Gunpowder age

First topic message reminder :

I bought a hair under 8lbs of Bullseye last night.  Today I realize it’s from 2009

Doesn’t look rusty nor have strong of a scent that I can tell

So my question is: Does gunpowder lose its effectiveness as it ages?

For a given weight, will I get better FPS with new powder vs my 15 year old powder?



I plan on buying a 1lb bottle and testing it but would love to hear your guys experiences 


Thanks

Hey I'm not a very smart man, all you very learned people with the ability to find these dissertations on powders and explosives online have far exceeded my capability's and I don't want to die in a ball of flames or take out 4 city blocks because the old powders I have increased in power ten fold as several of you have pointed out, I do not have anything that looks like any of the pictures you all have provided. BUT like several of you have said" HOW DO YOU KNOW" I don't know and HOW DO I KNOW that the newer powders I have like WIN760 8 lbs I bought it like two years ago and when I received the MFG date is like 5 years before that. and that came from a very well known to us all supplier. So HOW DO YOU KNOW?. is really only leaves a person with one choice, Because how do I know that Hogden, or Remington, Winchester or any of the big MFG's of powder of ammo is selling absolute garbage cause after all we know that they just care about making a buck and don't care if they kill their customers, just so long as they get their money of the big sporting goods stores just keeping stuff in the warehouse for years and years before selling it, so they can sell it for more money then they paid, HOW DO YOU KNOW? I DON"T so I'm going too throw out ALL of the powders I have. I'm going to start a fire in a barrel and destroy all of the primers I have because HOW DO YOU KNOW if they didn't increase in power over time, HOW DO YOU KNOW. I am very worried about my fellow human beings and since I can not trust my supply of components and ammo because  HOW DO YOU KNOW.  I can't sell any of my guns because I don't want my fellow human beings to hurt themselves, because how do you know? I'm going to buy a Habor freight chop saw and chop all my guns in several pieces and sell them for scrap metal and just stop shooting all together, Because as you and others have pointed out 40 years or 2 weeks. HOW DO YOU KNOW?.

MkFiji wrote:I bought a hair under 8lbs of Bullseye last night.  Today I realize it’s from 2009

Doesn’t look rusty nor have strong of a scent that I can tell

So my question is: Does gunpowder lose its effectiveness as it ages?

For a given weight, will I get better FPS with new powder vs my 15 year old powder?



I plan on buying a 1lb bottle and testing it but would love to hear your guys experiences 


Thanks

looking forward to your test. I posted mine they chose to ignore it, The bullseye from who knows when is shooting right in the box of the old Hercules load data I have, 230 grn.RN 5.0 grn. 905 FPS

I have noticed my 20 year old Bullseye and Clays powders losing some "oomph!" Both powders were kept in the original plastic containers and the caps were always tightened well after use. There was no bad smell nor discoloration noted. There had not been any extreme swing in heat or cold temperatures while being stored.

With the help of my friend's new Garmin Xero C1 Pro chrono, I was able to test velocities quickly and easily, all loaded with 185g LSWCHP.

My 3.8g of Clays powder loaded in 2011 tested at 702fps yesterday. The same amount of powder of 3.8g loaded recently, tested at 663fps. Upping the charge to 4.0 Clays produced 732fps. This sandbag tested the best for accuracy at 50 yards.

3.8g Bullseye had always shot well and the pistol cycled perfectly in the past. I don't have any chrono information of older loads but yesterday, this load shot poorly at 50 yards with an average velocity of 636fps. Upping the powder charge to 3.9g produced 693fps.
I'll be loading some 4.0 BE with this older powder and see what velocities will show.

For 50 yards, I've seen better grouping with velocities over 700fps.  For 25 yards, reduced loads will probably be fine as long as the gun cycles properly. There may be may other factors to consider but older powders may still work fine but monitor loads with the chrono and continue to check for powder discoloration and smell.

8eightring wrote:Not my first rodeo with one of these old boys.

I have over 20 pounds of this and still works fine!

If your powder looks like this, maybe toss it out:




others reporting powder issues, and they don't know what is going on, because the angry deniers have chased this information out of shooting community




This is probably bad:



I would not shoot this:





Prior to 2010, I did not know gunpowder had a shelf life. I had been taught in the print press that gunpowder was immortal. So I did not keep records on when I loaded ammunition. I did not have a first in, first out practice. I do now. So prior to 9/11 I loaded ammo cans of 223, and I know I shot this lot in NRA Highpower, and 600 midrange matches, and it shot well. Then 9/11 came, ranges shut down, and unfortunately, NRA Highpower matches collapsed. Not enough shooters showing up for matches for the match director to bother showing up. So this ammunition sat around for decades.

I have a disc bullet puller, but it could not grasp the bullet. A kinetic puller, I could spend 30 minutes and pull maybe 10 to 15 rounds. I gave up after enough time.  A lightweight 223 bullet does not fall out with one whack like a nice 175 or 190 gr 308 bullet.

Because I was not taking notes about lots, I don't know if this ammunition was loaded from this can



But I tossed that can in 2017.


In 2020 I decided I could not toss loaded 223 ammunition in the trash, but I decided to start shooting the ammunition can up. Target was a dirt berm at the local gun club. I loaded AR15 magazines, and fired.




not a great picture,



I experienced all the indications of high pressure, and of NOx attacking brass, That is blown primers,  case head flow into the ejector hole, brass splits and cracks.  And this year, I finished the rest of the can, and it was even worse. There was a bitter smell in the air too from the fired cases.

High pressure indications are pretty obvious.

Incidentally, I have found more DTIC charts about gunpowder stability. I wish I could have been at the briefing, so I could ask questions, and gain a better understanding. But, at least we have charts.


Over time, there is a reduction in the amount of nitrocellulose in gunpowder. This has to be notional.  I am very certain, that deterioration rates are not the same across all powder lots and all powder types. If gunpowder deterioration was nice and predictable, there would be no need for ammunition specialists to perform periodic inspections.



Over time there is a reduction in the amount of stabilizer in gunpowder.






Particularly for double based powders, and for single based, peak pressures increase.  I wonder if it has to do with the porosity of gunpowder. Gunpowder, or at least some gunpowder, is quite porous, the designers and manufacturers want the flame to permeate the grain. I think, increase the porosity through age, increase the burning surface area,  then the burn rate should spike. Yes total energy is down, but burn rate is something different.




I used an on line calculator, 20 Mpa equals 2900 psia, 40 Mpa equals 5801 psia, 50 Mpa, 7251 psia, and 100 Mpa is 14,503 psia. Whatever models they use show single base powders having a dead cat bounce. Now something I might have asked, would brass case integrity been compromised during any periods of stabilizer depletion? 

Based on what is in this chart, they verified their models with experimental data



I do want to say, I am sure there is more about gunpowder stability that I don't know, than what I do know. I look at the documents out there, but what I have, is catch as catch can. I know when it comes to my information on insensitive munitions, I have unknown unknowns.  A known unknown is gunpowder stability and detonations. I can see the insensitive munition community wants to remove gunpowder when the stabilizer reaches less than 20% of original content. This is to prevent catastrophic fires at munitions depots. But there has to be lots of reloaders with gunpowders that are close to zero percent stabilizer. So at what stage of stabilizer depletion will the human senses of smell, taste, touch, vision,  detect gunpowder deterioration? I can tell you, I had IMR 4895 pull down powder that caused case neck cracks in loaded cases,  it did not look bad, and it did not smell bad. It also gave occasional sticky extraction when I shot NRA Highpower. When I had sticky extraction, instead of a "boom" the retort was more of a "ping" in my 308 bolt gun. No idea of why it sounded different. I would like to know, when does gunpowder start having detonation issues?

like this:



An interesting article "Know thy Gun, and know they Gun Shop", Oct 2023, Gunsmagazine. A gun shop was accepting "customer" reloads for store credit.  The gun shop sold this "remanufactured" ammunition to a Garand owner. The very first shot blew up the Garand, casting parts in a 36 foot radius.

I believe the Garand was one of those Genesco Illinois Garands that had Australian receivers. I saw them on Commercial Row decades ago. The article states the remaining ammunition was sent, along with the rifle, to the Garand manufacturer who found, three different powders, two different bullets, and three brands of primers. The remaining kernels of unburned powder could not be matched up to any know gun powder. The root cause of the accident was determined to be unstable powder, most likely due to age and improper storage.



This makes me believe, that unstable gunpowder may not provide visual indications of deterioration, or necessarily smell.

there is a powder company, that has kept samples of every lot of smokeless powder they have manufactured since 1930. its stored in swimming pools. 

I would love to get to it,

RedBand wrote:there is a powder company, that has kept samples of every lot of smokeless powder they have manufactured since 1930. its stored in swimming pools. 

I would love to get to it,

Alliant.

Here's what I have.

RedBand wrote:there is a powder company, that has kept samples of every lot of smokeless powder they have manufactured since 1930. its stored in swimming pools. 

I would love to get to it,

Call up Alliant and ask them if you should fill your gunpowder bottles with water. Tell us what they say.

I do know, Hercules/Alliant stopped talking about that. Have to wonder why. Maybe someone stole both the bottles, or, people copying Hercules practice had accidents and sued.

I do know, from research of an 1930's Army Ordnance Magazine, that the powders of that period, chemicals in the gunpowder would leach out in water, cause cracks. Somewhere around WW2 industry developed "water proof" powder, but I really don't know if continuous contact is all that good once the powder is dried out. 

I did run across in a document that the Navy was storing old, deteriorated naval gunpowder underwater. It was to keep the gunpowder cool, absorb the NOx coming out, so the gunpowder would not auto combust before it could be demilled.

Hercules may have stored samples of every lot in a container that was stored underwater, but I don’t think it was stored submerged in contact with water. In any event, the Kenvil New Jersey plant exploded almost 40 years ago. With that a lot of these old reference lots were lost.

DA/SA wrote:Here's what I have.

I am going to offer two possibilities.

1. You mixed your can with another can.
2. the different colors represent a different lot of Clays, blended at the manufacturer  so the shipped lot met their inhouse pressure curve for Clays.

This is 30-40 Krag gunpowder from Nov 1898.


I sent this to an insensitive munitions expert and he claimed the ester base was depleted and this was dangerous. All the deniers on the web claim that Krag gunpowder was red at the time of manufacture. Since they were there at Frankford Arsenal in 1898, they have to be right.

This is Iraqi 303 Ball from the 1960's. Kind of red





I have no idea what the color of cordite was when new. Maybe the Iraqi's liked red.

None of the obviously deteriorated gunpowders I have had, and dumped out, turned color. I had a pulldown bottle of IMR 4895 that fumed, and nothing in the bottle looked different.

the fumes will knock your socks off

Wobbley wrote:Hercules may have stored samples of every lot in a container that was stored underwater, but I don’t think it was stored submerged in contact with water.  In any event, the Kenvil New Jersey plant exploded almost 40 years ago.  With that a lot of these old reference lots were lost.  

Hercules had a quantity of "Infallible/Unique" from 1899 in two jars under water.  Since I cannot link to the document, google it:  The Smokeless Powders of Laflin & Rand and their Fate 100 Years after Assimilation by DuPont. I called Hercules in the 1980's and the guy on the phone claimed once a year they would take a sample out, dry it, and fire it, and the ballistics were still perfect. One of the jars was lost (probably walked out the door, and maybe it will show up on Antique Roadshow)

I don't recommend storing gunpowder in water, and powders from WW1 were not expected to last long. Still good after 25 years!