Old reloading components

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Vern Kowalski

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So I've inherited a whole wacky of old reloading gear and components including primers and powder. The primers and powder would date back to the mid 70's to mid 80's. Everything was stored dry and at about 18-20 degrees celcius. What are your thoughts about using these components? I was just gonna display the primers but thought about using the powder, there's quite a bit of it. I've never seen vihtavuori primers before.

Thanks,
Vern.
 
Those are good storage conditions and the powder and primers are probably fine. Keep using it until it actually shows signs of deteriorating, which might be decades from now.

I've got a fair bit of powder and primers from that era and it's still 100%. Keep unopened powder containers sealed and don't open them unless they start to show signs of degradation like strong smell or corrosion on metal cans. Use it until you see it actually is going bad. Primers should be fine. Shoot them.
 
Look at the powder to see if it looks rusty and carefully check if it has an acidic smell. Also one thing about old powder is that it has often traveled many miles on several moves. If the powder is very "dusty" the means vibration has caused the coatings, which control burn rate to be rubbed off. I have seen this cause excessive pressure issues.

As for primers, they are the cheapest component available. Why take the chance that your rifle will go "click" when it should go "bang."

They are likely fine but at 3 cents or so each????????
 
Most of the stuff should be fine if it has been stored okay, if it looks like it has been in a damp place I'd be leary of it, you can always test a few primers in a piece of empty bras to see if they fire.
 
I picked up a bunch of old Alcan primers a few years back that i'm sure were at least from the 80's. I loaded them and every single one, out of a couple thousand, went bang with no issues. I say load up 50 test rounds, if you have no issues move forward.
 
That stuff is not very old.

A note of caution. When I used Vht primers I found them much, much hotter than any other primer I have ever seen. I had to drop the powder charge.

If You have a lot of them, use them when you develop a new load and stick with them in that load until use them all up.
 
Load up and blaze away. I had 3000 primers from the 60s I think brand name was Staynless As others have said check the powders and do some test loads, YMMV but were it me load and go.
 
I still have about 2000 CIL 8½ and 8½M primers. They have been out of production for decades.
I use them in specific applications because they are so clean and consistent.
Never had one fail to go bang, nor any indication of deterioration.
Still have small quantities of 2 powders manufactured decades ago as well. Still perform
exactly as they did when new. Dave.
 
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