Do you buy/use "used" powder at sales, etc?

Mercury

Just wondering if anyone buys partial cans of powder and then uses them? I DO NOT.....always afraid someone switched the powder, or that it is bad.....


Merc

"You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone. " - Al Capone, (1899-1947)

"Tolerating things you may not necessarily like is part of being free" - Larry Flynt

Elbesta

I see partial cans at gun shows all the time but there is no way I would take a chance on using it. I saw a guy buy a opened can of powder and I asked him, and it was only because that type was disconued and he liked it. I will buy drop down or pulled powder in kegs.

Iconoclast

Depends . . . . If it is something distinctive such as Blue Dot, yeah. Or if I have every reason to believe the seller is on the up & up + with the program . . . usually I request a bill of sale in the belief that if there's anything hinckey going on, the seller will balk. This has happened a couple of times and I've passed on the deal, but most of the time the seller is perfectly comfortable with it, which tells me he knows what he has and is not playing games.

"There is nothing lower than the human race - except the french." (Mark Twain)

old single shots

The only time i will accept an opened can of powder is when it is from someone i know,and that they are a responsible reloader.Just not worth the risk to me.

Kdub

NOPE!!

Keep off the Ridgeline

deadeye46

Like a couple other replies,ONLY if I know the seller.

deputydon

Only from a known reloader. IE: I must know him personally & well. -Don

When they pry it from my cold dead fingers.

eastwood44mag

Never had too. I have too mush of everything I use already.

O Lord,
grant me the Serenity
to accept the things
I cannot change
the courage to change the things I can,
and the supreme firepower to make the difference.

RadCat

I have on ocassion gathered some powder from "somebody I know", a small amount of a particular powder for testing purposes, prior to deciding if I will like/use it for a specifc load, or given it to them for the same reason. Kind of mutual favor. "Clique's" of reloaders that trust each other will do that. Strangers? No way!

On 95% full containers of four or more pounds of some use specific powders like Hodgdon's H-108, from a known source, or Noble's SP-2 from a fellow competitor, it will be considered. Again, from strangers? Forget it!


ON THE OTHER HAND, IF SOMEONE HAS SOME OLD, NASTY, UNKNOWN POWDER, SEND IT C.O.D. COLLECT TO OSAMA BIN-LADEN, WITH YOUR COMPLIMENTS.

plains scout

Let me make this as simple as I can: NO.

I don't take medicine without labels either.

I don't use motor oil that is opened

I don't eat moldy bread or meat with a green tinge to it either.

Power with a never been opened lid is another factor in the safety of reloading.



"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for." -- Will Rogers

My friend is one... who takes me for what I am.
Henry David Thoreau

Ray B

As noted- only if I'm sure what it is. Case in point- abut ten years ago a hunter education instructor bought a can marked one of the slower rifle powders- seems to me it was 4831, but the intructor loaded it in a 30-30, personally I'd have used something like 3031- but be that as it may, prior to the class, the instructor tested the loads. On firing the first one the gun, a Marlin 336 literally came apart in his hands and he went to the hospital. While Hercules wuld never admit to it for liability reasons, it appeared to all that the powder was Bullseye. They estimated the chamber pressure of the load as something over 200,000 psi. Not to knock Winchesters, but the investigation noted that the only thing that save the instructor from even worse injuries and possibly death was that the load was in the more solid Marlin action, rather than the relatively open M94. Part of the responsibility does lay with the instructor- pistol powder, unless a Ball type, looks nothing like slow rifle powder.