High hopes for old ammo…dashed

[joem]

Pull the bullets, tumble them and reload with new primers and powder.

[Greg]

I pull the bullets on stuff I find like that, dump and burn the powder, and then build a small fire and toss the cases in the fire. The primers pop or burn. After everything cools, I toss the now inert brass into the scrap bucket. The bullets, if they are not pitted, I reuse. If pitted, well, scrap.

[dave]

They would have sold at gun shows for 20-30 dollars a box, to collectors. Maybe more.

[slamfire]

The shooting community believes that it and their ammunition will last forever. These are two assumptions that are wrong and anyone believing in both will ultimately be proven wrong.



The shooting community has rightly been told to keep their gunpowder cool and dry, but not understanding why has lead to some erroneous ideas. Gunpowder deteriorates faster in hot and wet conditions. There are a lot of other things that will deteriorate gunpowder, but heat is the primary factor. Water is polar covalent, the oxygen atom acts ionic, and ions attack the chemical bonds of nitrocellulose, hence the warning to keep gunpowder dry. One should not also add iron filings, (ionic) or really much of anything to gunpowder because you don't know how it will react with the double bonded NO molecules. Heat however breaks gunpowder faster and heat is what is used for simple tests of gunpowder stability.

Gunpowder has stabilizers in it. When nitrocellulose breaks down it releases NOx, in the presence of water, some of that NOx converts to nitric acid gas. Stabilizers sop up the NOx until the stabilizer is depleted. Then the NOx vents directly out of the powder and fuming red nitric acid gas becomes visible when the gunpowder is at a dangerous stage. Nitric acid gas is the cause of the green corrosion. Nitric acid gas attacks brass and if your brass had a lot of green on the inside, toss it. It is weak. You can test this and shoot the stuff, keep a count of how many cases have case neck splits, shoulder splits, body splits. If you have a case head split, you may blow your stock in half and things can get very messy. All your choice of risk of course.

Gunpowder breaks down, is always breaking down, since the laws of thermodynamics work in all environments and circumstances found to date. Gunpowder is a high energy compound breaking down to a low energy compound. You can accelerate the rate of breakdown by heating the stuff. Therefore, keep it cool. Keeping it cool will not make gunpowder last forever though.

When gunpowder gets old enough, it will catch on fire. Also, it needs to be stated, the lifetime of gunpowder is highly variable, quite unpredictable if you want certainty. Since it cannot be predicted analytically, Military Organizations pay people to go through their stockpiles and weed out the deteriorated stuff before it autocombusts.

I found this an interesting tid bit on ammunition storage.

Army Not Producing Enough Ammunition
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.o...y_Not3866.aspx

Regardless of what the Army decides to do with its industrial base, the fundamental issue does not change: the Army needs to produce more war reserve ammunition, Naughton said. Time is running out, he said. “Most of the ammunition in the stockpile today was built 20 years ago during the Cold War buildup.” Most rounds are designed to have a shelf life of 20 years. “We are outside the envelope of the shelf life on 40 percent or more of our existing ammunition. The rest is rapidly approaching the end of its shelf life.”

Ammunition does not “go bad” overnight, after it reaches a certain age, but “once it’s over 20 years old, the reliability rapidly degrades,” said Naughton. Within a few years, it will become increasingly difficult to shoot it. “You can predict that you’ll lose 7-8 percent of the ammo after the 20-year mark.”*

To replace the obsolete rounds, the Army would have to produce 100,000 tons of war reserve ammunition a year for the next seven years. Past that point, it would need 50,000 tons to 60,000 tons a year to sustain the stockpile. That represents about “half the level of the Cold War buildup,” he said.

* I think what is meant, 7-8 percent per year after 20 years.

http://www.ssusa.org/articles/2015/9...07-ssc-powder/

It is my recollection that IMR 4007 was introduced to the market in 2007. Less than eight years later, several jugs of several lots have auto combusted and there is a recall. People don't notice this because it conflicts with their desired goal of ammunition immortality.

by SSUSA Staff - Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Product Recall Notice: IMR 4007 SSC Powder

IMR Legendary Powders has announced a product safety warning and recall notice for IMR 4007 SSC on the six lot numbers listed below. Find your lot number on the side of your bottle as in the below photo.
•10130139
•10131139
•10429139
•10430139
•80425139
•80426139

IMR has received reports that this particular powder in 1 lb. and 8 lb. containers may have become unstable due to possible rapid deterioration. Use of this product from these lot numbers shown on the enclosed label may result in spontaneous combustion, fire damage or possible serious injury. IMR suggests that anyone who has this product should cease using it immediately! Fill the powder container with water which will render the product inert and safe for disposal.

Contact IMR directly for more information:

IMR Powder Company, 6430 Vista Drive, Shawnee, KS 66218, email help@imrpowder.com, imrpowder.com, call 1-800-622-4366 or 913-362-9455 and fax 913-362-1307.

In bulk old gunpowder will autocombust. Brass cases act as a thermal sink and so whether auto combustion occurs in cases less than five inches in diameter is an point of argument in the Insensitive Munitions community. Everyone agrees that old gunpowder removed from old cartridges, poured into cans and barrels, will autocombust. Just remember that with pull down powder.

Also, old gunpowder does not burn evenly, called burn rate instability, and old gunpowder has blown up plenty of guns. That old Vietnam, Korean, WW2 ammunition, is long past its shelf life and there accounts of Garands blown to bits with old WW2 ammunition. Because the shooting community is unaware of the thermokinetics of gunpowder you can read pages upon pages of weird speculations as to why the gun Kaboomed.

This was a good thread on this topic:

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/show...-ammo-goes-bad

1. When milsurp ammo goes bad........

[Dollar Bill]

I've used the Lee universal decapping tool to decap live primers. After talking to someone who had done it before with no problems, I decapped 100 old cases. slow easy pressure (while wearing safety glasses) did the trick with none going off.

[psteinmayer]

I've used the Lee universal decapping tool to decap live primers. After talking to someone who had done it before with no problems, I decapped 100 old cases. slow easy pressure (while wearing safety glasses) did the trick with none going off.

I've done this also using the LEE decapper. Never had a problem so long as you use slow, easy light pressure!

[CJCulpeper]

Glad to hear I am off on the right foot as to primer disposal. As for storage, the vet died at 110 yrs old in 2011. I have no earthly idea how old the ammo is. I know one thing, however…his home was without central air. There was heating, bout none of the rooms in his 200+ yr old farm home had air. Probably explains the condition.

You got ammo from Frank Buckles' estate? That is too cool.

[Griff Murphey]

I've driven to a match with my older brother steel-wooling corroded 1950's GI ball to shoot in the match.

In high school I was given a tobacco tin full of WW-2 M-1 carbine, all heavily corroded and covered with verdigris. I wire brushed it and wiped it down with WD-40 (not yet known to be a no-no it was a new product!) and xxxx it away... Maybe 75 rds. All fired perfectly!

Does this mean all my old .30 Mauser commercial should not be shot in my broomstick 96?

[dave]

The 1950's sounds about right. One box still had the price tag of $2.30 on it. Imagine that.

Yeh, sounds cheap to-day, in '56 I was just out of the service and went back to work on the railroad for 1.96 an hour! Few months later started at oil refinery for 2.03! So 2.30 was not cheap!! More then an hours pay!