Powder going bad?

5mmgunguy

What does a can of powder smell like that is going bad? I got a couple of pounds of powder, cans have never been opened. I opened one and there is some light rust inside the can and the powder has an ether smell.

1KYDSTR

Most IMR powders smell like ether to me anyway, but the "rust" is a telltale sign that the base of the powder is begining to deteriorate. I had one can of old IMR 4198 that went bad (used it for fertilizer in the end) and aside from the "rust" it smelled of eggs to me.

gunnut505

Smell a new can of powder from any brand; does it smell a lot like the questionable one? If not; toss it.

5mmgunguy

The rust isn't on the powder the rust is on the inside wall of the steel can.

cbyerly

As previously stated, It is corrosive gasses being released when the powder deteriorates that is causing rusting in the cans. It's lawn fertilizer. In extreme cases, old powder improperly stored can self combust.

jonk

While I don't question what you found, I've gone through plenty of reloading powder since I started 10 years ago. Not all new, some new old stock cans from gun shows including the old square pry open Hodgdon cans- which are OLD, comparatively speaking, 30 or 40 years. Never had any that was deteriorated.

I have bought old milsurp AMMO (Argentinian) that was deteriorated and had turned into a clumpy mess with blue corrosion in the case, but I think that had gotten wet (how I have no idea). Still good pull down fodder for the bullets as they cleaned up fine in the tumbler.

Maybe I'm just lucky, but my experience is Ether ok, when I pulled those rounds down, they were just stinky! Maybe not quite rotten eggs bad, but similar.

kevind6

The addition of ether to gun powder was one of the technological breakthroughs in the developement of smokeless powder over 100 years ago. So the ether smell is as it should be. However, I still don't think I'd mess with the old powder. Maybe it's good, maybe it isn't, but it wouldn't be worth it to me to find out.

beantownshootah

I don't think you can really judge the quality of a gunpowder purely by its smell.

It only takes a MINUTE amount of any compound, particularly within a closed container, to generate a strong odor. As mentioned, some powders normally smell like ether.

In other words being Devil's advocate here, 99.999% of the powder mass could be fine, but the 0.0001% from the surface of the grains that is slightly oxidized could make a pretty strong smell that gets concentrated inside the closed can.

I'd be more worried about the rust than the smell. Rust means the can metal has oxidized. Assuming the cans were properly sealed and airtight, that implies that the powder itself may have degraded, releasing some 02 into the can.

How much has it degraded? Don't know. Don't know if its even possible to measure that without some reasonably sophisticated testing.

Enough to be dangerous? Don't know. . .though if the can has really never been opened, I sort of doubt it.

The biggest concern I'd have isn't that the powder won't work at all, or that it will spontaneously explode, its that it will be inconsistent. That can lead to varying pressures, and poor accuracy.

Badly degraded powder could lead to hang fires (where the powder doesn't all ignite at once) or squib fires (where the pressure isn't high enough to drive the bullet out of the barrel), and both of those are potentially dangerous.

The question is really how much is it worth to you in terms of time/energy to take a chance testing it. For a $15-20 can of powder (or maybe you paid even less) it may not be worth your time and energy to bother. I certainly wouldn't use it for any "serious" (ie match-type) loads.

Ambrose

I wouldn't use it. I just junked a couple of cans of IMR4320 that had rusted the inside of the cans.

5mmgunguy

Thanks guys, lawn fertilizer it is.

1988z01

Makes good fertilizer. Why take the chance?