Old Powder

[INGunGuy]

I am curious, but I came into some powder that is in excess of 40 years old. Are there any particular issues I may want to think about before using the powder? The powder is in sealed containers that have been stored in military ammo cans in a dry garage off the concrete floor. I wouldn't be so concerned, but I got about 200 lbs of different types of pistol and rifle powder. Also, I got about 25000 primers they are CCI, all types same scenario for storage.

Thanks,

INGunGuy

[kraigwy]

If your powder is the original sealed containers I think you'll be fine. Same with the primers.

Just shoot it and thank your lucky stars for the find.

[AF_Reloader]

Alliant has these adds in all their reloading manuals about their powder lasting forever and all that, but that's them and I always take that with a grain of salt.

If it were me (and this is just my HUMBLE opinion, NOT expert advice), I'd find a nice mild load in the caliber you're loading them for, and give it a shot, as long as:

-The powder doesn't have a strong smell
-The powder isn't in clumps
-The primers don't show obvious signs of corrosion

And then I'd check the cases for signs of high pressure (found in any reloading manual).

Personally, I wish I could come upon 25,000 CCI primers!

[Stumper]

There are few safety concerns. Smokeless powders usually have a solvent odor (due to residual solvents from their manufacturing). If the powder smells acrid (like acid) or has red powder amongst the flakes/kernels/balls then it is detiorating and should be discarded (I'm not referring to the red flakes in Red Dot) All testing that I am aware of has shown that powder is very stable but IF it is deterioratiing it produces lower pressures so the only potential safety hazard would be squibs. I have powder of my own that is 30 years old and is fine.

[INGunGuy]

The powder that I have opened, is fine. No signs of deterioration or strange odors. As for the primers, they look just like the new ones I bought earlier this year. My father was a handloader and gave me all the powder and primers. I really like how he has all the primers separated in all their own ammo cans. The powder is the same way, then the smaller cans were put into larger ammo cans. I wonder if the 4 and 8 lb drums of powder would have more value as collectibles or to use for reloading. Funny there are still price tags on stuff, and 1000 CCI small pistol primers were $2.25

INGunGuy

[AF_Reloader]

$2.25 for 1000 CCI primers is, frankly, disgusting, as that's the price for 100 these days. I regret reading that, since I'll remember it every time I shop for components.

As far as the powder, hey, the cans will look nice up on the mantle, regardless of if they're empty or full! I say shoot 'em up!

[closetgunnut]

I don't want to hi-jack this tread but...

I have some old Hogdon powder that I got from a relative also. About 6-7 cans I think. Some have rubber caps, some metal caps.

I opened them and there is no odor what so ever to the powder and there is no discoloration or clumping.

My new IMR 4895 and 4064 has a smell to into.

Is this powder ok to use in your opinion?

Should I try a mild load like Stumper suggests?

Thanks,

Closet

[Stumper]

If it has no odor at all that is not a sign of a problem-It just means that the residual solvents have evaporated. In theory, I suppose that the powder may be an itsy bit drier/ lighter per combustible unit but it should have very little effect on ballistics. Use starting loads 10% under max recommended loads and work up (or not if those loads suit you.)

[INGunGuy]

I reloaded and shot 100 rounds of .40 S/W with this 40 year old powder and primers. I ran all 100 rounds thru my pistol without a single misfire feed jam or anything else. I was shooting 10 rounds at 25 yards with 3 inch groups. For comparison I shot 10 rounds of factory loads and 10 rounds of handloads using new powder, and all were in 3 inch groups. I did have a strange one that was WAY WAY high, no idea why, but the damn thing was way off????

INGunGUy

[rbb50]

Dang I wish I could win the lotto like that some day LOL

I did get some old powder and some primers like that I still use and they work very good but it wasn't even a drop in the bucket compared to how much you got.

That 3 pounds of winchester 231 is sure going to last a long time for me anyway.

[Pathfinder45]

I have some World War II surplus powder that was repacked in 1973 as Hodgdon 4831. It's as good now as the day it was made.

[INGunGuy]

My father and I reloaded when I was growing up. He actually made the .357 .38 and .44mag molds and we molded our own bullets, greased them up, and loaded them. He bought all this powder and primers years ago and then got out of reloading. I grew up, moved out and joined the Navy. I guess after I left he got out of it. Anyway, we pulled all this stuff out the other day and he told me if it was any good, I could have it. I said thanks and now I have all this stuff...

INGunGuy

[Inspector3711]

200 lbs of powder??

You don't live near me do you??

I think that just may exceed the limit of how much you can store in your home by law.

[rbb50]

I have some of that H4831 powder and it sure does still work very good indeed in the old Model99 Japanese rifle I fixed up a little.

http://raybb.com/model99.jpg

My uncle had given me 2 pounds of H4831 along with 3 pounds of Winchester 231 some BL-C#2 a can of dupont IMR 4198 along with some Accurate 4350 and all of them have worked very good and he also gave me that old broken model99 Japanese rifle he brought back from the war that he thought would never work again.

Some of the powder was my granddads or his dads and dates back to pre WW2 I'm sure but it is all still good stuff.

200 pounds is a lot of powder alright and if you just take a small empty clean vegetable can half full of it way out into the back yard not close to anything that will burn of course and throw a match in it then you might get an ideal of what could happen if 200 pounds of it got lit off all of a sudden.

I will show that to friends sometimes while explaining how they make the rocket boosters for the space shuttle in the same way almost.

When lit off it does look like an upside down space shuttle rocket booster of course and shoots a jet looking flame out about 2 feet long.

The powder I use in that test is from old cases I unload of which I would never reuse anyway without knowing what powder it is to begin with.

[Gun 4 Fun]

You should check with your state and also get info [notice I did not say check with or tell] from BATFE. There are laws regarding how to legally store that much powder. You can do it, you just want to be sure if anything ever happened, that you butt is covered. Stumpers posts are right on the money.I have had exactly one can go bad in almost 30 years of reloading, and that was just this past summer. I don't know why this one can went bad, I've got others that are twice as old. I check them regularly as well. I have powders from as far back as, not long after I started loading. I bought them, tried them and found something I liked better, so they sit on my shelves waiting to be called upon.

[INGunGuy]

Well, I have been looking thru the Indiana Fire Code, and this is what I seem to have found.

CHAPTER 33 - EXPLOSIVES AND FIREWORKS
SECTION 3. - GENERAL
3301.1 Scope. Manufacture, possession, storage, sale, transportation and use of explosive materials shall be in
accordance with Chapter 33. See Appendix VI-F for excerpts from nationally recognized standards for
separation distances for explosives.
Explosives class designations in parentheses refer to new classifications used by DOT. See Appendix VI-F for
information on explosives class designations.
EXCEPTIONS: 1. The armed forces of the United States, Coast Guard or National Guard.
2. Explosives in forms prescribed by the official United States Pharmacopoeia.
3. The sale, possession or use of fireworks 1.4G (Class C common fireworks).
4. The possession, transportation, storage and use of small arms ammunition when packaged in accordance
with DOT packaging requirements.
5. The possession, storage, transportation and use of not more than 5 pounds (2.27 kg) of commercially
manufactured sporting black powder, 20 pounds (9.07 kg) of smokeless powder and 10,000 small arms primers for
hand loading of small arms ammunition for personal consumption.
6. The transportation and use of explosive materials by the United States Bureau of Mines, and federal, state
and local law enforcement and fire agencies acting in their official capacities.
7. Special industrial explosive devices which in the aggregate contain less than 50 pounds (22.7 kg) of explosive
materials.
8. The possession, transportation, storage and use of blank industrial powder load cartridges when packaged
in accordance with DOT packaging regulations.
9. When preempted by federal regulations.
10. The use and handling of fireworks 1.3G (Class B fireworks) as set forth in Chapter 33.

The wierd thing is that dad had all this stuff stored for years out in his garage in ammo cans with no problems at all. I have it stored the exact same way, just moved from his house to mine. I wonder if there were any grandfather clauses that allowed people that had loads of primer and powder to keep it after the new regulations were put into place.

INGunGuy

[Edward429451]

Even more telling than the smell for me was to pour some of the old powder out onto a piece of white paper and take a good look at it. any redness, deteriorating granules (different sizes) or clumping means it goes on the rose bushes for fertilizer.

[Slamfire]

I have access to a gentleman who is an energetics expert. I asked him about smokeless powder lifetime.

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. 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 either slow the reaction down, or eat up the nitric acid. I forget the exact function. The stabilizers get consumed over time.

Heat accelerates the combination process. Exposing powder to high temperatures for extended periods of time is bad. The expert said, if you could freeze the powder without introducing water, you could slow the process down.

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

The expert said that powders are initially tested 10 years. (I think, could have been 20 years). They put a 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 new powder.

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 in the 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. As the Military is extremely scandal sensitive, they do not volunteer information about big bunkers blowing up. And that fires in storage depots happen very often.

The Navy used to store cannon powder in pools. This powder was to be recycled. I guess the water absorbed the nitric acid, or kept everything cool preventing heat build up.

I have had half of my surplus 4895 powders go bad. About 8 pounds turned red and was poured out. About 8 pounds did not turn red, but went bad in the case. First indications that I had a problem were that loaded cartridges started having a lot of split case necks on firing. Then case necks started to crack on the loaded 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, that is for cases that did not have case neck cracks. I shot some exceptional scores with the stuff at 600 yards with 168 Match bullets, just after loading.

[doug66]

If I was you, but I'm not. If the primers were still shiny and the powder wasn't rusty looking or smelt acrid. I be loaded me up some cheap ammo. Hope you have a ball with your new found treasures.

[karen429]

I've got some H870 that my dad bought in the 70's which was WWII surplus at the time and it still works perfectly. However it has always been stored properly.

I've also had Unique and Blue Dot powder stored in a shed where summer temperatures get pretty high go bad after only about 5 years.

All the advise above about color and smell apply. You can easily identify really bad powder. Powder that is starting to go bad and may not pass a manufacturers test will likely work just fine if you load and shoot it. I've shot a lot of old powders and never noticed any performance difference.

I have also experienced the cracked necks in old loaded rifle rounds that were stored improperly. These happened to be 375 H&H loads put together in the early 80's and stored in the shed for years. Just about all of the necks split but you couldn't tell in shooting them that anything was wrong. While I didn't chronograph them they felt every bit as stout as new loads.

[INGunGuy]

I dont want to open any of the un-opened cans, but everything looks fine on the couple I looked at. No acrid smells, no lumps, clumps, red flakes, nothing that would indicate bad powder. I understand that there could be some issues with such old powder. I am going to use it until I get some indications as to there being a problem. As for the primers, they work great, not a problem with any of them.

INGunGuy

[rbb50]

There is something you might want to think about which is not thinking about loading up 300,000 rounds all at once just because you have the powder to do that.

The reason being is that loaded rounds will deteriorate in two different ways when kept in storage for long periods.

One way is the bullet and the case are dissimilar metals and will have an electrolysis action over years of storage that will make the case neck and bullet hard and brittle along with causing them to start a green corrosion as you can always sometimes see on old WW2 military rounds around where the bullet and case neck meet.

The other way is this action will also deteriorate the powder inside of the case faster than it would if it remained in the original powder canister after many years of sitting along with moving them around a lot will eventually cause the powder to dust off and settle into the primer hole causing either a much hotter ignition or the primer to fail altogether.

Karen429 more than likely experienced both of these problems with the old 375 H&H loads.

It is always best to only use what powder you need to make the loads you know you will shoot within that month then make some more after that than to try to make thousands of rounds while thinking you will have enough ammo to shoot for 20 years without ever reloading again.

Take an new piece of copper tube and stuff it into a tight brass fitting and let it sit some place for a year or two and then look and see how the copper has not only changed to a brown looking color along with having some green corrosion on it and the now dull looking brass compared to the bright copper and brass colors they had before but also how it is now hard and brittle copper tube compared to how it was soft and pliable when it was new.

When all of the components are kept completely separate until they are ready to be used they will in every case look and work like brand new is what I have always found.

[INGunGuy]

Well I ran thru 650 rounds today without a single problem. I did experience a feed jam. I pulled out the round and found the case lip had a slight burr on it which jammed up the works. Other than that, all fired, and fired on target. I am shooting steel at 25 - 35 yards. This was all with the old powder and primers. Seems to be shooting good!

INGunGuy

[rbb50]

650 rounds

Wow that sounds like fun LOL

Most I ever shoot in any one range trip is about 25 rounds from the 357 about 10-15 from the 38 S&W then 20-30 from the 22 buck mark then I move over to the rifle range and shoot 5-10 each from my 7mm-08 and the 7.7x58mm

They don't have the steel silhouettes where I shoot or I'm sure I probably would spend more time there with the pistols but after shooting paper so many times all I end up doing is shooting thru the big hole left in the bulls-eyes and all of a sudden that gets kind of boring fast

When I would go camping up by Whittington center in Raton NM I would take a whole slew of pistol rounds because they have so many silhouette targets on the pistol range it is almost unbelievable.

Once I fast drew my 357 there and knocked down 6 silhouette chickens at 25 yards in 5 seconds LOL

That is a whole lot more fun than shooting paper targets for sure any day of the week.

[INGunGuy]

Oh yea that is a light day. My daughter and I went to the range over the Thanksgiving day weekend on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and shot almost 5000 .22 rimfire. I shot almost a thousand rounds thru my .40 s/w I did shoot some .44mag probably 200 rounds, and blew the heck out of some water jugs... :-)

INGunGuy