Nobel #60

[Missionary]

Good morning
Anyone have any load data for Nobel #60 ? The little I have been able to gather (and been shared) is this powder was very popular in the English Empire about 1960 through to the 70's. Maybe has a burn rate around Green Dot .. I am looking to use it in 38 Special and maybe 44WCF. Any info will be greatly appreciated.
Mike in Peru

[Tuco Ramirez]

This is what I have found so far. I will keep digging.

[pricedo]

I personally don't mess with that real old stuff.
Goodness knows what chemical reactions have gone on in those cans in all the years they have been around and what the residues & gases generated are going to do to your guns.
It would make great fertilizer.

[Ranch Dog]

Nothing in QuickLoad. Tuco thanks for the help. pricedo, that is some funny stuff! I got to save that picture!

Missionary, how old do you think the powder is?

[Tuco Ramirez]

It has to be from the 60's to 70's. From what I found in the 60's and 70's it was listed as 60 and 62. In the 80's they changed the number to 80 and 82. The company was bought by a French company in the 90's.

[Missionary]

Greetings
I think this container was filled before 1970. It smells just like my small suppy of 231. It looks good. It ignites good. I hope none of us ever face a time in our country where smokeless has not been available for 40 years.
I am going to load one cartrige at 3.0 grains with a 158 SWC in caliber .357. Then add .5 grains till I get to 5.0 grains which is a suggested load a feller in Australia used to use back in the 70's. If there is any erratic procedings then I recon it is no good.
I have fired ammo from 1936 in my M1 Garand. Have shoot even more from WW2. Then there was alot more 30-06 from 1952. This was all done in the last 5 years. Not one round acted peculiar or squib.
So I see no reason to dump out the only container of smokeless I have seen down here in 27 years until there is some evidence to do so. If it was caked together, turned to dust, smelled rank, would not ignite..... Then I would dump it.
Mike in Peru

[Model 52]

Assuming it has not been stored in excessively hot conditions or exposed to moisture, powder is generally very stable stuff and will last for several decades.

In the 60s and 70s it was common for companies to recycle WWII era cannon powder and that's are area where colloidal ball powders excelled as they were easy to make from recycled powder. The original powders were very stable, and the recycled ball powders were even more so given the over use of stabilizers (one of the contributing factors to M16 gas tube issues in Vietnam.

Even if you discount the recycling aspect of powder, manufacturers seek to make it very stable over time and it will last for several decades when properly stored. Unless it smells bad (a harsh acidic smell as opposed to an acetone type smell) and/or is visibly off color and/or visibly degraded it's probably good to go.

I agree with your approach of loading a small sample of rounds in increasing increments to see if you're getting predictable linear performance from the powder. If that works, then load the hell out of it.

[pricedo]

Roto-tilled a 1/2 can of W785 that had been kicking around taking up space in my powder cabinet forever into the garden plot last fall.
Nothing goes to waste in nature.

[Missionary]

Now I can see my dad with a salt shaker after work sitting in the tomato patch munching away. Good photo of a prime food source. Mike

[Ranch Dog]

The only trouble I've had is with some 219 Zipper ammo I purchased about a decade ago for my Marlin 336SC chambered in that cartridge. I bought five 20 round boxes of Winchester ammo for $40 a box.

219_zip.jpg

The best I could determine is that this would be pre-WWII ammo but not by much. Anyway, every round I fired had some type of catastrophic failure. Ended up shooting one round out of several boxes with the same results so then I got smart and pulled a bullet off a round from each box. In all of them, the powder had turned to jelly. I had purchased the 100 rounds from three different sellers on GunBroker so I did not pursue a return, just threw them all in my lake. I see that same era ammo selling for $115 a box now! Anyway, forming brass from 30-30 cases was such a pain I sold the rifle for 2 1/2 times what I paid for it. In the Marlin collapse I ended up with a "new in the wrapper" 219 Zipper barrel, sold it for seven times what I paid for it.

I'm using some Hercules Unique, about as old as it can get and it performs fine. The biggest throw away I had is when I dumped a hopper full of Universal into a pound of HS6. That stunk. Spread it out on my cactus garden and those boys seemed to enjoy it as they berried out real pretty.

Just for fun...

powder_shelf.jpg