How long do reloading components hold their full potential when stored in a dry area?

Have several sealed containers of H4831 and some older large rifle primers both are probably over 10 years old but I see no signs of corrosion or other problems.

Did some shooting over a chronograph for the first time in a lot of years and the 280 REM /150 gr Nosler's seemed to do well with 57.5 grains of the old H4831 from the one container that has been opened over the years.
Vel ranging 2880-2895 ft per sec.

A long time 15fps velocity deviation is good even for fresh powders.

I have reloads more then 30 years old that preform just fine.

I routinely shoot WW2 ammo; no degradation noted. I have a rule not to load with primers over 60 years old. Maybe more.
Ten years, is the same as brand new to me. Smell the powder; IMR powders will always smell like ether. If any powder smells like acid, it is bad.

This topic has been all over the web in the last three months.
Nothing more than internet hype about powder and primers having a set life or starts to decompose.Who started it is anyone's guess.
If powder was properly made as well as primers,they have no life.
If properly stored from heat and moisture there is no reason both should not outlast you.
I have powder from WWI that I still use and nothing has changed with loading data.
The Original batch of Bulls Eye powder still exist and is used to compare every batch made today. And that batch is over 120 years old.
The original batch is stored underwater away from heat and O2.

From SAAMI here:

"Although modern smokeless powders contain stabilizers and are basically free from deterioration under proper storage conditions, safe practices require a recognition of the signs of deterioration and its possible effects."

I found a carton (1000) of really old "Winchester Western Staynless" primers from a local source. They have been discontinued for decades! I have used up about half of them and so far they have performed flawlessly.

I had some 748 and CCI primers that must have been at least 20+ years old and it all loaded and shot fine.

Federal has said 10 years.

You will know when they go bad.

Thanks,

I have some old red dot from the late 60's but not loaded in since the 80's.


I was Curious with the old CCI LR primers from the very early 80's,

Federal Large rifle Bench Rest primers in the thin packaging and 1000 box of the thicker "new" packaging.


I have gotten lazy the last 10 years and found that the Nosler boat tail bullets shoot within the same 3/4 and less as the hand loads but you give up 100 to 200 fps but where does it make a difference before 300 yards.

I was just swapping out the Remington bullets with nosler but I have not been long range trophy hunting either. I am getting ready to retire and going back to reloading.

Thanks for confirming my opinion.

LET me ask The old federal 210M primers did not have a coating nor does the older CCI 200's BUT the new Federal Premium GM210M have a red coating over the primer.

HAS this made a difference in performance for those of you that use the Federal primers?

I'm using the last of my Winchester small rifle primers in many 223.
My cousin gave them to me when he went 100% archery in '73.

Properly stored, a very long time. I used up some old surplus H4831 a couple of years ago. I bought that powder about 1960.

Dave

I have posted similar replies over the years to this question and since I usually go to the range on New Years Day to test my old ammunition, this years results are the same as years past--the 30-06 ammo that I reloaded as a kid in 1962 still go bang.
In all honesty I did not chrono the stuff but it all fired flawlessly.
Now down to appx 30 rounds left from that era of reloading.
Reloads are in a Win case with a 150 gr. soft point over IMR4064 all dated May 1962.
Storage has been indoors for that period of time, basements, closets and under beds but never in the garage so temps were somewhat stable.
About the only thing I wish I had done was to save the powder cans as collector items but then again I wish I saved my comic books and baseball trading cards too LOL

Gary

The only powder I found to go bad was 4895 ( surplus WWII ) Got rid of 8 # of it and burned a large section of my lawn after I mixed it with 33 gals. of water. roger

Ten year-old primers and powder are like six week-old whiskey: Too green to be at its best.

The little dab of WW-II surplus 4831 I have left is still some of the most consistent powder I load.

And the Herter's small rifle primers (made in Japan), purchased before the 1968 GCA, are what I go to when I have a gun with a weak firing pin since they are more sensitive than most current primers.

Whether powder is good is not easily answered unless the powder has gross indications of going bad.

The gross indications are the bitter smell due to NOx, red powder granules, fuming gas emissions, others have said “red gas”. By the time you see this the powder went bad a long time before.

Half of all the surplus IMR 4895 I purchased went bad. The first 16 lbs, I used up eight pounds quickly. For whatever reason, I pulled the bullets on some of that stuff and found green corrosion on the bases of the bullets. Similar to these pull down bullets from old US ammunition. Not the horrible one, but the small green spots.





I don't remember what US ammunition these came from I pulled them decades ago.

It took a while till I found reason to use the rest of that surplus IMR 4895. When I opened the bottle top, it smelled bitter, red dust flew above the opening. I decided to get rid of it, but not have it wasted. I gave the jug to a machine gunner guy and he put it in his laundry room. Passing by the laundry room he tossed soiled shorts at the hamper, but missed. The shorts ended up on top of the powder bottle and stayed there overnight. Next day my friend found that escaping acid gas from the bottle had eaten holes in his shorts!! :what: This so unnerved my friend, he poured the powder out over his lawn.

Actually this was the best thing to do, and had I know of the hazards of old deteriorated gunpowder, I would have poured it out on the lawn and not given to him to shoot.

Since then I have had more surplus 4895 powder from a different vendor go bad in the case. Visual inspection of the ammunition revealed green corrosion on the bottom of the bullets and cracked case necks.

This powder never smelt bitter at all. I shot this powder in highpower matches and it shot exceptionally well, but case necks cracked after firing. I also received “funny” retorts and the occasional sticky extraction. The longer the ammunition was unused the more cases necks would split when fired. In time virtually all of the remaining 700 loaded cases experienced cracked case necks without being fired.

From what I had read on the internet, which is a repeat of what is said in gun magazines, powder has an “infinite” shelf life. I think we all remember reading statements to the effect that powder lost energy as it got old, making it essentially benign. This information is not only wrong, it will get people hurt.

Years later I ran into a Naval Insensitive Munitions expert. This IM expert explained that powder is deteriorating the day it leaves the factory. Nitrocellulose decomposes through the reduction-oxidation process, he called it Redox. The expert said “The molecular stability of the functional groups on the organic chain determine the life time of the nitrocellulose molecule.” This guy actually writes and talks like this, he is extremely bright with a PhD in Chemical Engineering.

The bottom line is that nitrocellulose is a high energy molecule that is breaking down to become a low energy molecule. Anyone who has taken thermodynamics will realize that this is obvious, everything is breaking down to a lower energy state, but somehow, shooters have been lulled into thinking that the second law of thermodynamics does not apply to our sport.

Heat accelerates the deterioration/decomposition of powder and the rate is directly proportional to the Arrhenius equation, which is an exponential function. Maybe this is a simpler way to say it: the lifetime of ammunition decreases exponentially as temperature rises. This table is instructive on how quickly heat deteriorates smokeless propellants:


UN manual on ammunition inspection. See section 7.3.

Surveillance and in-service proof - the United Nations[/B

http://www.un.org/disarmament/...ice%20Proof(V.1).pdf






If you read Insensitive munitions literature, you will see that they use high temperature to accelerate aging of smokeless propellants.


As gunpowder gets older it does not get safer to shoot. Old gunpowder will, and has, blown up firearms. The basic reason is something called “burn rate instability”. For all your cartridges you want a nice and smooth pressure curve. If the burn rate is irregular, because the nitrocellulose powder grain breaks down irregularly, there will be peaks and valleys instead of a smooth pressure curve. These irregularities can interact in such a way that pressures spike. Double based powders are a combination of nitroglycerine (NG) and nitrocellulose, the NG is there for an energy boost, but unfortunately NG causes a new set of problems. NG is apparently not bound to the powder grain but is a liquid and it migrates. NG is wicked to the surface of the powder grain over time, one causal reason, water condensing and evaporating on the powder grain surface. Apparently the evaporating water molecules pull on the NG. I was told that created a NG rich surface. So, even though the total energy of the grain has decreased due to breakdown, the surface is NG rich and that will spike the initial burn rate. Another thing NG does is accelerate the breakdown of the base nitrocellulose molecule by attacking the double bonds holding the NO molecules. Unfortunately all ionic compounds attack those double bonds, water is a main offender because it is always in air, is a polar covalent ion (acts like an ionic compound) and thus you know the reason you were told to store gunpowder in a cold and dry environment. Quality ammunition is manufactured in humidity controlled environments, between 40% and 20% humidity, but they don't go lower due to electro static discharge concerns. Incidentally rust is bad and that rust that came out of those old tin cans accelerated the aging of gunpowder, and I think, is why they went to plastic containers.



This is from the Dec 2003 Propellant Management Guide:

Stabilizers are chemical ingredients added to propellant at time of manufacture to
decrease the rate of propellant degradation and reduce the probability of auto ignition during its expected useful life.

As nitrocellulose-based propellants decompose, they release nitrogen oxides. If the nitrogen oxides are left free to react in the propellant, they can react with the nitrate ester, causing further decomposition and additional release of nitrogen oxides. The reaction between the nitrate ester and the nitrogen oxides is exothermic (i.e., the reaction produces heat). Heat increases the rate of propellant decomposition. More importantly, the exothermic nature of the reaction creates a problem if sufficient heat is generated to initiate combustion. Chemical additives, referred to as stabilizers, are added to propellant formulations to react with free nitrogen oxides to prevent their attack on the nitrate esters in the propellant. The stabilizers are scavengers that act rather like sponges, and once they become “saturated” they are no longer able to remove nitrogen oxides from the propellant. Self-heating of the propellant can occur unabated at the “saturation” point without the ameliorating effect of the stabilizer. Once begun, the self-heating may become sufficient to cause auto ignition.


Actually there are only a few compounds used as stabilizers, and as the Propellant Management Guide tells us, stabilizers are consumed with age.

Hodgdon provides an excellent short summary about this:

[b]Gunpowder stability]/b]

http://www.hodgdonreloading.co.../gunpowder-stability


Our Armed Services have stockpile surveillance programs (but each Service does theirs a little differently) and one of the easiest things to show that gunpowder is at the end of its service life is that red fuming nitric acid gas. Of course there are a lot of tests, if you want to see all the different tests the military uses look at Mils Std 286 Propellants, Solid: Sampling, Examination and Testing to be found at https://assist.daps.dla.mil/quicksearch/.

One common test for gunpowder age is placing the suspect powder in an oven at 65 C (150 F) until it fumes. If the sample fumes within 30 days the lot in the field is either chemically tested for the percentage of stabilizer or it is simply scrapped.

This is from a 1969 Symposium:





This is from a 1970 Symposium:




The fume test for evaluating the stability of propellants is well established in the Insensitivy Munitions community. The rationale behind the 30 day period can be found in the 1973 Picatinny Arsenal report AD-763-879 [b] Prediction of Safe Life of Propellants states

quote:

Recently the NATO countries were in need of an evaluation procedure that would assure acceptor countries that propellants received from others would have a proven chemical stability for a given period of time when stored at ambient conditions. After many stability tests were reviews and evaluated through the conduct of round robins to insure that strict analytical agreement could be realized among world wide participating laboratories, the above mentioned method for the determination of available stabilizer content was accepted, with the establishment of suitable cut-off points. It was assume that if a propellant withstood a heating period of 60 days at 65.5 ˚C., without undue depletion of available stabilizer content, then that propellant would have a proven chemical stability for 5 years storage at ambient conditions

Each service has its own peculiarities, the Navy expert told me they keep master samples in test tubes. In the test tube is a methyl violet paper, if the paper changes color, they track down the powder lot and test to see how much stabilizer is left. If the amount is less than or equal to 20%, the lot is scrapped. I think this is called the Methly Violet test, or Talliani test in Mil Std 286.

The Army must do something similar because page 5-11 of the 2003 Army Logistics Propellant Management Guide provides the protocols for their Stockpile Propellant Program. The trigger for investigation is: "When Master Sample Stability Failure Occurs"


The Navy and Army are consistent in that they scrap powders and propellants when the stabilizer is decreased from 100% to 20%.

So, what do you do if you don’t have a chemistry lab to check the percent of stabilizer? Well all you have left is the gross indications of seeing fuming nitric acid and smelling a horrible bitter smell. The smell will knock your socks off. If you see or smell fuming nitric acid the powder went bad long ago. The stuff is absolutely unsafe to shoot and unsafe to store. More on the second point later.

My Navy expert provided 'rules of thumb' concerning the safe lifetime of double based and single based propellants. The rules of thumb are: Double based powders and ammunition are scrapped at 20 years, single based 45 years. In his words “These 'rules of thumb' are particularly useful when the protocol fails. The protocol can easily fail when workmanship or good housekeeping measures are not followed during manufacture of propellant and/or rocket motor or during storage of the weapon system components, respectively.”

I want to say, given hot storage conditions, sloppy manufacture, the lifetime of your gunpowder can vary considerably. Rules of thumb are best guesses and best guesses are guesses. Sometimes best guesses work out the way you predicted, when they do people will call you a prophet and you will pat yourself on the back for being a genius. When best guesses go wrong, you will wear the dunce cap and wonder what that word “hubris” means.

Take these numbers with a grain of salt, early in the last century the storage lifetime of smokeless powders was considered to be 20 years or less:

Army Ordnance Magazine, June 1931, page 445 says:

quote:

Smokeless powder constitutes one of the greatest hazards from a storage standpoint, due to the fact that it is subject to deterioration and at the best cannot be expected to have a life greater than about twenty years…….Master samples of all lots of smokeless powder are under constant observation in the laboratories at Picatinny Arsenal. Should any of these samples indicate rapid deterioration, notification is given at once, and steps are taken to use this deteriorating material within a very short period, if possible, or else withdraw it from service.”

Federal says their ammunition has a ten year shelf life:
Federal Ammunition
http://www.federalpremium.com/company/faq.aspx

quote:

What is the shelf life of ammo and storage?[b]

Store reloading components and ammunition in a cool, dry place, protected from direct exposure to sunlight. If stored properly there is a 10-year shelf life on loaded ammunition.

This is a recent recall of powders that had to be less than eight years old before they went bad:
http://www.ssusa.org/articles/...imr-4007-ssc-powder/



I believe the most prudent approach to gunpowder is to regularly sniff test bulk gunpowder. Break that seal and cautiously sniff for fuming red nitric acid gas. Red nitric acid gas is extremely bitter. Examine the powder for clumping, grains that have changed color. Get rid of any powder that looks like this:


http://thefiringline.com/forum...old+gunpowder&page=3

quote:

Of particular interest to me was the link to the thread on N140. In the early 1990's, my dad got a 1/4 lb free sample container of N140 at Camp Perry, and gave half of it to me. That's about 20 rounds worth in .308; not enough to do serious load development with. I put it in a plastic bottle with a plated and painted steel cap with cardboard seal disc. I left it at the back of a high shelf in the basement where it was out of sight and soon out of mind. Some time later I bought a full pound of N140 to experiment with, but that original 1/4 lb continued to sit.

I finally re-encountered the bottle during some cleaning out activity. It looked like this:

quote:

the lid out. Rinse water put over it poured out yellow. At that point I cut the container open and buried the wet mass under the compost heap to let nature take its course.

Interestingly, the remaining 1/8 lb still at my father's place (also untouched) appeared to be in fine condition in it's original container. Shaking some out onto a white sheet of paper to look for traces of red dust showed no signs of any. Odor was normal. Nonetheless, with only that small amount left, we scattered it over the yard.The powder in it was not powder any longer. The grains were all stuck together. That was the result of the lid seal failing and letting humidity in. The acid fumes corroded

As gunpowder ages, pressures rise. Gunpowder grains deteriorate unevenly causing burn rate instability. Old gunpowder has, and will, blow up fire arms. Just search for reports of blown up guns with old military surplus ammunition, there are lots of them. The reporters don’t know why their guns have blown all to heck, and neither do the posters to their threads. Given that every one believes ammunition is immortal, the explanations become ludicrous, often, racist. I do not believe any military purposely manufactured or issued dangerous ammunition, but they certainly surplused it when it became so.

[b]Why We Don’t Use Turkish 8mm Surplus https://www.forgottenweapons.c...turkish-8mm-surplus/

http://www.usrifleteams.com/fo....php?showtopic=21886


Posted 17 July 2012 - 01:29 PM
'Tailgunner', on 17 Jul 2012 - 13:16, said:

quote:

I picked up some surplus ammo a couple of years ago and had a couple of hang fires. The hammer would drop and a second later the rifle would discharge.

After that happened a couple of times, I decided I wasn't going to shoot that stuff any more. So I took the ammo apart, thinking I'd at least salvage the brass. After I'd pulled all of the bullets and dumped the powder, I tried chucking the primed cases in a vice and then hit the primers with a pin punch and a hammer.
I found that some of the primers would "pop" but others would just sizzle and smoke. I'm pretty sure those were my hang fires. It was an interesting experiment

The last surplus ammo I had looked so bad that I never fired any of it. Like you, I took it apart. The powder was clumped together. The base of the bullet was green with corrosion. I decapped all the brass, burned the primers and powder outside when burning rubbish, and sold the brass and bullets to a scrap company. Recouped a very small amount of initial price. That was the last time I got fooled on surplus ammo crap.

My guess is that most of the foreign countries that are selling surplus goods to the USA, don't care much about how they handle or store the items, as long as it gets on the shipping container and they pocket the purchase price, they are happy. Caveat emptor is Latin for "Let the buyer beware." It especially applies to surplus goods that have a shelf life. Where was it stored? How was it stored? What temperature? Subjected to water or salt air? Exposed to a structure fire? How was it transported? Etc. etc...too many unanswered questions. A deal that is too good to be true, usually is too good to be true.

Westerners buy old Pakistani, Turkish surplus, think they have bought “day old” bread at a bargain price. I can assure you, the Pakistani, Turkish militaries had a reason to get rid of that stuff, and they have made a tidy profit on the ignorance of gunowners. They are laughing all the way to the bank.

For those hoarding 50 year old gunpowder, I recommend you shoot up the stuff as soon as possible, before it autocombusts and you die in flames.

This section is from the Dec 2003 Propellant Management Guide:

quote:

. During the period 1984 through 1997, seven propellant auto ignition events occurred at U. S. Army Material Command (AMC) Installations.

1. 1984: Lake City AAP

IMR powder that was only 5 years old auto ignited and the above round magazine and its contents were destroyed. More than 100,000 lbs of powder deflagrated.

2. 1984: Lake City AAP

The same lot of IMR powder, a fragment quantity isolated and saved for critical production testing, auto ignited two months after the previous fire. Only a small quantity of powder was lost, but another magazine was destroyed.

3. 1985: Blue Grass Army Depot

The local-stocks storage magazine use for demilitarization activities contained high explosives material as well as unmonitored M10 propellant powder. Auto ignition of the powder and its resulting deflagration gradually ignited the other energetic materials present. The earth covered magazine and its contents were destroyed.

4. 1987: Lone Star AAP

Benite was stored in a heated magazine so that it could be temperature conditioned prior to loading into production items. The building became overheated which accelerated the rate of decomposition of the benite to a point that auto ignition occurred. The structure and contents were lost.

5. 1989: Hawthorne Army Depot

8-inch, 55-caliber propelling charges loaded with single-base propellant auto ignited in an earth-covered magazine more than one year after the Navy ordered the lot destroyed due to low stability. The magazine contents of 30,715 lbs of various propellant were destroyed and the magazine was heavily damaged.

6: 1996: Red River Army Depot

Explosion charge assemblies for large caliber artillery rounds, each charge filled with only one ounce of M10 propellant and stored 250 to a box, auto ignited. The earth covered magazine and its contents were totally destroyed.

7. 1997: Hawthorne Army Depot

M9 flake propellant bags that had been removed from 81 mm mortar round were bulk-packed and placed into long-term storage. A container of unstable propellant auto ignited, and all 20,000 lbs of propellant inside the earth covered magazine were destroyed. The magazine was severely damaged. Value of content lost was more than $3,000,000, which the cost to repair the magazine was $164,000.

Military Surplus Powder autocombusting

http://www.ar15.com/archive/to...tml?b=6&f=3&t=248538

quote:

I run a long range shooting club here in NM. Yesterday a member approached me with a question about a powder he is using. He said " it's fuming" ........What?
I walked down and sure enough the powder was outgassing a very heavy oder of ammonia and Nitric Acid fumes. The powder was slowly turning sticky and had,from over night, corroded the brass cases and the projectiles.
This powder is milsurp pull down IMR-5010 powder that was sold in bulk from the long gone Talon company. Weidners and Pats reloading sells this powder in black plastic 8 pound jugs. There are no lot numbers or dates on the label.
I have been reloading since 1964 and have never seen this happen before. As you know nitro-cellulose uses Nitric Acid to make the propellant. Some how the acid was not neutralized correctly. When the acid is not removed from the powder grains, the deterent coating will break down and uncontrolled burning will happen. The powder may detonate rather than burn

If any of you have any powder that was OK a few months ago you may want to check it again. This powder was normal just last winter. Now it is breaking down. It was stored in a cool room. It was not left in the sunlight.

Chris at Weiders has been notified.

This was purely a PULLDOWN powder issue. NOT a Virgin IMR-5010 issue. I know the guy this allegedly happened to (Paul A. of Albuquerque). I suggested he post the source, acquisition date, etc but to date he has not. He told me the powder was PULLDOWN IMR-5010 from www.wideners.com. Wideners allegedly told him they would not replace the powder as his storage of it was beyond their control. Also, he had no direct status with them as he obtained this particular jug from another guy that had bought it from wideners.

I personally know the guy this happened to and unless you see some sort of acrid fumes coming off your powder, I wouldn't worry about it. Paul is a real cheap skate. He was loading $2.00 Lehigh 800 grainers with surplus powder. Silly way to save $0.25.
http://forums.gunboards.com/sh...MR-5010-powder-users

1. 10-02-2009, 11:02 AM#6
Cincinnati Kid
Platinum Bullet Member
Join Date
Dec 1969
Location
Cincinnati, Ohio
Posts
421

quote:

That IMR 5010 powder that came from Talon has caused several large fires here in Ohio, two of them locally to a friend of mine, and one large fire in Northern Ohio that I know of. Anyone who has any of that 5010 powder that came from Talon needs to dispose of it if it shows any signs of breaking down. I wouldn't trust any of it.

Old WW2 era powder, such as the powder in these containers, are well past any shelf life and yet the owners of the stuff store them sealed in their houses. They just don't know the risks with old unstable gunpowder.

Slamfire, this is excellent information. I've read your posts on this topic before, and I think this should be continually brought up until the myth of "infinite" shelf life finally expires. I myself have experienced the bullet corrosion you mention. Also ballistic deterioration (without the accompanying red gassing) with powders that have been "opened" for various lengths of time.

It's curious but not unexpected that many folks would rather believe in myths rather than to look at the actual facts..

A very impressive treatise, slamfire, but misleading.

Different lots and types of powder will deteriorate at different rates. If this were not the case there would be no reason for the large stored quantities of powder cited by Slamfire to be monitored. Just destroy them when they reach their "burn on" date. But there is no such predictable "burn on" date for powder.

The fact is that batches of powder that have been properly formulated will last virtually forever. Every element has a half-life, so the diamond in your wife's wedding ring is deteriorating as we speak, but I'm not worried that it won't last eons.

Every now and then, as with the IMR 4007, a bad batch is formulated which goes South extraordinarily quickly. But if it ain't gone bad in ten years, it's not likely to go bad before you do.

Powder going bad has little to do with chronological age and lots to do with its formulation and manufacture. And powder sold as canister grade has typically been formulated more precisely than that which goes into bulk uses.

quote:

A very impressive treatise, slamfire, but misleading.

Thanks.

quote:

Different lots and types of powder will deteriorate at different rates. If this were not the case there would be no reason for the large stored quantities of powder cited by Slamfire to be monitored. Just destroy them when they reach their "burn on" date. But there is no such predictable "burn on" date for powder.

Agreed. That is the basic problem with nitrocellulose based propellants, their lifetime is unpredictable. If they simply failed after a predictable number of years, then first world militaries would not have to have sampling programs, chemical analysis laboratories, to determine just when the propellant has to be scrapped. Third World countries cannot afford expensive monitoring so they just let their ammunition age to the point that it autocombusts. Just Google Ammunition Depot Explosions, every month there is about one blowing up somewhere.

quote:

The fact is that batches of powder that have been properly formulated will last virtually forever. Every element has a half-life, so the diamond in your wife's wedding ring is deteriorating as we speak, but I'm not worried that it won't last eons.

Every now and then, as with the IMR 4007, a bad batch is formulated which goes South extraordinarily quickly. But if it ain't gone bad in ten years, it's not likely to go bad before you do.

This is an amazing example of Confirmation Bias. I suspect you really, really want your stash of gunpowder and ammunition to last forever. Well, I certainly want my ammunition and myself to last forever, but, unfortunately, that is not going to happen no matter how earnest my wishes. If you ever figure out how to make or detect that properly formulated gunpowder, you need to patent the process for you will become fabulously rich. The United States military alone scraps about $1.2 Billion in munitions a year, out of a stockpile of $70 billion.

Army Not Producing Enough Ammunition
http://www.nationaldefensemaga...es/Army_Not3866.aspx

quote:

Regardless of what the Army decides to do with its industrial base, the fundamental issue does not change: the Army needs to produce more war reserve ammunition, Naughton said. Time is running out, he said. “Most of the ammunition in the stockpile today was built 20 years ago during the Cold War buildup.” Most rounds are designed to have a shelf life of 20 years. “We are outside the envelope of the shelf life on 40 percent or more of our existing ammunition. The rest is rapidly approaching the end of its shelf life.”

Ammunition does not “go bad” overnight, after it reaches a certain age, but “once it’s over 20 years old, the reliability rapidly degrades,” said Naughton. Within a few years, it will become increasingly difficult to shoot it. “You can predict that you’ll lose 7-8 percent of the ammo after the 20-year mark.”*
To replace the obsolete rounds, the Army would have to produce 100,000 tons of war reserve ammunition a year for the next seven years. Past that point, it would need 50,000 tons to 60,000 tons a year to sustain the stockpile. That represents about “half the level of the Cold War buildup,” he said.

* I think what is meant, 7-8 percent per year after 20 years.


In so far as the lifetime of gunpowder, nothing in these documents suggests that gunpowder is a stable compound that will last forever if properly made.

ROLE OF DIPHENYLAMINE AS A STABILIZER IN PROPELLANTS;ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY OF IPHENYLAMINE IN PROPELLANTS

quote:

Nitrocellulose-base propellants are essentially unstable materials that decompose on aging with the evolution of oxides of nitrogen. The decomposition is autocatalytic and can lead to failure of the ammunition or disastrous explosions.

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/783499.pdf


Ammunition Surveillance Procedures SB 742-1

https://acc.dau.mil/adl/en-US/...%2022%20Nov%2016.pdf

Chapter 13 Propellant and Propelling Charges ,
page 13-1
WARNING

Nitrocellulose-based propellant can become thermally unstable as they age. The normal aging process of the propellants involves deterioration of the nitrocellulose with an accompanying generation of heat. At some point, the propellant may reach a state where heat is generated faster than it can be dissipated. The accumulation of heat can lead to combustion (autoignition). Chemical stabilizers are added to propellants to slow the aging process. In time, the stabilizer levels will drop to a point where the remaining effective stabilizer (RES) is not sufficient to prevent an accelerating rate of decomposition. When this point is reached, the propellant may autoigniet, with possible catastrophic results to property and life. Monitoring the stability level of each propellant lot is essential for continued safe storage.

Page 13-5 , Table 13.2 Propellant Stability Codes
.
Stability Category A 0.30 or more Percent Effective Stabilizer

Acceptable stabilizer loss: safe for continued storage

C 0.29-0.20 Percent Effective Stabilizer

Significant stabilizer loss. Lot does not represent an immediate hazard, but is approaching a potentially hazardous stability condition. Loss of stabilizer does adversely affect function in an uploaded configuration. Disposition instructions will be furnished by NAR. All stability category “C” assests on the installation must be reported in writing…

One year after becoming stability category “C” a sample of the bulk propellant lot or the bulk-packed component lot will be retested. If the lot has not deteriorated to category “D”, it will be retested each year until it has been expended, or it has deteriorated to category “D”, at which point it will be demilitarized within 60 days.

D Less than 0.20 Percent Effective Stabilizer

Unacceptable stabilizer loss. Lots identified as stability category “D” present a potential safety hazard and are unsafe for continued storage as bulk, bulk-packed components , or as separate loading propellant chargers. Bulk propellant, bulk –packed components and separate loading propelling charges will be demilitarized within 60 days after notification of category “D” status.


Propellant Management Guide

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101.../docs/prop_guide.pdf