I have in hand a 1951 item about a .50 cal. rifle whose charge was 90 grains Cordite, M.E. 6180 (Whatever M.E. is). I wasn't aware Cordite was ever offered to handloaders. Comments?

I omitted the best part- the custom rifle involved had an 18-1/2" barrel!

Yeah, the rifle pictured didn't have a bull barrel. It appeared in a Buehler ad in the American Rifleman in 1951. The ad gave me the distinct impression Cordite was available to handloaders. Since no one recalls that, looks like it wasn't.

Cordite was originally a British rifle powder that was like noodles.

Schutzenbob wrote on Feb 6^th, 2026 at 12:34pm:


If I remember correctly, they filled the cases with the noodles before forming the neck to get them in the case.

Condor, I suspect that the supposed 'cordite smell' was also a generalization in the same vein as the blanket naming of any propellant as cordite by the old folks. Same as us calling so many brands, and types of jeans by the omnibus moniker of 'Levis'. Just how we go about things, ain't it?

Into the early '70s I shot along with an ol' pal that had a mail-ordered (from a magazine ad) so-called Jungle carbine. An Enfield, it was in .303 British and he had the remains of a couple of cases of ammo from the same source.  I am about ninety nine percent sure it'd been loaded with cordite and probably stored in the desert of Africa or somewhere for a while. It shot about as well as we did- eraticaly for us, and at least so-so for it. Sometimes I'd hit a beer can at 50-100 yards by the time I emptied the magazine.  Probably more the lousy trigger and the idiot shooters than the cordite-loaded rounds. Never picked up a single case. 

Odd that you should mention it. In 1963 I [my mom] bought a jungle carbine from Kauffman's military surplus in N.Y. city, still in cosmolene for $30. I chose it over the Springfields and Mausers because it looked cool. With it came 100 rounds of 303 ammo and being kids we pulled some of the bullets with pliers only to find spaghetti instead of powder. Naturally we chewed on some and found that we could make fuses for some of our  nefarious devices with it. Don't remember any problem with the ammo though. Still have all my fingers after stuffing empty co2 cartridges with it and managed to stay off of the terrorist watch list so things worked out pretty well.

calledflyer wrote on Feb 7^th, 2026 at 10:18am:


"The smell of Cordite" is a hackneyed phrase that  "journalists" love to use. They have no clue.