Click-Bangs

[lngstrt]

It makes you wonder where it's been in the meantime doesn't it? Especially to end up in a still sealed box, in the USA, in 2008!

Not sure where Samco got it. Stencil and hand letter/numbering on wooden box. The seal was broken but the inner boxes were still sealed. Very dusty/dirty inside the boxes though ...

[Aussie48]

I would keep an unopened box just for histories sake, and Peter that is an excellent question you posed makes one wonder.

[Peter Laidler]

There's no doubt about it, by the stencilling format on the box, that it's ex India or Pakistan

[scout7]

Patrick, I have never been able to hold still with all of those fireworks going on inches from my eyeball. I am forever indebted to Edward Boxer and Hiram Berdan for inventing their respective centerfire primers.

[Bruce_in_Oz]

Is it really only the primers that are at fault?

The brew in those Mercuric primers was formulated to handle all sorts of extremes. Most primers have a lacquer seal over the compound in the cup. This is to prevent contamination of the mix whilst in storage.

How stable is the old cordite? I have just dumped several pounds of smokeless stuff that had deteriorated badly in its original tins. It was made in the early 1980s and had been kept in the proverbial "cool, dark place".

Any ammo techs out there?

[browningautorifle]

it really only the primers that are at fault?

I'm not an ammo tech Bruce, but I've had lots of this questionable stuff go past me. When it shows this sort of thing happening, I simply use fresh cases and current primers and the existing powder(or cordite stick) and bullets and it works like the first day. I have only experience to fall back on...no chemistry expertise.

[lngstrt]

There's no doubt about it, by the stencilling format on the box, that it's ex India or Pakistan

Interesting. And it acts like POF ammo too.

[Thunderbox]

How stable is the old cordite?

100-year old Naval cordite found in shipwrecks still seems to work perfectly well. There are plenty of diagrams and photographs in the old manuals showing the "deterioration" of small arms cordite sticks - eg surface sweating of nitro glycerine, etc - but I wonder whether the actual burn rate ever actually changes, because it always seems remarkably consistent.

I find that not only click-bang ammo groups perfectly well, but that even mixed batches of wildly varying ages and headstamps also groups well. I.e. if you fire ten rounds of MkVII dated from 1918 up to 1955, you still get a normal group. That must indicate that not only the bullet production was consistent, but that the velocity from the cordite charge must be consistent. Ergo the cordite performance does not seem to change over time, or depend upon the state of the cartridge.

[Peter Laidler]

I see the point about the old cordite being raised from shipwrecks. They show a stick being set alight just to scare the living sxxxe out of the general members of the public (or AMP/avereage member of the public) as we call them. It might BURN, but it's not the burning out in the open that counts, it's how fast/the SPEED that it burns when it's sealed up and confined. Two entirely different things!

I had a whole belt of aircraft .303" from an old wartime fighter. 1x tracer, 1x incendary, 1x AP and 4x ball and it all went bang but you'd be hard pushed to hit anything withany sort of accuracy or reliability. And that had been in a cool dark and dry place for 70 years.......... underground, still in the belt boxes in the folded up wings!

[Buccaneer]

And that had been in a cool dark and dry place for 70 years.......... underground, still in the belt boxes in the folded up wings!

What was the aircraft Peter?