I was pleasantly surprised when I found a brick of small pistol primers squirreled away at the bottom of my gun safe. I always vacuum pack them when I buy them and the seal was still air tight. Next when burrowing around in my closet I found an unopened OLD 4# keg of Hi-Skor 700x. I fired up the lee furnace started melting some lead and made a bunch of 148gr 38cal wadcutters. The only gauge I have on whether powder is still viable is smell. The keg was still sealed and when open had that sweet smell of fresh powder. To me, I start tossing powder out if it has no smell or an acrid, unpleasant kind of smell. Anyways I used the blizzard as an excuse to get 300 .38's reloaded. A let up in the weather allowed me to get out and shoot them in my old S&W 27. They hit right where I pointed them, all went bang, all the cases looked great. I got lucky with old powder and old primers. I forgot to mention that the Oehler chrony said the rounds were 12 to 15 fps faster than they were 10 years ago when I loaded some. So maybe the Hi-Skor aged a bit after all. Its good to keep detailed records.
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