Hi guys, I’ve had the equipment for a while and starting to get the itch to press out some ammo again. I started reading various threads on various forums and the topic of storage came up. I’ve never had too much power laying around, just buy it by the pound whenever I decide to start pressing. I do, however, have a few thousand plus primers at any given point in time. I’ve just had them in a locker in my garage for the last couple years, no problems. The temp usually swings between 55°F in the winter to 75° in the summer, as long as the garage door is closed. Temp may swing higher and lower, to typical seasonal mid west temps and humidity if the garage door is open for any length of time. Usually keep the powder, still in the factory plastic container, in my basement, in another locker with a humidifier keeping the room between 30-40% and temp usually around 65°F.

Any alarms going off? Should I make some changes as to not inadvertently blowing up my house and my neighbors’ houses? I appreciate any thoughts. There wasn’t too much consensus on the other forums. Just curious what you all think and what’s your experience.

Thanks!

Following.

Cool an dry. Dry here is in the teens to 30% Rh but then basements are damp. Gotta keep watch on your dewpoint. Dewpoints in basements can rot timbers and cause your powders to get damp if not in a tightly enclosed container. A safe sitting in a basement on a cold concrete slab can rot and rust through do to dewpoint on the surface of the slab.
Airflow helps but not damp air coming in from the outside, especially warm damp air. In the flooring biz crawl spaces and basements rot timbers and even subfloors above.
Crawl spaces and basements should be fully enclosed, sealed off with plastic and ventilated along with the upper floors.
Course then theres water intrusion and the need for sump pumps. Basements are a bad place.

My incendiaries are stored in a metal office filing cabinet in a heated/AC outbuilding about 400 feet from the main house.

I think there are other ways of doing it. I don't smoke or light votive candles or experiment with lightning, so never had a problem... fingers crossed.

https://www.powdervalleyinc.com/reloadi ... ng-powder/

https://www.alliantpowder.com/getting_s ... dling.aspx

https://www.vihtavuori.com/powders/storage-of-powders/

https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=70.74.340

I know it’s anecdotal, I think smokeless propellant is more resilient than people give it credit for.

When I got divorced; I moved into a small house on a rural property. The only place I hard to store my reloading equipment was up in a hot/cold non-climate controlled attic for 2 years. When I then moved to a house with a basement, I set set up a loading bench and loaded up all those components, with no drop off in performance that I could discern. , with the same exact loads. I had a bottle of 2400 that was half used, and the propellant behaved exactly the same with the same velocity per given load. I’m not saying it’s ideal, but I personally, did not experience any adverse effects and I expected some.

On the flip side of the coin; my boss found some shotgun shells in his attic that I could tell from the packaging were from the 70s. Likely in that attic since that time. Being the type of guy I am, (I was too many Paul Harrell videos) I shot one off in my $89 Turkish shotgun at the trap range. The round ignited, but belched black smoke and I hit the clay pidgeon. It also seemed to produce an excessive amount of recoil compared to modern target loads, but I wasn’t sure if target loads were loaded hotter in the 1970s than they are today. I declined to shoot the rest. The round was functional, but I would call degraded.

I’m betting that the nature of shotgun shells makes them a bit more susceptible to maltreatment and weather over 50years than metal-cased ammo. However, the primer ignited just fine. I’m going to go out in a limb and say ‘most’ primers last a long, long time even under semi-adverse conditions. I’ve had some ignition issues with some older, Winchester SPM primers that I bought second hand, but all the Winchester primers I have purchased factory new ignited fine. Even given that; I would not buy reloads, or reloading components second hand, if I had a choice.


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