Shelf Life of Smokeless Powder

[jonp]

This has been batted about on here with many reports from members including me of powder 20 or more years old being perfectly fine. Does anyone know the actual expected shelf life of powder assuming its kept dry? I've got some Unique and some Blue Dot in an open container that is approaching 20yrs and is kept at my hunting camp. 80 or 90 in the summer, -40 in the winter etc and it is still working good.

Is there an age where most would just pour it out and move on? I can't find an estimated expiration date by the manu's on powder. The military just pulls bullets at a certain date not because anything is wrong with them but because they are not taking any chances

[farmerjim]

I started reloading in the 60's.In 1970 I moved away from my parents home, went to work with many 16 hour days, and a small apartment. I moved around with the job, but never had the time or place to reload. About 4 years ago I got interested in reloading again. All of my equipment, powder and primers had been kept in my fathers attic and then my barn. Temps were between 140 high to 15 low and high humidity. I am loading with these powders and primers now. I also have ammo that I loaded back then, It all shoots fine.
I think that an expiry date on powder would be as meaningless as the ones they put on bottled water.

[NavyVet1959]

I suspect you are more likely to find a difference in just the batches of powder from long ago compared to today than you are in any degradation of the powders due to age.

[Porterhouse]

I worry about this also. But it seems like unless you dig really deep into chemistry, no clear answer. Keep them dry, monitor temperature, load and shoot while you can! Who knows what happens to you tomorrow...

[jonp]

Manufacturers put expiration dates on everything. None recommend using powder only for a certain amount of years before they think it might be too unstable to use even if kept dry?

[dragon813gt]

From the horse's mouth: http://www.hodgdonreloading.com/reloading-education/safety/gunpowder-stability

Keep it cool, dry and it will last for decades. Just remember the clock is ticking from the moment it's made.

[JSnover]

Does anyone know the actual expected shelf life of powder assuming its kept dry?
I don't think anyone knows. Look for it to change color or get lumpy.

[Outpost75]

Heat is what kills smokeless powder. If you avoid prolonged storage temperatures over 80 degs. F, powder willlast for many years. I am using ammunition, powder and primers from before WW2 which was stored in a GI wooden footlocker in a cool cellar.

Black powder is not affected by heat, but by moisture. Keep it dry and it lasts forever. I have disarmed Civil War munitions in which the powder was good and actually used the recovered powder.

The info from the Hodgdon web site is very good!

[jonp]

I know lots on here use powder decades old and everyone should use it as long as it smells and looks good. I was wondering if there is an expected date or estimated date on it. The hodgdon site pretty much says use it if it looks good which is fine.

[elmacgyver0]

If it has a pleasant solvent smell to it and pours fine it is good.
If it has an acidic smell that wrinkles your nose and has clumps in it, get rid of it.
If you feel time is an issue, you can give me all your old powder, I will be happy to dispose of it for you.

[NoAngel]

I just recently opened a can of Alcan-5 that was marked $3.50 It shot great!
Not sure how old it is, but it's older than me.

[biffj]

Still loading with powder that was made in WWII. Works great. Other powders made much more recently have burst into flames due to breakdown. The truth is that its tough to know how long it will last. Ball powders seem to last longer because they're made wet as in with water. That makes it easier to remove the acids that cause the deterioration.

Frank

[Porterhouse]

I really wonder those of you who say the powders made decades ago still work GREAT.
Do you constantly check velocity? Accuracy? Or any other things that convince you that it works as good as XXX years ago? Without some hard numbers, how can you say they work just fine?
It's almost saying my wife is as beautiful as 50 years ago. Yeah, may be in your eyes...

[dragon813gt]

Results on target are all that matter. I have my grandfathers reloading log that goes back to the 50s. I don't have any powder that old. And he never had a chronograph. I do have a couple of his rifles and if I load to his info they are still just as accurate.

I will be able to check velocity over the years. But this is a long term proposition. I wouldn't consider any data valid until the ten year mark. And even then I would want to shoot rounds that were loaded ten years ago along w/ loads that were recently loaded w/ 10yo powder. I guess I could do it on a yearly basis if I felt like it.

[elmacgyver0]

I really wonder those of you who say the powders made decades ago still work GREAT.
Do you constantly check velocity? Accuracy? Or any other things that convince you that it works as good as XXX years ago? Without some hard numbers, how can you say they work just fine?
It's almost saying my wife is as beautiful as 50 years ago. Yeah, may be in your eyes...
You may not want to let your wife read this, just saying.

[NoAngel]

Load powder that looks and smells fine.
Pull trigger - Bang!
Target has a hole in it where I intended to put it.

That's how I say it works fine. I don't give two wags of a rats ars if there's a velocity change from what it would have given decades ago. If it does what I want it to do, it's good stuff. Maybe I'm just simple that way.

[Multigunner]

If it smells like cat urine dump it.
I was given some 7.62 Nato ammo years ago to break down for components . The degraded powder had eaten pin holes in the brass and apparently caused the gilding metal to peel away from the steel jacketed bullets.
When placed in an old IMR steel can after a few months the bottom half of the can even with the level of the powder turned to a pile of red dust.

Storage conditions are the most important factor for quality ammo, but some propellants are not so well made and can deteriorate within months of production.

The stabilizers used in modern smokeless powder are rated for 5+ years under normal storage conditions. An Ex Soviet ammo storage facility blew up a few years back, destroying much o a near by town. degraded ammunition was the accepted causation.

When there's an accident at a powder factory single base powders usually burn while double base usually explodes due to nitro cooking off. Same goes for ship board powder magazines. USN vessels have taken torpedo hits that breeched the powder magazine yet the ship survived due to automatic flooding of the magazine, WW1 and WW2 British ships using double base propellants and hit in the same manner turned into expensive canoes.

[NavyVet1959]

It's almost saying my wife is as beautiful as 50 years ago. Yeah, may be in your eyes...

Some women do not age gracefully. For those, nature has a solution for us guys -- glaucoma and/or ARMD.

Or as Ben Franklin so eloquently put it, "all cats are gray in the dark".

[Blackwater]

Keep powder stored in a coolish, dry and preferably dark place (the dark as much of the plastic cans as anything) and it's, for all practical purposes, got an indefinite and seemingly near infinite shelf life. However, there is a question about some of the newer formulations created to comply with EPA's "Green" regulations of some very old and very well established chemicals that are not very friendly to our environment. To my knowledge, the question as to whether they're as stable over time has yet to be settled very definitively. I've heard claims both ways, and don't have a clue which one is actually correct. If I try the newer formulations, I think I'm going to try to use them up first, where I find good loads with them, and keep my old standbys, with their sterling reputation, in reserve. Just seems to me to be the most logical and cautious way to approach the matter. YMMV.

[Ranger 7]

Have used Powders that were 20 plus years old (Kept properly stored), along with primers of same age.
I did check loads using my Pact Pro Chronograph for FPS and checked accuracy too.
No problems!

[Tenbender]

Smokeless powder will start turning a rust-red when going bad. It will still shoot but with less power. When that happens fertilize your grass with it !

[NoAngel]

Have used Powders that were 20 plus years old (Kept properly stored), along with primers of same age.
I did check loads using my Pact Pro Chronograph for FPS and checked accuracy too.
No problems!


Primers? I just finished off some Western primers that were in wooden trays. No idea of age.
All went bang just as good as anything new.

[Caster1977]

I'm on the last 1/3 of my 3 pound can of 452-AA that was bought back in 1987. It was my favorite for 200 gr semi wc's for .45 ACP IPSC shooting. Still no problems with it after being stored in a 20mm ammo can for just over 18 years.

[Shiloh]

Stored cool, dry, consistent, it'll last a long, long time.

Shiloh

[rintinglen]

I have come across two instances of powder degradation in my 46 years of reloading.

The first was a 30+ year old bag of 4895 that I got back in the 1980's that looked OK, but smelt a little odd and gave me a hangfire and obvious variances in ignition in a 30-06, sort of a BANG--pop! I poured it into my wife's roses. Shortly there after, I got a bunch of partial cans as a gift from an elderly neighbor who had given up reloading. The Hercules pistol powders worked fine and looked good, but a can of Hi-vel was obviously ruined, It was clumpy and smelled vaguely of vinegar so it never saw the inside of a case nor the base of a bullet but went out as fertilizer.
I have some 30+ year old Unique that I ran against some recent production stuff back in 2012. Loaded into same-lot Winchester cases with same-lot primers, individually weighed charges and 429-421 boolits, I ran up some Skeeter Loads using both powders. I shot 10 of each out of a Ruger 44 special. They were statistically identical, although the new ran about a dozen fps faster, IIRC. But that was still within the standard deviation.

[Overalls87]

I'm not an expert by any means. But I have a pound of bullseye that I've been reloading that has seen cold and hot temperatures in the New Mexico desert that are ruthless. It's still producing accurate reloads. Granted it's been indoors the whole time. But it hasn't been climate controlled.

[Beagle333]

I had some Hercules Unique that was around 25+ years old. It looked and shot just fine. I didn't have a chrony at the time, but performance was good, and repeatable when reloading with it.

[EDG]

About 30 years ago there was an article in Handloader Magazine about Hercules Unique. They were still Hercules at the time and had a batch of Unique from one of the earliest lots made about 1901 or 1902. This batch of powder was about 6" deep stored in one of those 5 gallon water cooler jugs - and it was full of water poured in with the powder.

To test it Hercules would take some out of the jug every few years and dry it. Then they would load it and shoot it through a chronograph. The powder was still good and the time of the article was sometime in the early to mid 1980s.


However I bought some old surplus H4831 (in a paper drum) at a estate garage sale. About 1983. Within about 3 years all of it went bad giving off the iridescent brownish/purple fumes of nitric acid. So I poured it in a trail late one evening and set fire to about 7 pounds of it.

A few years later I had a metal can of IMR4320 that went bad that was less than 5 years old. About 2 years ago I had a 10 year old can of H4198 go bad.
All of this powder was stored in a air conditioned house so it was never over heated at least when I had it.

True to the Hercules story I have never had any Herco, Unique, Red Dot, Green Dot and Blue Dot go bad. I have some of all of it and some of it dates back to the 1980s when I shot skeet a lot. I also have a few pounds of ball powders and I have never had any go bad.

[Gew]

A friend of mine just loaded some 44/40 with IMR 1204, from 1925! He said it smelled good and shot fine. He is going to chrony it to see if he is getting 1800 fps like the container says.

[17nut]

Oldest smokeless i have reloaded is from 1931 and maybe made a year or two before.
No worries, it was stored sealed and airtight (read pulled cartridges).

[10x]

About 30 years ago there was an article in Handloader Magazine about Hercules Unique. They were still Hercules at the time and had a batch of Unique from one of the earliest lots made about 1901 or 1902. This batch of powder was about 6" deep stored in one of those 5 gallon water cooler jugs - and it was full of water poured in with the powder.

To test it Hercules would take some out of the jug every few years and dry it. Then they would load it and shoot it through a chronograph. The powder was still good and the time of the article was sometime in the early to mid 1980s.


However I bought some old surplus H4831 (in a paper drum) at a estate garage sale. About 1983. Within about 3 years all of it went bad giving off the iridescent brownish/purple fumes of nitric acid. So I poured it in a trail late one evening and set fire to about 7 pounds of it.

A few years later I had a metal can of IMR4320 that went bad that was less than 5 years old. About 2 years ago I had a 10 year old can of H4198 go bad.
All of this powder was stored in a air conditioned house so it was never over heated at least when I had it.

True to the Hercules story I have never had any Herco, Uniquez, Red Dot, Green Dot and Blue Dot go bad. I have some of all of it and some of it dates back to the 1980s when I shot skeet a lot. I also have a few pounds of ball powders and I have never had any go bad.


http://castboolits.gunloads.com/archive/index.php/t-280173.html

I have used DuPont Bulk powder in my 22 hornet for years. The powder dates back to the 1940's
every charge has to be weighed as the grains don't allow accurate metering through a measure.
It gives the predicted velocities from the manuals from that era. I also use AL5 and get consistent velocity and pressure. I have had 3031 go red and smell acrid it got tossed.

There are some powders that have a strong ether smell. If it doesn't smell or doesn't smell like it should then the powder is suspect

[sharps4590]

I have SR-4756 and SR-7625 from 1981 and 1982 respectively. Both are just fine. They were kept in the climate controlled powder vault of a major bullet manufacturer for their entire life until I acquired them and my loading room is also climate controlled so no doubt that helps. Had some powders from the 70's I swapped to a friend and they were still good. He used them in hunting loads and said they were fine.

[10x]

I have SR-4756 and SR-7625 from 1981 and 1982 respectively. Both are just fine. They were kept in the climate controlled powder vault of a major bullet manufacturer for their entire life until I acquired them and my loading room is also climate controlled so no doubt that helps. Had some powders from the 70's I swapped to a friend and they were still good. He used them in hunting loads and said they were fine.

I obtained a large canister of SR-4756 from an estate - it is still sealed. I just found pistol data for it in a 2007 IMR Smokeless Powder Reloader's Guide. It sometimes pays to be a hoarder and save these books. This is the first comprehensive set of data I have found for this powder and I had it all along - tucked in a Lyman manual as a bookmark.

[tomme boy]

I'm wondering about these new GREEN powders that are coming out.

[10x]

I'm wondering about these new GREEN powders that are coming out. If it has a shelf life and they DON'T put a warning on the label , imagine the liability and lawsuits when a squib leaves a bullet in the barrel and the next shot injures the shooter?

[6bg6ga]

I recently opened up a can of WW231 that I hadn't used since 1986 and it was still good.

[dragon813gt]

If it has a shelf life and they DON'T put a warning on the label , imagine the liability and lawsuits when a squib leaves a bullet in the barrel and the next shot injures the shooter?

Hodgodn has life expectancy on their website. I realize it's not on the cans you buy. But the information is readily available. I need to look through their recent annual to see if they have the disclaimer in there.

[mold maker]

When I first started loading (about 1962) a friend gave me a penny candy bag of WW2 surplus military powder, and it still works exactly like it did then. It's still in the little brown paper bag with the top neatly folded and sitting in the door shelf of my powder magazine, a 1980s refrig that didn't last.
Lucky or just not my turn, but I haven't lost any powder to deterioration.

[Elkins45]

I have had two separate lots of IMR rifle powders go bad since I bought my first cans in 1988. One was 4831 that was loaded into 270 that lingered on a shelf for 15 years. When I got around to shooting I was losing 100% of my brass to cracking. I pulled down the last few and discovered the powder was offgassing nitric acid and was corroding both brass and bullets. I'm 99% sure this was the explanation for the catastrophic case failure I experienced with ammo loaded with the same powder.

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm35/elkins_pix/4BCB0045-471D-4613-9594-3CE3756F95CF_zpshmz2ulbc.jpg (http://s292.photobucket.com/user/elkins_pix/media/4BCB0045-471D-4613-9594-3CE3756F95CF_zpshmz2ulbc.jpg.html)

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm35/elkins_pix/sectionedcasehead.jpg (http://s292.photobucket.com/user/elkins_pix/media/sectionedcasehead.jpg.html)

The second I just discovered last week. 4320 but I had transferred it to a plastic Hodgdon can. I caught the smell when I opened my powder cabinet and way in the back was a brown puddle. It turns out the metal cap had been completely eaten away and some sort of acidic liquid had condensed on the paper liable. Inside the can is a whole bunch of red liquid and a large clump of what used to be powder grains. I will eventually take pix because it looks interesting.

The bad news is that most of my 8mm Mauser jacketed ammo is loaded with this powder. I hate to think all my good commercial 8mm brass has been eaten up from the inside.

[dragon813gt]

I would pull down some rounds to see how they look. If they look fine shoot over a chronograph to confirm. I would shoot them all or pull them down ASAP regardless. No point in taking chances when it comes to body parts.

[Multigunner]

Going back over this thread I saw that my earlier post had a glaring typo.
It should have read that the stabilizers have a average shelf life of 25+years not 5+ years.

I haven't been able to edit posts on this board for quite some time. don't know why.

Elkins45
The 7.62 NATO ammo I broke down must have had much the same degradation at work only much further advanced. It was only a little over 10 years old at the time IIRC. I think the headstamp was 80's FNM. Most likely it had been exposed to high temperatures in a cargo container or something of the sort.
The Gilding metal cladding peeled right off the steel jackets. Don't know exactly what the jackets were made of but the bare metal was so slick you could barely hold one between your fingers.

[.22-10-45]

Few years back, I came across a 1/2 filled can of IMR3031 bought in the late 1970's & stored in a dry cool basement...can was hot to touch! When opened a red rusty powder & very strong acid smell. It was the heat I was worried about..I am checking the older powders more often now..don't want a house fire!

[waco]

I still have several cans of 1990 era Unique in the cardboard containers that have been out in my garage here in the western part of Oregon. It rains here 9 months out of the year. My garage is nowhere near weather proofed. The powder looks, smells, and shoots just fine.