What powder do I have?

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My grandfather passed away several years ago and my grandmother recently gave me a box with all of his reloading supplies that she found while cleaning the attic. The box contained the following: Chilled lead shot, 12ga wads, 20ga wads, .410 wads, 30-06 brass, 44mag brass, and a LARGE glass jar full of an unlabeled powder that I suspect he bought in the late 70s or 80s.

EEK!


If you do reload the stuff, tells us whether you experience severe overpressure indications. Assuming the gun don't blow up. In which case, that would be interesting and instructive.

This is the text from the Hodgdon link

https://www.hodgdonreloading.com/reloading-education/safety/gunpowder-stability

Read it, learn it, live it.

Gunpowder Stability


Reloading ammunition is a great hobby and saves money. Commodity cost increases in brass and lead in recent years have resulted in many new and/or returning reloaders trying to stretch their budget.


The following information is provided as an introduction on the stability, storage, and safe handling of modern smokeless propellant.


Smokeless Propellant

The main ingredient of smokeless propellant, comprising from about 55% to 90% of the composition, is nitrocellulose. The process of creating nitrocellulose leaves remnant acid in the material. This acid immediately starts decomposing the finished product. Left alone the decomposition will reach the stage where the propellant becomes unstable and self-ignites. This process resulted in massive explosions at U.S. Government arsenals after World War I.


To increase the life of the smokeless propellant, a stabilizing chemical is used. This “stabilizer” reacts with the acid to slow down the decomposition process. However, as the stabilizer reacts with the acid it is consumed. After the stabilizer is totally consumed, the propellant is no longer protected from the internal acid.


The entire stabilizer / decomposition process is a time and temperature function – the higher the temperature, the shorter the safe life of the powder. Even moderate temperature, over extended time, leads to propellant decomposition. As a rule of thumb, any temperature over that which is comfortable to a person is accelerating the decomposition of smokeless propellants.


Under proper storage, modern smokeless powder can last for decades. However, this does not mean the reloader can ignore how the powder is stored, particularly if in an uncontrolled environment such as a garage or storage building.


Supporting documentation:

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Even if someone could provide you what you consider an acceptable guess, you would only have an answer that it LOOKS like X powder. Maybe with gas chromatography you could discover what it is. Then if course you'd have to have similar data for all the potential powders it could be.

I've heard of people being sentimental about many things but a glass jar of improperly stored unknown powder is not one of them. Your grandpa would probably not encourage you to risk your hands and eyes to save $20.

I'm "resourceful" also but trying to use up a potentially dangerous powder to save the cost of taking the family out for burgers is being penny wise and pound foolish.
 
I see no green markers in the picture of powder that is not actually the powder we need to see. The one green looking kernel is cromatic dispersion of the light.

Green dot powder flakes do not have holes.

That is not green dot. (See LiveLife's example.)

1. I do - at least 2 in the lower right quadrant.
2. They once did - and we are talking about an older powder, not new production.
3. It MAY be - there is no definitive evidence to the contrary. . DSC00880.JPG DSC00882.JPG


The image on the left is of a sample of OLD Green Dot (which I bought new in the old square steel can) - it has perforations and the green dots, while not prominent, are present.
The image on the right is of a sample of NEW Green Dot (which I bought new in an 8 lb. jug).
As I said initially, the identification is not gospel, but I try not to tell more than I actually know...

PRD1 - mhb - MIke
 
PRD1, thanks for posting YOUR powder pictures.

But with all due respect, keep in mind the OP STILL has not posted pictures of HIS powder he was given in a glass jar. (The picture OP posted is someone else's picture borrowed from another forum ;)).

So we may have a good idea what your powder is BUT we have NO IDEA what the OP's powder is at this point.

BTW, I am seeing some red colored flakes in your picture along with green colored flakes. Are you sure perhaps some Red Dot could have been mixed in with your Green Dot? (See how making determinations simply based on pictures that could be affected by lighting? And OP STILL has not posted pictures of powder from the glass jar - But at this point, I don't think it would make much difference as I believe the general consensus is to not use the powder in the glass jar)

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And since this is The High Road Handingloading and Reloading category where we tend to lean heavily towards safe reloading practices, I think it would be sound advise to recommend OP not use the powder in the glass jar.
 

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Live Life:

You are, of course, correct that we have not seen the powder the OP actually has, and only his statement about its resemblance to the pictured sample. I probably should have been more specific about that. I certainly did not recommend the OP use the powder at all.
The photo of the old Green Dot I provided is from a can more than 50 years old, and the powder has almost certainly dehydrated and deteriorated over that time, but is definitely Green Dot, and not a mixture with any other powder.

PRD1 - mhb - MIke
 
The photo of the old Green Dot I provided is from a can more than 50 years old, and the powder has almost certainly dehydrated and deteriorated over that time, but is definitely Green Dot
And I am sure the OP appreciates a verifying picture of what old Green Dot should look like.

But for the rest of us, if someone gave us a glass jar of powder, despite how it looks and appears, as a general safety practice, most of us would not use the powder and that's what many of us are recommending.

Of course, OP can do whatever the OP wants to do with information provided in this thread thus far.
My grandfather passed away several years ago and my grandmother recently gave me a box with all of his reloading supplies that she found while cleaning the attic.
But the next question is HOW VIABLE is the old powder that was found in the hot attic (Is the powder unstable)? Perhaps YOUR Green Dot was stored properly in a cool place so decomposition of powder was slowed. But in the hot attic, chances are decomposition of powder would have been accelerated and we have no idea what the condition of the OP's powder is now. Since grandfather passed away several years ago, the powder in glass jar could have been stored in the hot attic for several years. We just don't know.

Hodgdon's warning is clear about powder storage temperature and decomposition - https://www.hodgdonreloading.com/reloading-education/safety/gunpowder-stability

"Smokeless Propellant - The main ingredient of smokeless propellant, comprising from about 55% to 90% of the composition, is nitrocellulose. The process of creating nitrocellulose leaves remnant acid in the material. This acid immediately starts decomposing the finished product. Left alone the decomposition will reach the stage where the propellant becomes unstable and self-ignites. This process resulted in massive explosions at U.S. Government arsenals after World War I.

To increase the life of the smokeless propellant, a stabilizing chemical is used. This “stabilizer” reacts with the acid to slow down the decomposition process. However, as the stabilizer reacts with the acid it is consumed. After the stabilizer is totally consumed, the propellant is no longer protected from the internal acid.

The entire stabilizer / decomposition process is a time and temperature function – the higher the temperature, the shorter the safe life of the powder. Even moderate temperature, over extended time, leads to propellant decomposition. As a rule of thumb, any temperature over that which is comfortable to a person is accelerating the decomposition of smokeless propellants."
 
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If (that's a big if) Gramps kept good records you might be able to determine what powder you have, but as the others say, dump it. I got some unknown powder, can't remember where it came from, and dumped a full pound, almost made me cry, but I'd really cry if one of my guns was ruined by a mystery powder.

As far as the argument about gunpowder being good fertilizer, I believe it started out as a tongue in cheek comment because nitrogen is a good fertilizer and gunpowder contains a lot of "nitrogen", and like a lot of things on the web, it grew into "Internet Wisdom". The one pound I spread on the bushes beside my shop didn't make them grow, shrink, or turn yellar...
 
Thanks for all the responses gentlemen. I'm not looking to join my grandpa in the afterlife anytime soon, so will probably just toss it. As LiveLife said, I was mostly just curious on what the powder could be. It has been in a hot attic for several years so it could be darker and burn faster than when it was manufactured. I'm about 99% sure it's shotgun powder, given that he primarily reloaded shot shells. The closest resemblances I have found among shotgun powders is DuPont 700x and Hercules Red Dot, but these powders sound a bit obscure to me. Maybe they were really popular "back in the day".
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Either way, it will be tossed. Now I'm more interested in what it is for the mystery of it. I'll take it to the next gun show and ask one of the reloading booths. I'll post a picture of my actual powder when I get home later. The only reason I posted the other picture was because it was nearly identical in that I wasn't able to detect any colored "indicator" flakes in my powder, as it was uniformly dark gray and metallic in appearance.
 
700X obscure? Not by a long shot. Red Dot? Same thing.

Hell, I just bought two 8 lb kegs of Red Dot. It's a very versatile powder.
 
When I got home, I dumped the uniformly gray powder onto a white piece of paper and took a picture in the whitest light I had. My earlier observations were lacking. When I took a decent picture and zoomed in, it is clear that there are several green indicator flakes that I overlooked before.
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Pretty sure it's green dot from the 80s.
 
As far as the argument about gunpowder being good fertilizer, I believe it started out as a tongue in cheek comment because nitrogen is a good fertilizer and gunpowder contains a lot of "nitrogen", and like a lot of things on the web, it grew into "Internet Wisdom". The one pound I spread on the bushes beside my shop didn't make them grow, shrink, or turn yellar...

Yup. Gun powder is not Miracle Grow.:)

Like sawdust, nitrocellulose actually needs nitrogen added to it for soil microbes to be able to break it down enough to begin releasing the nitrogen out of it.
It is more akin to pre-compost mulch.

Unlike sawdust, which will leach tannins and acids that rob the soil of nitrogen and "burn" the grass from lack of food as the microbes are killed of from the ph imbalance, the gun powder is more intimately compounded and takes much longer to break down into more simple molecules usable to the cation exchange between the root hairs and the soil.
Just like ping-long balls are technically biodegradable, but you'll come across it many times in the garden tilling...

Most importantly, it's not sitting in the bottom of a shop trash bin, waiting for an errant ember or spark.;)
 
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