powder age

[Zeke R]

My father-in-law gave me a keg of surplus 4831. He recently put his guns for sale on consignment with a local gunsmith. One of them (a custom 25-06 from before it became a commercial cartridge) blew up. Someone told my him that powder becomes more potent with age and he advised me to get rid of it. I never heard of anything like that before. Anyone here have any knowledge or experience with anything like this? My father-in-law is in his late eighties and he doesn't have his records or remembers what the loads were, but I know that he used to load his stuff hot. I would hate to discard perfectly good powder if I don't have to. Thanks in advance for any feedback. I've been a long time lurker on Greybeard and I have learned a lot from these forums.

Zeke

[zeke08]

Speaking as a Bomb Technician we dislike old powder. Black powder not stored properly that gets hot sweats then gets cold and freezes actually becomes somewhat unstable but to say it gets stronger not so much, double and triple base smokeless powder that is stored properly should be safe to use but since I can not lay hands on it I WILL NOT tell you to use it. If you are are unsure of how your father-n-law stored it I would not use it. My uncle bought powder by the keg but was extremely strict on how he stored it and he never had problems with the age of powder, when he passed away I disposed of almost 12 lbs. of powder that he was still loading with but it would not work in anything that I or anyone else here shoots. Hope this helps.

[1sourdough]

 I wouldn't throw it on the garden just yet. How was it stored? sealed tight? moderate steady temp? How does it look & smell? Any rust look to it? Does it smell bad?acidic? IF stored properly I think it would be fine even if 40 yrs old. If it passed a check out I'd load some rounds up & test it out. I would be more suspicious of any reloads passed your way, maybe pull them.

[Catfish]

You will be able to tell by the smell of the powder. If it don`t smell right don`t use it.

[Siskiyou]

I bought 16 pounds of surplus 4831 in the sixties.  While it was still available I would buy one pound cans of 4831 for less than $2 a can. 

My first purchase was in two jugs provided by me at as part of the deal.  Years later a friend who worked for American Can Company gave me new one quart paint cans and the powder went into cans.  I have not observed any deterioration of the powder. 

The best check of the quality of the remaining powder came when I ran some loads from it across the Chrony about year ago.  The charges of 60-grains of Surplus 4831 with a 130-grain Remington C-L where giving 3050-3060 fps out of a fast 22-inch Savage barrel.  I have not tested in my Remington barrels but they are normal 30 fps slower.  I have no idea what year the 4831 was manufactured but I had my powder plus or minus forty years. 

Most of the powder deterioration stories regarding WWII powder centers around 4895.  It was used to load massive amounts of ammunition for the Springfield, Garand, and other rifles plus different .30 caliber machine guns.  The story goes that to speed up production one or more washes in the manufacturing process were dropped in “some” lots.  Later this resulted in deterioration of the powder which handloaders experienced. 

First off surplus 4831 is not black powder, and is much more stable.  On the job I have disposed of old mining caches of black powder and dynamite.   Dynamite does rather nasty things when it ages, like leaking.  The loggers were not much better leaving dynamite behind after constructing roads in the forest.

I would consider a keg of 4831 a treasure to be handled with care but a treasure.  Now days I store powder in a “powder box” at floor level in my garage.  I recently built a powder box for my SIL when I gifted him with some H414.

Like any other powder I would start at a minimum charge and work up.  When I go for a minimum charge I consult two or three manuals looking for the minimum SAFE charge.  There is a lot of loading data out there for 4831 that was developed by backyard loads that is on the hot side. 

If you do not have current data I would go to the following:


http://data.hodgdon.com/main_menu.asp

Watch out for old manuals as an example my of Speer Manual shows a maximum charge of 58.0 grains of 4831 for the 150-grain bullet in the 270 Winchester, and the Hornady Manual of the day shows 58.9 grains.  I consider both these unsafe in my three 270 rifles.  The above link shows the maximum charge as 55.7 grains.

When Hornady first came out with the 140-grain Boattail for the 270 I thought I could work up to 58 grains based on loading data for the 150-grain bullet.    This speculation did not hold true and I started to get a sticky bolt before reaching 58.0 grains. 

I have loaded Surplus 4831 and H4831 in four different calibers for many years.

They are not to be confused with IMR4831 which burns a little faster. The key is to build each load from bottom to top.  H4831 in newly manufacture powder designed to fill the void of Surplus 4831 when the supply ran out.

[Zeke R]

I checked it and it smells and looks ok. I have it stored in the basement, so it isn't exposed to heat. It is in a metal keg.  I had a weird thing happen a few years ago. I had some powder stored in a wooden cabinet and one of them went bad and the top cap was melted and several containers were ruined. I know most of it was good, but I ended up taking about 20 lbs of various powders to the hazmat place here in PDX. I realize that there are several factors that can be involved when a gun blows up but as for the theory that powder becomes more potent with age, I don't know about that. I am no expert when it comes to this, but I recently shot some .223 loads that I loaded in 1987 using 27.0 gr of H335 with a 55gr bullet. That was the maximum load in most of the loading manuals then, the last max load I saw in a newer one was 25.5. By that reasoning (increased potency with age), these should have been way too hot. I didn't notice any signs of excess pressure (bulged case, cratered primers). If I have any doubts after researching this subject, I will get rid of it. I really appreciate the feedback here as it will help me make a decision. Thanks gbo members!

Zeke

[SHOOTALL]

I have some powder that is 30 years old and stored in org card board container . It has been in the shed for years . I used up one last spring . It smelled like it should no acid smell.