I spent the last 5 months working out of town, and I just got home to discover that I left my powder funnel half full on my Dillon 550, which is in my garage. This summer in SE Texas was especially hot. Should I discard this powder or is it ok to use?
Powder stored in hot garage
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bedwards1
Member
I stored some for 8 years in a shed in Alabama and had one container go bad. It had a very acidic smell to it and when I disposed of it wouldn't hardly burn. Try the smell test.
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243winxb
Member
Smell is the first clue, unless the can looks like this.
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MutinousDoug
Member
Your powder is unaffected by being stored in your garage.
When I worked in Ordnance, the propellant loaded devices we made were subjected to temperature cycling between -65 and +140f every 4 hours for 2 weeks before acceptance testing. Additionally, the propellants were stored in steel walk-in magazines out on the Colorado prairie summer and winter (some for as long as I worked there; 24yrs). Single and double base propellants don't start to decompose until it gets to 165f or more and as NVMM, bedwards1 and 243winxb mention, you can smell the difference when propellant goes bad.
Doug
When I worked in Ordnance, the propellant loaded devices we made were subjected to temperature cycling between -65 and +140f every 4 hours for 2 weeks before acceptance testing. Additionally, the propellants were stored in steel walk-in magazines out on the Colorado prairie summer and winter (some for as long as I worked there; 24yrs). Single and double base propellants don't start to decompose until it gets to 165f or more and as NVMM, bedwards1 and 243winxb mention, you can smell the difference when propellant goes bad.
Doug
Seedtick
Member
+1
Not that I doubted what anyone else has said but in my opinion 24 years of first hand experience like Doug has is worth something.
ST
Not that I doubted what anyone else has said but in my opinion 24 years of first hand experience like Doug has is worth something.
ST
qajaq59
Member
If it was bad you'd know it. It stinks..... Big time.
For a five month period, I would not worry.
The fact that smokeless propellants will handle two weeks of temperature cycling, which is a good thing, does not mean that gun powder can take this indefinitely.
Hot, wet, is bad for gun powders. The stuff is a polymer. Heat breaks down polymers. Double based powders have nitroglycerine which migrates to the surface, wet accelerates this migration. This changes the burn rate. Heat just accelerates the reduction reaction of both single based and double based powders. Gun powder is deteriorating from the day it leaves the ammunition plant.
There are stabilizers in powder, designed to suck up and slow down the nitric acid gas given off in the reduction reaction. When that stuff is eaten up the powder is bad.
When you smell nitric acid gas, and when the powder molecules are red, the stuff is well past its shelf life.
The Army scraps ammo based on 20 years for double base, 45 years single base.
MutinousDoug
Member
Slamfire1,
Temperature cycling admittedly only simulates aging; it is however more practical than waiting multiple years to test for propellant degradation. I mentioned it to illustrate that both "accelerated aging" and 24 years of actual aging were suffered by this one can of propellant and other propellants suffered similar abuse without degradation while I worked in ordnance.
I would agree that heat and moisture can cause propellants to decompose. I would further agree that propellants do have a shelf life.
I can state with certainty that when stored as I described above, a particular can of Hercules Bulleye produced the same pressure/time traces throughout the 24 years I was responsible for it's use on a NASA sponsored launch pad device. Similar commercial propellants such as Unique and the non commercial propellants we used, when kept dry and out of the light, suffered no degradation from this type of storage (although that can of Bullseye I spoke of was sort of famous because of its age).
I have an ammo can of 1951-52 carbine ammunition I intend to continue to shoot without fear of decomposition and I would shoot WWII era 30-06 ammunition if it weren't corrosively primed.
The US Army, of course may continue to do as it pleases without my permission or advise.
Doug
I have used very old, estate sale bullseye, unique, 2400. The differences I saw with vintage bullseye compared with modern can be explained by lot to lot variation.
However, half of each lot of surplus 4895 that I purchased, went bad in the can. The stuff also went bad in the case.
Since I learned those Army dates from an insensitive munitions expert, I have decided to shoot my oldest lots of powder first, and stop buying powder that dates back to the 60's.
From what my friend said, the absolute best storage conditions would be artic: cold and dry. Temperature changes that result in water condensing and evaporating on smokeless kernals will pull NG to the surface. Hot increases the redox rate and is therefore bad.
P.S. Just google ammo dump explosions. It is surprising to find out who many ammo dumps go boom because of old smokeless propellants/explosives.
I've had some powder go bad a few times, over the last couple decades of reloading. The worst was some old surplus 4895. It gave off a nasty brown gas and would barely burn.
I hadn't realized it was going bad and had loaded boxes of several different calibers with it. For about a year I was finding boxes of ammo with rounds that were corroded from the inside out, from .303 British to 6.5mm Arisaka. Decomposed powder must release some pretty nasty acid or something.
I hadn't realized it was going bad and had loaded boxes of several different calibers with it. For about a year I was finding boxes of ammo with rounds that were corroded from the inside out, from .303 British to 6.5mm Arisaka. Decomposed powder must release some pretty nasty acid or something.
MutinousDoug
Member
Gentlemen,
My experience in ordnance did not include use of powders such as 4895 or any such slow burning powders. The devices I worked on usually required production of a lot of gas at relatively low pressures (.38 SPL +/- pressures but in a large volume) in a very short time.
In my experience, old propellant does not present a hazard to the hobbyist. On the other hand, it may well affect your internal ballistics.
Deflagration retardants are not part of my vocabulary outside my hobby of reloading, so there is much I do not know of this art.
At the end of my career I did work with gas generators/propellants for automotive air bags but there is little to compare between the two (some of the gas generator grains were as big as your thumb or more). I do not pose as an artillery propellant expert in any way, so if the US Army resolves to destroy all propellant at 20-40 yrs, that's OK by me. Your car airbag inflators are designed for a 10 year life.
Small arms ammunition? Gimme all you got.
risk><risk
My experience in ordnance did not include use of powders such as 4895 or any such slow burning powders. The devices I worked on usually required production of a lot of gas at relatively low pressures (.38 SPL +/- pressures but in a large volume) in a very short time.
In my experience, old propellant does not present a hazard to the hobbyist. On the other hand, it may well affect your internal ballistics.
Deflagration retardants are not part of my vocabulary outside my hobby of reloading, so there is much I do not know of this art.
At the end of my career I did work with gas generators/propellants for automotive air bags but there is little to compare between the two (some of the gas generator grains were as big as your thumb or more). I do not pose as an artillery propellant expert in any way, so if the US Army resolves to destroy all propellant at 20-40 yrs, that's OK by me. Your car airbag inflators are designed for a 10 year life.
Small arms ammunition? Gimme all you got.
risk><risk
Well I was interested in your posts. I don't know what design lifetime powder manufacturers use, but assuming that 20 years is a good number, your tests with 24 year old powder, plus or minus a standard deviation or two, it would not be unreasonable to expect that your DB lot was not degraded sufficiently to show up on your instrumentation. You needed to wait a couple more decades, and see what might happen.
If you could get Nasa to fund this, you could have a job for life. Sit in an easy chair for the next thirty years and watch that can of Bullseye get old.
The Navy does things a little differently. They put samples in a test tube, with methyl violet paper. Nitric acid gas will turn the paper red. If the Methyl violet paper turns red in weeks, the Navy then tests a powder sample for the percent of stabilizers in the powder.
The Navy keeps original powder lot information, and knows how much stabilizer was in the new powder. My recollection is that if the amount of stabilizer is less than 12%, 15%?, the powder lot is scrapped.
Clock time is an easy way to determine stockpile condition. I am certain the numbers are a bit conservative, the Army neglected ammunition insensitivity issues for years, (just get waivers!) and then they started having accidents.
http://www.eaglehorse.org/3_home_station/doha/doha.htm
http://www.ordnance.org/mishaps.htm
As I stated earlier, DB powders degrade sooner than SB. The rate of deterioration is directly related to temperature, as the reduction reaction follows the Arrhenius equation. The higher the temp, the faster powder deteriorates.
I agree with most replies stating that storage of powder is usually not affected by moderate temp ranges. I doubt that the temp in the garage got over 110* even during a Texas summer.
However, the one statement that hasn't been considered is - "I left my powder funnel half full ...". That implies that it was open to the atmosphere for a long period of time and not stored in an approved container. Being in SE TX is a good thing in this case since the humidity would normally be low, but it isn't always low. I would load only a few test rounds to see how they perform before accepting that the powder is still up to its original specs.
However, the one statement that hasn't been considered is - "I left my powder funnel half full ...". That implies that it was open to the atmosphere for a long period of time and not stored in an approved container. Being in SE TX is a good thing in this case since the humidity would normally be low, but it isn't always low. I would load only a few test rounds to see how they perform before accepting that the powder is still up to its original specs.
MutinousDoug
Member
Slamfire1,
I read the eaglehorse link you posted and gather that the initial damage was the result of an electrical fire and the second incident was from cleanup of the 1st fire? In my experience, DB powders decompose pretty quickly above 160f or so. I wasn't able to open the ordnance.org link for some reason, so if it referred to aged propellants I may have missed something in there.
I read the eaglehorse link you posted and gather that the initial damage was the result of an electrical fire and the second incident was from cleanup of the 1st fire? In my experience, DB powders decompose pretty quickly above 160f or so. I wasn't able to open the ordnance.org link for some reason, so if it referred to aged propellants I may have missed something in there.
You will find almost nothing on the web referring to powder decomposition. Almost nothing on insensitive munitions (IM).
You will find records of ammo dumps exploding, many of which are due to old ammunition spontaneously igniting. There are interesting videos of Romanian depots blowing sky high, you just have to search. As gunpowder outgases nitric acid, it creates heat. Localized hot spots (around 200 C) created by the outgassing nitric acid gas will spontaneously ignite the gunpowder.
The Navy used to store old cannon powder in pools of water, so the heat would be dissipated.
The root cause of the Roseville incident was the overheating of train brakes. That started a fire which then blew up 18 out of 21 rail cars. The IM issue was explosives with too low of temperature initiation.
Things which are too sensitive can be ignited by static electricity, or maybe lighting. All bad.
You will find records of ammo dumps exploding, many of which are due to old ammunition spontaneously igniting. There are interesting videos of Romanian depots blowing sky high, you just have to search. As gunpowder outgases nitric acid, it creates heat. Localized hot spots (around 200 C) created by the outgassing nitric acid gas will spontaneously ignite the gunpowder.
The Navy used to store old cannon powder in pools of water, so the heat would be dissipated.
The root cause of the Roseville incident was the overheating of train brakes. That started a fire which then blew up 18 out of 21 rail cars. The IM issue was explosives with too low of temperature initiation.
Things which are too sensitive can be ignited by static electricity, or maybe lighting. All bad.
oldreloader
Member
I started reloading back in the late 60's.I didn't have any air conditioning and even in this
AR humidity, I didn't have any problems.
AR humidity, I didn't have any problems.- Status
