Interpreting Lil Gun Date Code

[Hoot]

I got a text Friday night from a fellow member in the local rimfire BR league and avid reloader. I had told him I was looking for some Lil Gun, having exhausted my supply recently and reading that it was getting hard to find. He spotted a 4lb jug at one of the reloading shops around town. Needless to say, Saturday morning,I was at their door when the opened and left with the jug. Not sure how long they had it. Was just tickled I could get it.

Anyway, when I got home and looked at it, there was an orange sticker on the side bearing the following printing: 4 092403 39

Not knowing the key to interpreting it, I am left with assuming it is either 11 years old MMDDYY or if they use a more international date system, it might be 5 years old YYDDMM. Anyone know for sure how to interpret that code? Our eyes are trained to see dates in number sequences and possibly it is just a lot number with no date implied.

Thanks,

Hoot

[Hoot]

This should have been a two question post. The second question being, Should I be concerned using Lil Gun that is 11 years old? I haven't broken the seal yet and am not sure of the small shop where I bought it's return policy. Ron, the fellow who runs it, is pretty well respected in the local reloading community. I may give him a call and just ask him in the blind, how long is unopened powder still good. See what he says. If it were only a 1 pounder, I would just open it and run a charge step load test with a known recipe. If its not up to snuff, I'm only out the cost of a pound, but its a little harder to eat the price of a 4 pounder.

Hoot

[pitted bore]

Hoot-

Call Hodgdon and ask both questions. Let us know what they say.

Conventional wisdom: Smokeless powder usually has a very long shelf life. It can deteriorate if stored in a hot location, or if open to damp air. Some very few lots of powder have been known to spontaneously degrade or decompose. In all cases the result is a loss of "power". I'm currently using some old Hodgdon ball powder (H450) that is at least 30 years old, and it's performing as per the data in 30-year-old manuals. The sample of 2400 that I mentioned in a 450B loading on this forum 4-5 years ago came from a Hercules cardboard container that was at least 45 years old. It performed equally with the 2400 I purchased soon thereafter.

The standard test for powder degradation suggested by reloading manuals: Open the container and take a sniff of the contents. Good powder should have a solvent smell; usually it smells like ether, acetone, alcohol, or a mix of these. Deteriorating powder smells acrid or acidic. Deteriorating powder can produce a red dust also, resembling rust.

Date Codes? Currently on all their powders, Hodgdon is giving a MMDDYY code; my latest bottle of Lil'Gun is stamped 1052113 with another code number 2205. Some older bottles of other powders are stamped "10899", and still older "t1095". I'd guess your date code indicates an 11-year-old packaging. Were it mine, I'd do the sniff test, and use it without a qualm. Your step test might show a difference from other lots you've used, but if it shows less velocity, it's likely due to lot variation rather than age.

--Bob

[Hoot]

Hoot-

Call Hodgdon and ask both questions. Let us know what they say.

Conventional wisdom: Smokeless powder usually has a very long shelf life. It can deteriorate if stored in a hot location, or if open to damp air. Some very few lots of powder have been known to spontaneously degrade or decompose. In all cases the result is a loss of "power". I'm currently using some old Hodgdon ball powder (H450) that is at least 30 years old, and it's performing as per the data in 30-year-old manuals. The sample of 2400 that I mentioned in a 450B loading on this forum 4-5 years ago came from a Hercules cardboard container that was at least 45 years old. It performed equally with the 2400 I purchased soon thereafter.

The standard test for powder degradation suggested by reloading manuals: Open the container and take a sniff of the contents. Good powder should have a solvent smell; usually it smells like ether, acetone, alcohol, or a mix of these. Deteriorating powder smells acrid or acidic. Deteriorating powder can produce a red dust also, resembling rust.

Date Codes? Currently on all their powders, Hodgdon is giving a MMDDYY code; my latest bottle of Lil'Gun is stamped 1052113 with another code number 2205. Some older bottles of other powders are stamped "10899", and still older "t1095". I'd guess your date code indicates an 11-year-old packaging. Were it mine, I'd do the sniff test, and use it without a qualm. Your step test might show a difference from other lots you've used, but if it shows less velocity, it's likely due to lot variation rather than age.

--Bob

Thanks Bob, I knew about the sniff test and nitric oxide (red) residue, just wanted some sense of the warm fuzzies before going forward. I will make that call all the same. Appreciate it.

Hoot

EDIT: Just spoke to Dave at Hodgdon and he said "absolutely no reason to worry, but it never hurts to do the sniff test, start low and work up to match my previous recipe's results in term of MV." That's good enough for me.

H-

[Hoot]

This probably should be written up as a Range Report, but its not much of one.
In the interest of calibrating the new (old) LilGun against the last of my old (newer) LilGun, I loaded 5 rounds of 250gr FTX in three 1gr increments, starting lower than my typical 38gr and working up.

Here's the chart of old vs new in terms of velocity and SD. Experience has taught us long ago, not to put much stock in the SD as its not unusual for it to run high in this caliber until you're really hitting it hard.



Interestingly, when shot as one group, the results defied the velocity differences as some slower rounds went higher than some faster ones up to the 38gr load, which has historically been an accurate load with the 250 FTX and taper crimp for me. The barrel did start out at ambient air temperature and not allowed to cool much through the 15 shots which took about a half hour to execute. When 'I was done, the barrel was hot but not alarmingly so.

Here's the three 100yd groups. Grid is half inch:







The 11 year N.O.S. Lil Gun averaged a little faster than the last of my 2 year old Lil Gun which has been back and forth from the dispenser hopper to the bottle many times, though stored in a cool, average humidity environment. I can live with the variation as just a batch variation as I've seen similar spreads from one 1lb bottle to the next over the past four years.

Time to move on. I don't know if you've followed my Trident barrel thread in the AR15 Style Rifles sub-forum, but the CrMo, Trident barrel has been averaging slightly faster velocities for the same recipes than I shot from my old chrome lined bushmaster barrel. In my old barrel, 38gr of Lil Gun pushing a 250 FTX ran about 50fps slower. May be because the chrome lined barrel offered slightly less resistance to bullet travel down the bore, but I can't say exactly why. Its a gift horse.

EDIT: In case anyone is interested in knowing, the COL distance to lands in my Trident barrel for the 250 FTX is 2.448 inches. Loaded at 2.26 COL, that equates to a .188 inch jump. In my original Bushmaster barrel that D-T-L for the 250 FTX was 2.41 inches.
H-