I've been shooting old powders that passed the sniff test, for many (~40) years now, including such disparate burning rates as surplus 4831 and quite elderly 2400 with the lead seal. No problems so far. To really appreciate the following, you gotta understand that I live down in the heart of Redneckland, down where some of the very best entertainment of all is to be seen when one of The Good Ole Boys says to another local, "Hold my beer and watch this!" Sometimes it can remind me of evolution in action, as when one of those mental giants sorta involuntarily removes himself from the gene pool, but nothing like that happened here. Close, but not quite. One of my old running buddies from back in the old country, Grinning Ray, was a fellow who would literally try just about anything to satisfy his curiousity......... or just to make a public spectacle sometimes. To make a long story short, he found that an old-style steel canister of pistol powder, when hit with a high-velocity bullet such as from his 30-06, would explode quite spectacularly. He said it seemed about the same as one stick of dynamite such as the farmers around here use for beaver dams and such. He also said that a lighted match, when dropped into the open mouth of such a steel container of pistol powder, would produce a flame jet ~ 20 feet long in the millisecond or two before the can exploded. Been hangin' with Ray since we were in high school, never personally seen him daunted by man or beast throughout some fairly hairy adventures. Ray was very enthusiastic about the possibilities of remote detonation via BAR and has done it again on several occasions at various times in various places. But even Grinning Ray, who's famous for grinning while joyously and repeatedly doing things that would make most of us quail with fear, said that he had to shake out his britches-laigs after that match-in-the-can experiment, and that he would not be doing such a thing again. I was impressed, that's the only time I've ever known Ray to back up from anything. These instances might have been a fluke but I treat all old powder as though it was still as strong or maybe stronger than new. Good luck, Joe
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