Armory Sponsor
Posted: 2/8/2013 9:15:59 AM EDT
|
So last year, some of the powder in my RCBS thrower got contaminated w/WD-40...stupid on my part. I dumped a bunch of it out, but I MIGHT have dumped some back into the can. By the way, this is Ramshot TAC. It's an 8 pound can, with about 6 1/2 pounds left in the can. Since I'm not certain as to whether or not I may have dumped some of the contaminated, is there something that I can do in order to sift out the bad powder? I recall that the stuff that I DID dump was clumped. My thinking is, that if I put some back in the can, perhaps I could run it through some sort of filter or seive, in order to save 6# of powder. |
|
If you can't be certain, that's an expensive lesson.
The bottle design prevents scooping the top layers of gunpowder off, and I'll bet they've been mixed anyway. Gunpowder clumps in the normal course of business. If there are a couple of hundred grains mixed well into 6.5 pounds, I would probably shoot it, that's about 0.4% of the volume. On the other hand, we throw charges to accuracy about a tenth of that figure, so the impact might be significant. Another question is, whether the gunpowder was soaked, or just barely coated from overspray. That goes to the concentration of the contamination. I suppose you could dump the whole batch onto cookie sheets to allow the kerosene and other volatiles in the WD-40 to evaporate for a few days. |
|
Quoted: If you can't be certain, that's an expensive lesson. The bottle design prevents scooping the top layers of gunpowder off, and I'll bet they've been mixed anyway. Gunpowder clumps in the normal course of business. If there are a couple of hundred grains mixed well into 6.5 pounds, I would probably shoot it, that's about 0.4% of the volume. On the other hand, we throw charges to accuracy about a tenth of that figure, so the impact might be significant. Another question is, whether the gunpowder was soaked, or just barely coated from overspray. That goes to the concentration of the contamination. I suppose you could dump the whole batch onto cookie sheets to allow the kerosene and other volatiles in the WD-40 to evaporate for a few days. This might be the best way for me to go. Since I'm in CO, the air is pretty damned dry right now. I'll also ensure that I only use this powder for my "non-accuracy" loads, and get a new can for stuff that I want good accuracy with. Thanks. |
|
I would pour the powder through a fine wire strainer, TAC is a fine ball powder so it should sift through pretty easily and any clumps at all would be caught by the strainer.
Maybe pour through the strainer as your pouring the powder onto the cookie sheet, then inspect what the strainer doesn't catch for any small clumps that might have got through. |
|
Quoted:
Anyone tested TAC powder with WD-40 comtanimation? 
Not sure I'd want to take a chance on something like that. Each of my rifles was far more expensive than 6.5 pounds of powder... 
This is how I would think of it as I'm fertilizing the lawn with the powder. |
Armory Sponsor