What would you do with OLD powder?

[Blue68f100]

The Win 748 of that era is the only powder I've had go bad. After the sniff test, pour some out on a white sheet of powder. Look for red/rust dust when your pour, clumps. If you see any type of cloud coming out it's going bad. Clumps indicates it's started breaking down. BE is more than likely has the longest shelf life, with the IMR 4227 next.

The 748 is what I used for W308 loads with the 125gr bullet. 748 has a lot of uses in rifles. The other powders are shotgun/handgun powders.

If you don't want it find someone that will and pass it on to a good home.

 

[243winxb]

Metal cans rust from contact with the powder. Metals and powder dont always work well together, over time.

The larger military rounds get the brass insides coated to keep powder from contacting it.

Yes, do research before using old powders, that doesnt look normal.

I blow the red dust away while pouring from containers. 4831 & IMR 4198.

The 4895 powder in this can looked and smelled normal. Didnt use it as i had 2 more pounds.




Your powder, your call. Better safe then sorry.

 

[doubleh]

It all smells decent...not bad like it's going to make me puke.

I would make up a few loads and try it out. I have some from the very early 70's that smells good, looks good, plus the containers look like they did when purchased. It still goes bang just like it did back when I brought it home.

 

[Col. Harrumph]

So the popular method of disposing of excess smokeless powder is to sprinkle it on the lawn, which makes sense considering it's a load of nitrogen. But is it truly fertilizer? I can confirm from personal experiments that neither Unique nor 2400 are water soluble....

 

[twarr1]

The primary component of all smokeless powder is nitrocellulose. Nitrocellulose is inherently chemically unstable and begins breaking down the moment it it made. It’s the stabilizers that are added that gives it shelf life.
Is your powder good? I have no idea. Use it or dump it, your call. But don’t fall for the legend that smokeless powder lasts forever.

 

[BigBlue 94]

The 4227 has a (for lack of a better word) insert inside of the mouth of the container after you remove the lid. It's almost like a double lid (think paint can lid under the cap). I don't know if it's ever been opened.

If they pass the sniff test, load a single round and shoot it. A rotten egg smell is bad. If its bad or you just dont trust it, dispose of it properly. Or lay a long line of it in the drive way and toss a match.

I used to have some of my grandpas powders. Even ones in cardboard. They were fine up until the day the building burned down around em!

 

[BigBlue 94]

I'd strongly advise that anyone with smokeless powder containing red dust do some research before using it or even continuing to store it.

Ditto. Thats the result of a chemical breakdown. Which means the gunpowder is no longer the safe product it was when packaged at the factory.

 

[lightman]

I'm not advising you but I would look at it and smell of it. If it passed those test I would load and shoot it. I would try to shoot it fairly quickly and not plan to store the loaded rounds long term. Just because..........

I keep a fruit jar of misc powder that I take to Deer camp and make light shows with around the camp fire. I often find dud rounds when I'm picking up brass. Being of unknown history I pull the bullets and dump the powder in my "light show" jar.

Most of those "dud" rounds were probably factory ammo fired in dirty guns and have light firing pin strikes. But I have a personal rule about shooting unknown ammo.

 

[AgPilot]

You can send the powder to Me. I’ll do some tests on it and let Ya know if it’s any good

 

[ArchAngelCD]

There's not much left to say. Under the conditions the OP described I would load it and shoot it. Free powder, especially these days is a very good thing. Christmas in May...

 

[VMC]

My brother gave me nearly a full pound of Bullseye in the round cardboard can that he bought in the early 80s which had been stored on an indoor closet that time. It looked and smelled fine, so I used it in loading 38 wadcutters. It shot just fine too. Could not tell any difference from a new batch even after nearly 40 years.

 

[jaguarxk120]

Hercules has a container of Bullseye in a lab where they test it every year.
That Bullseye powder is over 100 years old and is just as good as new production of today!

Yes, gun powder lasts a very long time.

 

[Thomasss]

Don't know how old my Bullseye is...It's in a metal can with a very small metal top(3/8"?) and yellow paper covering the metal can. No signs of aging and shoots very good. And if you are ever in Wisconsin, just drop it off and it will be safely disposed of. LOL

 

[mdi]

This raises another question. If this powder is from the 60's, what would the load data be for something of that era? Do they change formulations over the decades or would today's load data be the same for powder from previous decades?

This is one reason I keep all my old manuals. But, any new component gets a new load workup. Using an up to date manual with '60s powder in good shape, just start with min. and work up if necessary. I've read somewhere (?) that powder manufacturers keep a lot to lot variations to 4% or less...

 

[N555]

Use it.

 

[wcwhitey]

I agree with smell it! If it’s still good it would be a waste to not at least try it. If you aren’t willing then pay it forward, someone would love to have it.

 

[hk940]

Sniff test, and load it. Alternately, pour it into the mortar tube prior to the last shell of next year's Fourth Barrage.

But if you're just dead set on wasting it, top the cans off with water and throw it out.

You might want to rethink about pouring it into a mortar tube. I picked up what I thought might have been a homemade Christmas tree holder from a local storage unit place close to my home in NJ.

It was a piece of 2" pipe welded to a 3/8" base plate and supported with 4 pieces of 1" square tubing.
I wasn't sure what I would use it for at the time, but I was sure I would think of something.

Well it was my yearly trip to a friends house in PA for a weekend of shooting and other events.
I brought along said tree holder and several mixed canisters (2-3#) of old/last couple grains of in can powder. I had an idea of how to get rid of the powder.
The first attempt was sort of a letdown, a big flame and no noise.
The next day was more productive, I dumped the remaining powder (1.5 #) and covered it with sand.
After lighting the fuse, something made me move behind the garage door for cover.
After the initial blast (quite loud) I came out from behind cover and looked for the "tree holder" the pipe and all four supports were gone! The base was bent up badly.
I looked around and tried to locate the rest of it, when I looked at the house I could see a hole in the siding about 6" away from a 15'x20' picture window.
The next day I found pieces of it imbedded in the wooden fence 375 yards away!
I no longer dispose of old powder this way!

 

[GeoDudeFlorida]

Hercules has a container of Bullseye in a lab where they test it every year.
That Bullseye powder is over 100 years old and is just as good as new production of today!

Yes, gun powder lasts a very long time.

In 1995, Hercules, Inc. sold its subsidiary Hercules Aerospace Co. to Alliant, including all of what remained of Hercules' gunpowder lines. I wonder if that can of Bullseye was included in the sale?

 

[zeke]

Have some mixed powder due to powder measure mix up. Used a little of it yesterday to get some old charcoal going for the grill. Using a chimney, put in some paper, a small folded envelope with some powder, then more paper with charcoal on top. Got that charcoal going good.

 

[edwardware]

You might want to rethink about pouring it into a mortar tube. . . pipe welded. . . base plate. . . square tubing. . .

Yeah, that was not smart.

A mortar tube is a heavy cardboard paper towel tube, on a poly base. I don't build pipe bombs that close to the house.

 

[LocoGringo]

So, along with the powder came some primers. How long are primers good for? One of the small boxes is CCI (green and white box) no. 300 Large Pistol (100) for $.68. There are both CCI and Federal that are OLD. I've got 700 CCI no. 200 large rifle primers in the very old packaging and I imagine they are approximately the same price and age as the Large Pistol primers.

 

[Ironicaintit]

I don't know if I've ever seen a primer that failed due to age...
Ive been pretty lucky with old powders.

I only had one batch that had the dreaded "red dust", so I disposed of it, even though it still smelled normal.

anyways, what I do with powder that is unstable or just unknown; find a nice clearing, pile it up and set a torch to it. Burns hotter than hell but it doesn't last long. Do it at night and show your kid! It's pretty impressive

 

[FROGO207]

Those CCI primers are from the 70's. White sleeve with green elongated diamond shapes. Should be good to go still. Try a couple in empty brass to see if they pop off when fired. If so load them up in ammo.

 

[WeekendReloader]

Inspect all of the powder containers.

I was at a friend's house over the weekend and spotted this on his shelf. It had delicate, hair-like crystals growing all over the bottom half of the container. They looked like 1/2" of fuzz all around, but when I looked closer it was an amazingly beautiful structure of growing crystals! All the hair-like crystals fell off when we moved it outside.
The "Rock 1996" is when my friend got the powder from his friend Rock back in 1996. Actual age of the powder is unknown.


Inside was the "Red Rust" like appearance.


I then poured some out on a paper plate and the actual powder looked normal, but some of the extruded sticks were clumping. The Red Rust was only a layer over the top of the powder, not mixed throughout.

 

[Bazoo]

I’ve got some 4227 with a very little red dust in it. I wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t poured it into a Tupperware to measure how much was there. The smell is slightly different. Not enough I’d notice if I didn’t smell good powder side by side. I loaded some in 44 mag and it performed as normal.

I been considering canning it but for now I’m keeping an eye on it. I have it on a shelf in a ziploc bag where I can monitor it.

At the time, I had a thread about it on castboolits and I did some research on powder with red dust in it. Plenty of people piped up and said they been shooting some for years with red dust. And there was a brief article I found from a powder manufacture that said it was technically “safe” but not recommended. It would lose potency if anything.

At the same time clumps in powder was addressed too. It was considered a non issue and common occurrence. Just break them up. It wasn’t considered a safety issue or to be from degradation of the powder provided it wasn’t as part of a bunch of red clumpy globs.