Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Possible stupid powder storage question

The discussion a couple of weeks ago about storing powder in a low heat/humidity environment got me thinking. John mentioned he keeps his powder in a cooler in the garage, which probably works fine in Montana. I have a 'garage fridge' and was wondering if storing powder in said fridge is a stupid idea. The garage is hot in the summer, so I currently move powder indoors in the summer months.

Is is a bad idea to store closed bottles of powder in the garage fridge? My gut says yes, but maybe it is a good idea. It *is* cool, but I don't know about the humidity level in a fridge. I don't really store food in the fridge, but I do store water and other beverages. For that matter, what about the freezer section? It doesn't get any cooler or darker than the inside of a fridge or freezer.

Is it a frost-free refrigerator? If so, the air inside is plenty dry.

As far as I can tell, freezing doesn't hurt powder at all. All of my powder freezes every winter, and keeps acting the same when I load it in cartridges and shoot 'em.

My powder freezes too. My only concern is the introduction of moisture. For that reason I let make sure the covers are secure and the powder is loading-area temp before I open a container.

What does it mean to say powder freezes in this or any other context?

As discussed my own powder has of necessity been stored in places that water freezes very solid and other liquids including LCD type displays reacted to the low temperaturs. It has not been an issue for my purposes that I know of.

I've lived places that had only wood heat and if I was gone the place cold soaked at a possible minus 20 and lower over night with everything turned off and drained and maybe RV antifreeze in the drain traps. I lost some Starrett digital tools that went blank but I can't say that much seemed frozen to me when I came home. I wasn't inclined to chronograph or otherwise test for powder effects at those temperatures but the guns and loads did work. I did check samples of gun oil starting with Anderol for thickening in cold temperatures and I did find that most anything rated for aircraft cannon - typically specified as negative 40 - worked OK at negative 20 at least by my lights and for my purposes.

I don't know the specifications for moisture content in powder and I don't know what moisture is in the ether and I don't know how it varies over time so I don't know how the age of the powder affects reaction to freezing temperatures. Seems to me Phil Sharpe wrote of storing samples of Bullseye, that were already old when he was writing, under water to no bad effect.

I mostly store for storage in ice chests with the latch open in unheated and uncooled storage and worry more about summer temperatures than winter cold. I hope this moderates temperature swings and for convenience in toting the powder around. These days I do tend to keep my allotted 50 pounds in the house for ready access and inventory control and swapping or sharing with my friends with reserves in storage. I've not yet seen any powder go bad ever but that assumes the reported signs of powder going bad work better than the reported signs of pressure for home use.

Is there any sign at all for home users of remaining life in powder that still seems good?
Is there a point where powder in dead storage might be on the verge of going bad but would be saved by moving to temperature controlled storage?
Is there any sign for powder that should be used only for loads that will be fired this season? I often have a few cartridges from a batch that don't get fired for years and years.
Is aging powder more or less vulnerable to the environment when the powder is sitting inside cartridge brass at various temperatures?

I also store my powder in the garage, here it is plenty dry and the garage stays cooler then the house in summer. Some days in winter it gets cold but the snow still melts of the snow blower at the other end?????
I had no problems with this so far......

Frost free fridge. I just know 'arctic' conditions are best for powder storage, but there may be condensation issues when removing the powder to use for loading. All things considered, it may be best to store it in the house in the summer.

Heat is the big enemy. About nothing organic is completely stable, it's always changing at some rate. The rate of change increases exponentially with the temperature and this is generalized by the Arrhenius equation.

Anyway, heat is the killer so cool must be the preserver, absent physical changes which powder doesn't seem to have.

So this means that all loaded ammo needs to be in the refrigerator ?

No, but the most erratic ammo I've ever fired was stored in a SILO on a big rice plantation in Arkansas. I was one of several people invited to hunt waterfowl and deer there a few years ago, and the owner of the place (a real shotgun and rifle loony) had cases upon cases of ammo, all stored year-round in this silo, subject to Arkansas heat for several months each year.

We were shooting both shotguns and rifles one day, and I finally decided not to shoot any more, because the results were so erratic. Some ammo just went "pop," and some kicked like hell. A chronograph wasn't required to tell the difference. I've never seen such weird stuff from ammo stored in reasonably cool conditions, even after a decade or two.

I have several pounds of '60's vintage H-4831 that came in paper bags. The bags deteriorated to the point I'd stick my finger thru the side of the bags, just handling them. I transferred the powder to empty powder cans, labeled them with a Magic Marker.

This powder has mostly been in a climate controlled environment other than several years in a garage exposed Louisiana summer heat.

It still smells fresh, has no brown dust and shoots great. And, as surplus powder, it wasn't new when I bought it in the early 60's.

It's probably 60 years old.

DF

Better not do that with H-335, it will blow up and level you and your hose. That stuff will blow up in the window of your truck...

That's exactly why so many Montana pickups have cracked windshields.

Now, that's some BAD stuff...

DF

I am in Arkansas. I like the idea of grabbing a pound of powder out of the fridge, but I am worried about moisture issues. In the house in the summer months may make more sense.

I am worried about this hose issue. What kind of hose are we talking about and how can we protect against leveling it. Maybe a Lloyd's of London Umbrella?

Getting one's hose blown up is the big unmentionable...

I don't even want to go there...

OUCH...!!

DF

So that explains the mystery, SD too.

Stuff will freezer burn in my not frost free freezer so if anything powder will come out dryer than it went in. Do like we do with electronic shipments in the winter, let come up to room temperature before unsealing. I just keep powder in my cool basement where I reload, some for well over a decade.

Going back to Hatcher and his exposition on then-new ball powder, the most important part of the process for stabilizing powder is neutralizing traces of acid remaining from the nitrating process. Process control is much better now for lot-to-lot consistency. I would GUESS that in the "olden days" lack of close process control would let some lots escape the factory not sufficiently neutralized, so finding deteriorated powder was more common.

I'll just add that powder can get too dry.

One of the bigger pressure-testing labs in the country was having trouble getting absolutely consistent results. They're in a part of the dry West and eventually discovered their powder was drying out after jugs were opened and closed a lot. This isn't, apparently, much of a problem with ballistic labs in the East, where humidity is much higher, so the lab now stores their powder in a temperature AND humidity-controlled room.

As powder dries the burn rate changes slightly, which is why they weren't getting consistent results. This is because the weight of the powder changes: 60 grains poured into a scale pan one evening can lose half a grain by the next morning. But the amount of powder is still the same.

I live in the dry West, and don't open my powder containers any more than I need to, and don't leave them open any longer than necessary. I have 1-pound containers used for everyday loading, that I refill from big jugs that spend almost all their time inside coolers. When loading I pour enough from one of the 1-pound containers for the job, putting the top back on the container ASAP.

Some might WANT their hose 'blown up'

Wow, this thread got me thinking. I have a partial can of H335 left from loading 358 WinchesterS. That's been many moons ago.

The first thing I did was open the can;
#1. No bad odor, OKAY.

#2. Poured some on a light colored plate, no residue nor brown color.

#3. Took pics of powder/plate/can. Price was $14.90, not recently purchased.

I have ALWAYS stored powder IN my houses with central heat/air. 4 houses in 38 yrs. I've never had powder go bad living in Ark and La.




It works for me.