Home Forums Reloading Big Game Rifles Old powder still safe to use?

Today my neighbor gave me three one pound metal cans of IMR 4064, 4320 and 4895. I have no idea of when they were manufactured but the price tag on each tin is $3.99 if that is any reference to age. If unopened are these still safe to use?

If you open it & red dust floats out or you smell it & it burns your nostrils with a bad vinegar smell sprinkle it on the lawn. Otherwise it should be fine.

If it smells good, and there's not red rust color you are good to go.

I have powder from the 70's and loaded ammo from the 30's that's still good.

Agree. As long as it looks good, smells ok with no noxious red dust, should be good to go.

My vintage 4064 powder doesn’t have quite the solvent smell of a newer can, but I still can detect it. It looks good.

I have H-4831 that was surplus in the ‘60’s. It looks good, smells good, shoots good. It seems a bit slower burning then new 4831. I’ve shot some really good groups with it.

I have old H-110 that works well. You just need to watch for deterioration and dump those. Stored in climate controlled environment helps.

With powder being scarce, old powder in good condition looks better and better.

DF

I just finished up some powder that was priced like that and one that was lower.

They still work.

Thanks guys.

Poobs may have sold that late in his retail career. (grin)

I’ve been hand loading since the late ‘60’s, and just last week observed my first can of bad powder. I had an opened can of powder my uncle gave to me in the late ‘70’s early ‘80’s. I had never had a use for it, but thought I’d experiment with a new load for my handgun. I opened it and “sniffed”, it didn’t smell bad. But, when I poured it into my powder measure.....lots of red dust! Bummer......I really wanted to try it! memtb

If it's bad you should know it.I had some powder that was only about two years old,but last summer I saw the lot I had was on the recall notice.I had shot a couple of pounds of it and I always noticed it seemed to have just a little stronger odor than other powders.It shot good,grouped well in my rifles,just never really had any issues with it until I saw the recall notice.When I checked it a dust cloud came out when I opened the lid.The strong odor was extremely offensive.There was moister around the lid the turned my fingers yellow where I touched it.It took two weeks before it cleared up and the yellow was gone.I pulled the bullets and dumped the powder out of all the ammo I had loaded with this powder.The manufacture paid me for all the the powder I had that was recalled,so that was a good deal and not a total loss. I went to the range a few weeks later and found three cartridges I missed.I had shot ammo from this same lot I had loaded a few months before without issues,so I decided to just go ahead and shoot them instead of taking them back home and breaking them down.I shot one round and it was really high pressure from the bad powder.It smeared the headstamp on the brass when I ejected it after shooting.So I didn't shoot the other two rounds.This was my only experience with bad powder.I have some that's probably over 25yrs old in the old metal cans and it's still good.Well today I was doing some loading and going through my ammo boxes and guess what,I found those two rounds I had planned on pulling down.So today,about nine months after the powder went really bad I pulled the bullets and only a small amount of the powder would dump out of the case,the rest of it was all caked up inside and wouldn't come out even tapping on the outside of the case.Here is some pictures.