It's been discussed here time and again, the long term storage of Black Powder and it's ability to withstand the elements. There are numerous tales of BP arms from the War of Northern Aggression being found loaded and still able to fire, but I haven't heard of any "First Hand" experience with this.
Walking by one of my wifes antique displays the other day I realized I have such first hand experience sitting right there in front of me.
Last year while digging up a freeze break in an irrigation line, I noticed something odd in the hole I was sticking the shovel into. I had spaded through a cartridge buried about 18" below my lawn. The cartridge had powder in it and I picked both halves out and continued digging, but now for two purposes, fix the break and find the cartridges!!
In total I found 11 cartridges but they were so badly corroded I couldn't tell what they were until they had some of the crud scraped off. Turns out they are 32-40 copper cartridges filled with nothing other than the Holy Black. Just for grins, I poured the powder out of the one I had cut in half with the shovel and intelligently used a BBQ lighter to see if the powder would light. I was proud of myself for not using a Bic as the resultant ignition would have left me nursing a scorched finger or two.
The history of these cartridges is unknown but I would imagine that sometime in the 19th Century a cowboy probably got down off his horse and dropped a box of cartridges in the snow and didn't find them all. Along comes 1903 and somebody built a house on the land and they slowly got deeper in the ground over the decades. Since the '40s when my grandfather probably started cultivating a lawn, these things have been getting watered every summer, all summer long.
Given the fact that these cartridges are copper and that they have Black Powder in them is pretty conclusive that they have been buried outside my kitchen door since before the house was built 107 years ago. They have been frozen probably hundreds of times over the last century, not to mention soaked in irrigation water scores of additional times, all the while sitting there quietly under 18" of what Wyoming calls dirt. Are the primers still stable and usable?? I'm not going to find out, but the powder is still viable enough to convince me that Black Powder does not degrade significantly enough to preclude ignition.
As a side note, my wife joked that I was going to dig up the entire back yard looking for more cartridges and the rifle they went into. I assured her that I was not going to dig exploratory holes. She did get rather pale when I came home the next afternoon with a borrowed metal detector though.
Walking by one of my wifes antique displays the other day I realized I have such first hand experience sitting right there in front of me.
Last year while digging up a freeze break in an irrigation line, I noticed something odd in the hole I was sticking the shovel into. I had spaded through a cartridge buried about 18" below my lawn. The cartridge had powder in it and I picked both halves out and continued digging, but now for two purposes, fix the break and find the cartridges!!
In total I found 11 cartridges but they were so badly corroded I couldn't tell what they were until they had some of the crud scraped off. Turns out they are 32-40 copper cartridges filled with nothing other than the Holy Black. Just for grins, I poured the powder out of the one I had cut in half with the shovel and intelligently used a BBQ lighter to see if the powder would light. I was proud of myself for not using a Bic as the resultant ignition would have left me nursing a scorched finger or two.
The history of these cartridges is unknown but I would imagine that sometime in the 19th Century a cowboy probably got down off his horse and dropped a box of cartridges in the snow and didn't find them all. Along comes 1903 and somebody built a house on the land and they slowly got deeper in the ground over the decades. Since the '40s when my grandfather probably started cultivating a lawn, these things have been getting watered every summer, all summer long.
Given the fact that these cartridges are copper and that they have Black Powder in them is pretty conclusive that they have been buried outside my kitchen door since before the house was built 107 years ago. They have been frozen probably hundreds of times over the last century, not to mention soaked in irrigation water scores of additional times, all the while sitting there quietly under 18" of what Wyoming calls dirt. Are the primers still stable and usable?? I'm not going to find out, but the powder is still viable enough to convince me that Black Powder does not degrade significantly enough to preclude ignition.
As a side note, my wife joked that I was going to dig up the entire back yard looking for more cartridges and the rifle they went into. I assured her that I was not going to dig exploratory holes. She did get rather pale when I came home the next afternoon with a borrowed metal detector though.
