Storing Black Powder--Critique My Plan

I store between 10, and 1 lb. in the bottom draw of an old metal file cabinet. Above it are all my fly fishing reels. The cabinet sits on the concrete floor of my tack room-reloading room-fly tieing room-gun safe room. This is in a 25X25 section of a 50' metal building which sits 20' from the main house. I also have a mixture of up to 40 lb. of smokeless on the shelf above my reloading bench. I do keep the 5-10 thousand primers on a shelf on the other end of the bench for safety. I use a wood burning stove to heat the place as it get's cold here in Colorado. Oh yeah, the other half of this barn is used for hay storage.
Probably no one here will want to visit me soon, but I do take one important precaution, the volunteer fire dept. has a "do not attempt to fight fire" order on the structure

Interesting...

I know folks who've had tragic spontaneous BP ignition so I'm a little wary of the stuff. It only takes one time to cause real trouble. I'm certainly not keeping it next to the smokeless ammo.

Click to expand...

I'd be very curious to hear names, dates, places, and specifics of said spontaneous ignition examples mentioned above. I'll farm them out to my fellow BPCR shooters both here and when I go to the Quigley Shoots again this coming June.

In the meantime, I'll install a webcam and LED light to monitor my cans of Goex Cartridge sitting next to all my cans of smokeless in my flam locker. Something's bound to happen...

There's nothing spontaneous when it comes to BP ignition....It's one of the most stable propellents/explosives ever made. It won't degrade if stored properly. It doesn't become more or less sensitive with age. It's not shock, impact or friction sensitive.
Cool dry storage away from ignition sources is all that's needed.

A-ha!

"Ignition source nearby."

I'll wager if one drilled more into that angle, the rest of the story would surface.

About the only way to get real BP to light off with an electric spark is inside a CVA Electra rifle.

Tests were done here to try igniting the stuff with electric arcs of a lower voltage, a mere 40K volts:

http://www.ctmuzzleloaders.com/ctml_experiments/sparks/sparks.html