rust from the inside of the can.

Chances are if you inserted a sampling tube into a can that hasn't been shaken up you will find that the red dust is no where in the inside of the powder, just where the powder contacts the container surface.

[TXGunNut]

I thought it was rust at first, Jag. Walls are clean with no rust. If it were rust I'd consider firing it. I'm going with mrawesome and his coating theory. Since the coatings have a big role in retarding burn rate I'm not going to take any chances. Fertilizer it is, Mal!

[Mike Irwin]

IIRC that red dust, sometimes accompanied by red fumes that have a very corrosive odor, are actually oxides of nitrogen and can be poisonous if ingested or inhaled.

Just pour the powder on your lawn. Scatter it widely.

[dc.fireman]

^^^ What he said. If it smells 'peppery', or has a red dust, it's gone south. If it
still smells like ether, and has the nice grey or black appearance, it's still good. Your lawn will thank you for it, though.

-tc

[mrawesome22]

Is is just me, or does the smell of fresh powder just smell terrific. Single based smells the best. Double based is good too, but single based is just fantastic.

[jimbob86]

Actually, I like the smell of BURNT powder..... but maybe that's just the Artilleryman in me....

.... You can take the Man out of the Artillery, but you can't take the Artillery out of the Man.....

[mrawesome22]

I love the smell of burnt single based and BP. Burnt double based burns my nose. Unburnt BP smells like arse.

[TXGunNut]

I'll mix the old 4895 (and a few other leftovers and inadvertantly mixed powders) with the Ortho Max I need to put on the lawn soon. Thanks Mal and Mike.
Just checked, suspect powder a bit "off" in the odor category. Other smokeless powders have a nice, sweet "ether" smell that I enjoy. The Swiss powder I use has little odor unburned, a fantastic smell when fired.
What kind of BP are you using, mrawesome?

[jepp2]

I'm shooting IMR 4895 powder with a lot number in the late 60's. It has the dust you describe, but no red dust and no acid smell. The inside of the 8 pound container is lightly rusted. Works just as good as the day it was made.

Pour some out on a sheet of white paper. If there is no red dust present, I would use it.

[mrawesome22]

Pyrodex. I love the smell after lighting off a 90gr VL/EQ charge through my Knight. Unburnt, it smells awful. LOL

EDIT: Ya, it's not black powder. It's black powder "substitute". Oh well, I like Pyrodex. Triple 7 is terrible. They should call that stuff "Hard Crud In Your Barrel" and that Pioneer produces terrible SD's. Plus, with Pioneer, you don't get that wonderful smoke cloud.

[TXGunNut]

Reddish-brown dust coated the inside of a paper cup (wax-coated) that I use to dip powder out of. Guess they made it better back in the '60's.
Already pulled the bullets and substituted another powder, may try some new 4895 another time. Will focus on 4064, Varget, H and IMR 4350 for now.

[TXGunNut]

No experience w/ Pyrodex, just 777 and Clean-Shot for BP substitutes. Subs are growing old on my shelf since I discovered Holy Black, Swiss is just awesome! Gun cleans up w/ Windex (w/ vinegar) quicker than any smokeless powder. Cases only a bit more difficult. Deprimed cases, hot soapy water, a heat source and a conventional vibratory cleaner keep them looking and working like new.

[Slamfire]

I have access to a gentleman who is an energetics expert. I asked him about smokeless powder lifetime. The whole topic is a subset of “Insensitive Munitions”. A term you can Google and find bits and pieces in the public domain.

Smokeless propellants are used in more applications that just cartridges. Rocket motors, explosive warheads, these all use smokeless propellants.

He told me that powder starts deteriorating the day it leaves the powder mill. The rate of deterioration of double based powders is governed by the Arrhenius equation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrhenius_equation. The hotter it is, the faster it goes. Single based powders apparently deteriorate in a linear fashion.

What the expert told me was that double base powders are made of nitroglycerine (NG) and nitrocellulose (NC). The NG wants to wick its way, through capillary action, into the NC. Forming a lower energy state compound. In the process of combination nitric acid gas is released. As nature wants to go to a lower energy state, this reaction is inevitable. There are preventive stabilizers in the powder which eat up the nitric acid. The stabilizers get consumed over time.

Exposing powder to high temperatures for extended periods of time is bad. Heat accelerates the reduction-oxidation process.

Cool dry storage conditions, he actually said “artic”, are about the best for long term storage of powder.

The expert said that Navy powders are initially tested at 10 years. They put a litmus paper in contact with the powder. If the paper changes color, nitric gas is present.

If the paper shows a problem, they then chemically test the powder for the amount of stabilizer in the powder. If that drops below 20% original, than the powder is scrapped. You have to have the original powder records to know how much stabilizer was in the powder when it was made.

The Army scraps by clock time. Double based powders are scrapped at 20 years, single based 45 years.

A few years ago TALON released tons of demilled military powders. That stuff was at the end of its service life. Half of my surplus 4895 powders went bad. One keg turned red and was outgassing and it was poured out on the lawn. About 8 pounds did not turn red, but went bad in the case.

First indications that I had a problem were that I had a lot of split case necks on fired cartridges. Then case necks started to crack on unfired ammunition. When I pulled bullets, I smelt nothing, in the case or in the bottle, but I found green corrosion on the bottom of bullets. I believe that nitric acid was weakening the work hardened areas of the case, and causing corrosion on the bottom of the bullets.

Incidentally, the powder shot exceptionally well in cases that did not have case neck cracks. I shot some exceptional scores with the stuff at 600 yards with 168 Match bullets. I had "funny" retorts on some rounds. The expert said as the surface of gun powder changes, burn rates are affected.

If the powder changes color, it is bad. It is grossly bad. It was bad a long time before the color changed. And it is time to pour it out. That is when you typically see red rust in a metal powder can (acid gas eating the can up) and red powder.

I was told that when enough nitric acid is released, the powder will spontaneously combust. The expert diagramed the chemical reaction and hot spots can develop as energy is released. As the Military is extremely scandal sensitive, they won’t tell anyone that big bunkers have blown up, but they have. Ammunition depots go Kaboom all the time due to old ammunition spontaneously combusting. You can Google this and find incident reports in the literature. But you won’t find mention of some of the American ammunition incidents that this expert investigated. We Googled one incident he wrote a report on and found nothing in the public domain.

Government Rule #2: Minimize Scandal.

Water is bad for smokeless gun powders as it damages the powder surface and wicks NG to the surface. Even through age is reducing the total energy content of the powder , wicking NG to the surface will increase the initial burn rate of the propellant, which has lead to pressure spikes.

Contact with rust is bad for powders. As I understand contact with iron oxide increases the rate of the reduction-oxidation reaction.

The Navy used to store cannon powder in pools but the powder was to be recycled. I guess the water absorbed the nitric acid and kept everything cool, preventing heat build up. But the expert told me that the dry lifetime of powder is rapidly reduced after exposure to water.

Primers evidentially have an indefinite shelf life. Assuming the primers were not baked in an oven, soaked in penetrating oil, or the cups corroded, primers will outlast powder.

[Unclenick]

Originally Posted by Slamfire

Water is bad for smokeless gun powders as it damages the powder surface and wicks NG to the surface. . .

. . . But the expert told me that the dry lifetime of powder is rapidly reduced after exposure to water.

This is interesting. I know Alliant has a sample from among the earliest lots of Unique ever produced that is kept under water. They periodically pull a sample, dry it and test it and, so far, it still works to specs a century later. How long it would last after drying, though, I don't know? But the water itself does not seem to be deteriorating it.

Something is a little odd or, at least, unexplained, regarding the description you got of capillary action of nitroglycerin in nitrocellulose. That explains weeping in old dynamite, which used either a porous or fibrous substrate to wick nitroglycerin in to hold it in the first place. But when nitrocellulose is mixed with ether, the fibers dissolve into a colloidal gel. When the ether is driven off, this leaves a solid. Everything from billiard balls to movie film to toilet seats were made from low nitrated nitrocellulose dissolved and solidified in this way at one time. So if the colloid includes nitroglycerin in the suspension, there is no high surface area fibrous or porous structure for nitroglycerin to wick through by capillary action in this stuff.

I suppose it is possible that micro cracks could develop in solid grains as they shrink slightly with the further loss of trapped solvent traces over time? That will tend to embrittle the grains. Nitro might wick out of such features? Otherwise it would have to move by permeation. Perhaps the solvent trace helps keep nitro it in the matrix? But that's all speculation on my part. There are other factors that can cause a colloid to deconstruct. It would be interesting to get some clarification on this, particularly in light of the age of the Unique at Alliant. Also, nitro migration by any means does not explain deterioration of single-base powders like the IMR4895 in the OP?

Another item of interest in your description is the military time frame applied to powder storage and what that tells us about surplus ammo? I've got some corrosively primed surplus 1952 LC ammo that I was planning to experiment with, but am now thinking to pull down. I don't know what its temperature history was before I got it? I've also got some Berdan primed '82 Sellier and Bellot-made NATO surplus 7.62×51 that has had a few cases corrode through at the neck. Pulled bullets and powder from most of it seems fine, but it never performed consistently, so I think I'll pull it all down (about 800 rounds — yikes) and inspect more closely. It can certainly be reassembled with modern powder to use the primed cases. The bullets aren't much good.

I've noticed a few Berdan primed surplus cases I've picked up at the range that have a solid coating of verdis gris inside. Since it is also present in the neck, my assumption has always been that this was formed after firing due to corrosive priming, and that may still be so? But now I am wondering if acid dispersion caused it? Some of it seems to be too recent to have corrosive primers, though I understand they still showed up in some ammo as late as 1980 or so?

I've also got a fair amount of powder that is in the 20 year+ age range. Never stored in perfect conditions, moisture-wise (though always in cool condition—i.e., basement) and mostly in plastic that doesn't let water permeate very quickly. I've yet to find any signs of deterioration in any of it, but I suppose I shouldn't need a lot of excuses to shoot it up, either.

[chris in va]

FWIW I had some fine powder in the bottom of a 4895 jug bought a couple weeks ago (30-06 goes quick!). Thankfully I remembered someone saying the finer powders burn quicker, so I dumped the dust on my lawn. Last thing I need is my Garand blowing up.

[Mike Irwin]

"Is is just me, or does the smell of fresh powder just smell terrific."

Gives me a headache.


Alliant also had samples of Bullseye powder dating to before 1900 that are also stored in vats of distilled water, and have been for over 100 years, with no appreciable loss of potency.

[Edward429451]

Old powder is great for the Roses. I fertilized my Roses with the old powder and next year I had pink and red instead of just red, and more blooms than ever