Powder wet, then dried, still good?

[Joe Yanta]

I was engaged in a conversation with a friend the other day and he asked me if black powder could be dried out and used after it has been wet. After thinking about it for a few seconds I told him I thought that the nitrate would be weakened by the water. I think it would burn but not as fast.

Anyone know from experience what happens?

Joe

 

[Stumpkiller]

Black powder is mixed wet and then allowed to dry. I guess if you do it properly it might be OK.

I don't know from me, but there are period accounts (I think even Lewis & Clark) of a party drying out their powder in the sun after a wild river crossing. I gotta think the powder will suffer some.

 

[catman]

(Lewis & Clark), those are two people I would like to sit down and have dinner with.

 

[roundball]

I was engaged in a conversation with a friend the other day and he asked me if black powder could be dried out and used after it has been wet. After thinking about it for a few seconds I told him I thought that the nitrate would be weakened by the water. I think it would burn but not as fast.

Anyone know from experience what happens?

Joe

Now see...there's an experiment right there.
Measure out some powder charges, get them soaking wet, then spread them out on something flat like a cookie sheet...set them in the hot sun to dry for a couple hours.

I'm going to try and remember to do that this weekend with a few 50grn Goex 3F target charges...then use them the following weekend, see if I can tell any difference.

 

[shmrck1]

roundball,
Be sure to give us a report of your
findings....I'm thinking it will ignite just
fine but will burn slower. :hmm:
snake-eyes :hatsoff:

 

[Smokey in Oz]

I know this may not strictly relate to black powder but hear me out.....
My uncle gave me a BSA .310 Martini Cadet about 15 years ago with some ammo manufactured between the two world wars, the rounds may infact have had BP loads in them, not sure. Anyway, he told me the ammo had been in a box on the floor of his bedroom along with a couple of thousand rounds of .22 ammo when a flood went through, the box was under water for a day or so and he dried out the contents over a period of time but never fired it afterwards.
I couldnt let a chance go by to fire the old cadet so I loaded up and test fired a few rounds, no problem at all, with a bit of tuning on the open sights she would hit a Coke can end on at 100 yards regularly with no misfires.
I cant say the same about the .22 ammo, about 1 in 10 of them refused to fire and accuracy was quite poor.
Anyway thats my 5 cents worth. Good luck with the experiment.
Smokey.

 

[Lone Carabiner]

"Keep ye powder dry" To begin with and ye won't never need to know the answer.
But inquiring minds want to know - so somebody will dunk it 'n dry it :hmm:

 

[paulvallandigham]

YOu have a bigger problem with the primers on those old cartridges being damaged than any black powder. However, those .310 Martini cartridges were not loaded with black powder. Its a bulky flake powder similar to Unique, and is about as dirty as Unique used to be. Its been 50 years since I have seen one, and then I only saw a couple fired, but that is my memory. The bores on those guns run about .323! so its hard to match it with any 30 or 32 cal ammo made today. That is why so many of them were rebarreled for other cartridges.

 

[musketman]

"Keep ye powder dry" To begin with and ye won't never need to know the answer.
But inquiring minds want to know - so somebody will dunk it 'n dry it :hmm:

Does anyone have one of these powder testers???

If so, a simple test of two identical charges, one dry, one wet and then dried will answer the question that is on everyone's mind...

 

[Uncle Jed]

After thinking about it for a few seconds I told him I thought that the nitrate would be weakened by the water.

After some mighty head scratchin' I came up to this conclusion, the niter is not really weaken, more like redistributed. When powder gets wet, the niter leeches out because it is very soluble in water. As it dries, some niter can be lost because of it pooling below the clumps of powder. What doesn't leech out is reabsorbed as the water evaporates when the soluble niter recrystallizes on the carbon and sulfur. This reabsorbtion is usually uneven at best. You will also loose the graphite coating from the grains when powder gets wet, some of the powder will have to be rebroken down into smaller grains as wet powder tends to cake into larger clumps.

 

[roundball]

"Keep ye powder dry" To begin with and ye won't never need to know the answer.
But inquiring minds want to know - so somebody will dunk it 'n dry it :hmm:

Does anyone have one of these powder testers???

If so, a simple test of two identical charges, one dry, one wet and then dried will answer the question that is on everyone's mind...

An interesting contraption to be sure...looks like it has a propeller on it for flying, a spur on it for horseback riding, and a horseshoe awl to gets rocks out of a horses shoe
:shake:

 

[Uncle Jed]

"Keep ye powder dry" To begin with and ye won't never need to know the answer.
But inquiring minds want to know - so somebody will dunk it 'n dry it :hmm:

Does anyone have one of these powder testers???

If so, a simple test of two identical charges, one dry, one wet and then dried will answer the question that is on everyone's mind...

An interesting contraption to be sure...looks like it has a propeller on it for flying, a spur on it for horseback riding, and a horseshoe awl to gets rocks out of a horses shoe
:shake:

That propeller is none other than a gauge, the powder is tested by how far the first arm is blown out (in an arc) in reference to the measuring gauge, this test the strength of black powder. I have seen one of these work before and it's slicker than moose milk on a brass door knob.

 

[wszumera]

Is that an epouvette?
Pardon my spelling.

CLutch

 

[musketman]

Is that an epouvette?
Pardon my spelling.

CLutch

I lifted the image from Dixie Gun Works...

Here is what they say about it...

Powder Tester

 

[Old Ironsights]

After some mighty head scratchin' I came up to this conclusion, the niter is not really weaken, more like redistributed. When powder gets wet, the niter leeches out because it is very soluble in water. As it dries, some niter can be lost because of it pooling below the clumps of powder. What doesn't leech out is reabsorbed as the water evaporates when the soluble niter recrystallizes on the carbon and sulfur. This reabsorbtion is usually uneven at best. You will also loose the graphite coating from the grains when powder gets wet, some of the powder will have to be rebroken down into smaller grains as wet powder tends to cake into larger clumps.

That's pretty much correct. But to go into any more detail would get me into all kinds of trouble for essentially explaining how to brew your own...

 

[Toomuch_36]

The bores on those guns run about .323! so its hard to match it with any 30 or 32 cal ammo made today. That is why so many of them were rebarreled for other cartridges.

If you have the casses .323 is the same size as the 98K Mauser.

Toomuch
..........
Shoot Flint

 

[J.D.]

I have dried DAMP, clumpy powder in the oven, however, powder immersed in water may be a different story.

To dry powder in the oven;
turn the oven on the lowest setting, and while the oven warms, pour a thin layer of powder on aluminum foil placed in a cookie sheet.

TURN THE OVEN OFF, then place the cookie sheet in the oven, leaving the door propped open an inch or so. The powder will dry as the oven cools.
J.D.

 

[paulvallandigham]

The .310 varies from .318 to .324 and sometimes even more. The 8mm is the closest bullet diameter, but the casing used in the 8mm mauser is based on a base diameter similar to the .30-06, and is way to big in diameter for the .310 cartridge, which is more like a .30 m-1 carbine round. The carbine round is rimless, where the .310 is both rimmed, and is actually a longer case. You would have to find a European cartridge now obsolete, with a rim, to make into the .310. My rifle was originally rechambered for the .32-20, because that casing would fit. However, the bore diameter was so much oversized, the only way I could get bullets to shoot in any kind of groups was to lube than as cast, and not sized, and not size the case necks. It made for very slow reloading, and I eventually had the gun rebarreled for .357 Magnum.

 

[paco97]

I can't validate what I'm about to say but when I was in college (springfield, mo), I met a kid who said his dad grew up near Wilson Creek Battlefield. One day this guys father and his brother were playing around the Wilson Creek on their property and found a Civil War rifle. As the story goes, they were playing around with the rifle and it actually went off and the guys brother was shot in the leg. If this is true, then this probably happened back in the 60's so about 100 years after the war ended. This thing was exposed to water flooding from the creek, and rain water, and repeatedly getting wet and drying out, and it still went off.

Like I said, I can't validate the truthfulness or accuracy of this story, but the kid believed it and it was told to him by his father. So who knows! I just thought I would pass it on.

 

[BlackNet]

sure that wasn't the crack pipe they were passing around instead of the rifle?

it has been said that black powder can be found in just about any soil in the us.

Ed