Contaminated powder

[454PB]

About a month ago, I bought a bunch of reloading equipment and components from my son-in-law's brother. This stuff had been stored in their storage shed for several years, and the owner just wanted it gone. There was hundreds of copper coated bullets, some commercial cast boolits, 3500 primers, about 3K fired brass, 1K of handloaded .38 special and 40 S&W several die sets, gun cleaning kits, and three partial cans of powder.

All you scrounger types appreciate the fun of sorting through all this stuff and getting it pigeon holed.

Today, I decided to inspect those partial cans of powder. I poured some of each can into a glass container, the Red Dot looked and smelled good, the Bullseye was fine, but I was shocked when I poured out the Unique.....it has red dots in it. I'm assuming it somehow got mixed together with some Red Dot. Not the density of red dots you actually see in Red Dot, but enough to scare me from using it. The important point is that it took some very close inspection in direct sunlight through the window to see these red dots.

From the first day I started handloading 38+ years ago, I've been very careful about keeping only one powder on the bench at a time, and emptying my powder measure and/or related equipment back into it's container immediately after use. Here is a good example of what can happen with sloppy procedures.

[1Shirt]

When it doesn't look right you had best flush it! Why take chances!
1Shirt!

[MGySgt]

I don't flush suspect powder any more - I keep some of it around for the people that say it is an explosive.

I will put a generous amount in a empty coffee can and throw a match in. Even Bulls eye shows that it burns vice going boom!

[Ricochet]

If I were pretty sure that was a mixture of Unique and Red Dot, I'd probably still use it. Shake it up long and well to be sure it's evenly mixed, and load it as Red Dot. Can't go wrong that way pressurewise. You'll get lower velocities and pressures than with Red Dot alone. It'll work for plinkers. Red Dot being rated 94% as fast burning as Bullseye by Alliant, it'd be hard for any mixture with other powders to end up being significantly faster than Red Dot.

[kodiak1]

Pour it out on your lawn and watch it grow. Don't flush it then you can be called one of those Anti Enviromentalists.
Sprinkle on the lawn and if anyone asks yes I am a green fenatic I fertilize my lawn with GUN POWDER.
Ken

[44woody]

I have 2 rules on powder that I get from people that has been open rule one treat all open cans of powder as contaminated and use lawn fertilizer rule refer to rule one I only do this becouse I have seen a gun at the range that was blown to pieces I was talking to the man that did it he told me that he got some powder from someone and used it to load this batch of bullets the moral of this is do not trust any open cans of powder 44Wooddy

[Ricochet]

I used to have friends in a band who put on a big show with onstage pyrotechnics. They had porcelain crucibles that they'd put Estes rocket igniter hot wires in, and pour 'em full of Red Dot from an 8 pound caddy. They went off when the hot wires were energized with a big whoosh of orange fire that I'd thought was likely propane till I saw how they were doing it.

[SharpsShooter]

Cans of powder that I did not personally open or at the least come from unknown individuals is fertilizer. Powder is cheap compared to body parts and guns.


SS

[J Miller]

Late last year I picked up several pounds of powder at a gun shop. The powder was from the estate of the shop owners friend.
Most of it was powder that I already had some of, so all I had to do was smell it and compare it to determine if it was usable or not.
The Bullseye container looked good under normal light, but when spread out on a white paper towel you could see a variety of powder kernel shapes. So I'm figuring this can was the guys receptacle for pull down powder, or the last dregs of the cans that was too little to use.
It was saved for the 4th of July. I poured the half pound of powder into an aluminum tray, set it out in the middle of the back yard and lit it off. My wife took a video of it. VERY IMPRESSIVE! VERY HOT! MUCH FUN!

Joe

[buck1]

Thats what I do. It works great to!!

Pour it out on your lawn and watch it grow. Don't flush it then you can be called one of those Anti Enviromentalists.
Sprinkle on the lawn and if anyone asks yes I am a green fenatic I fertilize my lawn with GUN POWDER.
Ken

[rhead]

I am going from memory here but I seem to remember from somewhere that Unique origionally had yellwish orange flakes added as a burning inhibitor . I think it was in one of Paco's articles. PLEASE confirm that before deciding that it is safe. Do not trust my memory.
I found it!! In Powder profiles. He called it yellow flakes. I must have dreamed the orange or some other source called them that. They may have gotten more of a redish hue with age.

[Ricochet]

Those may well have been flakes of rosin. Alliant still uses rosin in it as an inhibitor. It's listed in the Unique MSDS linked from Alliant's page on Unique.

[trk]

Pour it out on your lawn and watch it grow. Don't flush it then you can be called one of those Anti Enviromentalists.
Sprinkle on the lawn and if anyone asks yes I am a green fenatic I fertilize my lawn with GUN POWDER.
Ken

Fertilizer and gunpowder are so closely related that when the Arsenal (RAAP) was looking for industries to sub-let to, they considered fertilizer companies.

Radford Army Ammunition Plant makes most of the solid propellants and powders for small arms ammunition - Radford, VA.

[Duckiller]

It may be someones OOPS can where all unknowns and mistakes that can't be salvaged are dumped. Several good ideas for using above that DON'T involve brass containers.

[leftiye]

So the EPA was about to deep six the fertilizer industry too?

[Ricochet]

The thing is, even if it's an "oops can," you can't get into trouble by assuming it's at the fast end of the pistol powder burning spectrum, loading and checking velocities. With a chronograph, watching for signs of untoward pressure, you can safely work back up to recommended charges of the powder it's supposed to be, if the velocity doesn't climb to excessive levels. People on this board use surplus powders without published data, that vary widely from lot to lot, all the time. Even completely unidentified powders from pulled down old surplus ammo. It's not a bold, reckless action to use powder such as this, if you're reasonable about how you do it.

[454PB]

I'm kind of in the middle on this. My intuition tells me to dump it and move on. On the other hand, I agree with Ricochet.....if I treat it as Red Dot and check the resulting velocity with a chronograph, I'm safe.

It's more of a "what can I learn from this" tinkering endeavor. After all, it's only 3/4 of a pound of powder.

The red dots in this are identical to the red dots in Red Dot, not some age induced color change. I've always thought the use of color indicators to visually identify powder was a great idea.....in this case it really paid off.

Interestingly, my grand dad gave me a bunch of old powder he had many years ago. One of the containers was Unique, in a square brown cardboard can that had a pouring spout exactly like that found on salt containers. I used it all up and it performed perfectly. I read somewhere that Hercules Powder had some initial production Unique stored that was 100 years old. They performed ballistic testing and found that it met the original specs.

[BluesBear]

Alliant still has a large lot of 100 year old Bullseye that they still use for testing.
They've shown photos of it in several of their magazine ads over the years.
Performance wise, it still matches today's Bullesye.

[georgeld]

Several years ago a fellow moving away gave me a five gallon bucket of 38's loaded with various bullets.

I proceeded to check them out and seemed ok so started shooting them. About 10-15% misfired. Nothing was overly hot. There was way too many to pull down.

SO I proceeded to shoot them up. When one misfired the second time it went in a coffee can. After everything that would fire had been shot I pulled those duds down.

There was about 8 different powders. Not any one of them had more that 7 gr. I kept them seperated by looks having little way of figuring out what they were. Two amounted to quite a pile. Since I'd weighed each load I knew how much was used in each powder. The remaining powders, none amounted to very much by itself but, together there was close to three pounds. I mixed it all together, shook it up real good each time I picked it up and loaded cast boolits at 5gr charges with fresh primers. Worked great for plinkers and gave me several hundred more free loads for the price of my labor. I felt completely safe doing it this way.

Because I'd kept exact records of charges on several from each type powder and none were over 7gr, or less than five. My use of 5gr was within tolerance.

The price of this stuff nowdays I sure hate to feed the lawn with it when the neighbors dog droppings do a much better job.

[BluesBear]

Because I'd kept exact records of charges on several from each type powder and none were over 7gr, or less than five. My use of 5gr was within tolerance.

The price of this stuff nowdays I sure hate to feed the lawn with it when the neighbors dog droppings do a much better job.

THANK YOU George, for posting this. I have done this sort of thing for 20 years.
I mentioned it once a long time ago on a long defunct forum and was and was nearly run out of cybertown on a cyberrail.
I save every scrap of powder. Spills, that tablespoon that ALWAYS left in the bottom of the can, pull downs, whatever. It all goes into a well marked empty powder bottle and saved. 90% of what I load is handgun ammo so I have a good idea of the burnspeed range.

I use five grains of this powder mixture underneath a swaged round ball, in .38 or .357 brass cut down to .38 Long Colt length with a HEAVY crimp, for outdoor plinking with my N-Frames.

#1 a round ball is the cheapest, stable projectile one can find.
#2 even 5 grains of Norma R1 (the fastest powder I know of (other than blank) is safe with a 70-75gr ball fired in a .357.
#3 the use of a round ball with a cut down case indicates it's a FrankenLoad.
#4 When walking in a gravel pit plinking at targets of opportunity the soft lead rarely ever bounce back at such low velocities. Even if they did they pose no danger. Eyes and ears worn at all times of course.
#5 It's a form of recycling. The only cost is for balls and primers since everything else is "scrap".
#6 It's just plain FUN. On long shots you can, at times under good conditions, observe the ball in flight.
#7 Recoil? What recoil? With my 5" and 6" N-Frames recoil is virtually meaningless. It's a good way to see if you're flinching. Any significant movement of the gun is MY fault.

Sometimes I'll load two balls over six grains in a .357 case just for shouts and giggles.



CAUTIONS:
The one thing that you do have to be very cautious of when loading a new batch is to make sure you have ENOUGH powder in the cases. When I first started doing this I was using 3 grains. If I had too much slow burning powder in the mix sometimes the ball wouldn't make it out of the 6" barrel. That is why I increased it to 5gr. 5gr of any powder I have ever tried will clear the muzzle.

It's also why I went to shorter cases. I want the minimum airspace under the ball.
I also tried the .38 Short Colt length but I didn't have a die that would give me a heavy enough roll crimp on a case that short. You need a heavy crimp for proper ignition.

Even though some of my muxtures have had 50year old British Cordite in them I have never used anything except CCI 500 primers. Since there is always a good deal of faster powders in the mix I see no need for a magnum primer. All it would do is raise pressures.
Plus the whole idea is to do it as cheaply as possible.






Ricochet, Years ago™, when I was performing in bands for a living, I used a similar powder mixture for my four commercially made "Volcanos". I found that "mixtures" gave a more dramatic effect than a single powder. (The manufacturer was recommending Blue Dot)
Back then powder was $3-$4 per pound (in bulk) and I used my volcanos a lot. Even when buying fresh powder and creating my own "recipes" for different flame effects it was affordable. Each Volcano used between 8 & 16 oz of powder for each firing. (They would actually hold two pounds each but that was a bit much for indoor shows.) Now with powder being $20 per pound that's a rather pricy effect.