Storage question - Ammunition

[littlerayray]

Sorry I opened this can of worms I just get nervous around certain things like my two scuba tanks that are pressurized are stored horizontally with the valves pointing into the house and they are protected because they are pressurized to verify 3200psi yes that's not a typo and if a fire were to happen the first thing I would do after getting the kids and wife out would be to open both valves so as to not cause two projectiles that could possibly kill someone

 

[thumpar]

It might make a lot of noise but not going to kill anyone unless they are very close.

 

[gm280]

Sorry I opened this can of worms I just get nervous around certain things like my two scuba tanks that are pressurized are stored horizontally with the valves pointing into the house and they are protected because they are pressurized to verify 3200psi yes that's not a typo and if a fire were to happen the first thing I would do after getting the kids and wife out would be to open both valves so as to not cause two projectiles that could possibly kill someone

Ray, isn't your SCUBA tanks over pressure protected? I mean I weld, and have tanks pressurized to 3000PSI as well (MIG CO2 and Argon mixture), but they are also setup up so over pressure is released. I also have Oxygen and large Propane tanks for welding. Yes I weld with Oxygen and Propane instead of Acetylene. Lots of folks are doing that now. In fact that IS the very reason they were made to swap to the new style propane tanks, for that very excess pressure release valve. I say stop worrying about things that could happen and live with things that are happening. Woudla's and coulda's will never make you happy if you dwell on them. JMHO!

 

[littlerayray]

Yes they have burst discs but in the off chance the disc fails and in a fire I am not sure if they would vent enough pressure fast enough

 

[Rick Stephens]

Sorry I opened this can of worms I just get nervous around certain things like my two scuba tanks that are pressurized are stored horizontally with the valves pointing into the house and they are protected because they are pressurized to verify 3200psi yes that's not a typo and if a fire were to happen the first thing I would do after getting the kids and wife out would be to open both valves so as to not cause two projectiles that could possibly kill someone

No can of worms. Just something I been doing a long time. Been reloading since I was a teenager and I am very serious about safety. When I talk about storing large amounts of powder and ammo, I won't put them inside a safe. They are a fire hazard, not an explosion hazard unless contained. I understand and deal with the fire danger.

And when I say I am a first responder - tis true. That is one of my professions currently. (just 'cause it's interestin and useful) I worry lots more when going to a house fire about the odd gun with a round in the chamber than masses of stacked ammo. A sporting goods store would worry me because it has flammables, not because it has powder and lots of shelved ammo. No sporting goods store is going to store any of the above in a safe, or even in much of a cabinet.. There is no reason to buy a safe just for ammo storage and there is reason to not buy a safe for the type of storage I have at home, as well as most of my friends and neighbors. Everyone around here is as well equipped.

A business type storage cabinet is perfect for ammo and powder. Keeps sparks away, no containment. Lockable. No big deal.

I am a LOT scared of propane tanks at house fires. They can and do really explode. And I have seen garages put across the street by a leaky gasoline tank in a garage with a water heater. And you can take a house down with a 5 pound bag of flour and a road flare. Doesn't mean I won't store flour or a flare in my house. And the other thing I fear is a medical oxygen tank in a fire. I have seen an ambulance fire blow pieces all over the place when the O2 bottles popped and fed the flames.

 

[aspeck]

Hey Rick, as a fellow first responder, I am right there with ya!

 

[Rick Stephens]

Sorry, my statement wasn't that putting a little ammo in a safe is building a bomb, only meant to reference my storage of a lot of stuff. My original purpose was to just state that an actual gun safe is kind of a waste of money for a little ammo.

 

[littlerayray]

I see

 

[aspeck]

I am most worried about someone who has lots of powder (black powder or reloading) that is stored in tightly sealed containers. In the opens it just burns really fast, but under pressure ... boom!

Here is a length, but interesting video dealing with ammunition and the fire fighter. In this video they blow up, crush, and burn (at around the 12 minute mark) ammunition. The results of their tests are very interesting. Enjoy ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SlOXowwC4c

 

[Rick Stephens]

I am most worried about someone who has lots of powder (black powder or reloading) that is stored in tightly sealed containers. In the opens it just burns really fast, but under pressure ... boom!

Here is a length, but interesting video dealing with ammunition and the fire fighter. In this video they blow up, crush, and burn (at around the 12 minute mark) ammunition. The results of their tests are very interesting. Enjoy ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SlOXowwC4c

I had never seen that video. Very interesting, thank you. On small scale I have burned samples of everything in my load room over the years, just to see how they behaved. I can't imagine a 100,000 round room fire, but they put it out in seconds.

Rick

 

[aspeck]

Thought you might like that video if you had never seen it, Rick. Share it with your fellow brothers.

 

[MTboatguy]

We have had some fires around here, that when it hit the ammo storage room, it exploded large enough to just about blow the fire out on its own, lots of people in my area keep a lot of powder around!

 

[Rick Stephens]

Amazing how much is out there. I am fairly small scale. Mostly bought a bunch of 571 when Winchester stopped making it. It is my powder of choice in my tactical pistols. It used to be pretty cheap. Now, I'm glad I have it. I use it in everything from my .38 Super, to 10MM and 45 auto. Having a room for this is part of living in the sticks, I suppose. And there can be all sorts of hazards, not least is what else is in the room. Lots of accelerants in the typical reloading room. At least my boat is in a shop building a couple hundred feet away if'n it blows :target:

 

[gm280]

Amazing how much is out there. I am fairly small scale. Mostly bought a bunch of 571 when Winchester stopped making it. It is my powder of choice in my tactical pistols. It used to be pretty cheap. Now, I'm glad I have it. I use it in everything from my .38 Super, to 10MM and 45 auto. Having a room for this is part of living in the sticks, I suppose. And there can be all sorts of hazards, not least is what else is in the room. Lots of accelerants in the typical reloading room. At least my boat is in a shop building a couple hundred feet away if'n it blows :target:

WW 571 is a spherical powder if I remember correctly. And therefore it should meter out of a powder drop very accurately too. I use a lot of Hercules Unique for a lot of pistol loads. It is so universal that you can load meager loads as well as some higher velocity rounds. Not a magnum powder but still pretty useful. For all my magnum loads I use WW 296!

 

[Rick Stephens]

No Title

WW 571 is a spherical powder if I remember correctly. And therefore it should meter out of a powder drop very accurately too. I use a lot of Hercules Unique for a lot of pistol loads. It is so universal that you can load meager loads as well as some higher velocity rounds. Not a magnum powder but still pretty useful. For all my magnum loads I use WW 296!

You are absolutely correct, you have an excellent memory. I tried everything, way back when IPSC/USPSA was young, to find the best powder that would take my 38 Super to major in a commander length barrel. No one else back then was shooting a short racegun, so it was new territory. Takes a slow powder, which both 296 and 571 are. 571 is more traditionally a mag shotgun powder than a pistol powder. I believe when Winchester stopped making it that it was replaced by the identical HS-7. I never bought any HS-7 as I bought up a lot of cheap cases of 571.

When I was looking for the proper powder to accomplish my task, I tried stuff like 296 and H110. They were too bulky in the small Super case. I don't know how many different powders I tried, it was a bunch and I saw a lot of flattened primers and excess pressure signs as I'd ease my way up the load chart. Pulled a lot of bullets when lower powder charges showed signs I was exceeding safe pressures. Finally though, 571 did the ticket. And one of the essentials is that it is easy to measure and stay in a narrow weight variation since it was running way up in the pressure and we were cranking out thousands of rounds at every sitting.

Understand also, that in the 80's, major power factor was 175 and we had to exceed that. In the 90's that got dropped to 165 which is a lot easier and opens up a whole lot of other powders. I always and only shot 115 gr JHP out of my compensated racegun. My target velocity was 1550 fps. Compare that to 357 magnum sometime to get an idea how much oomph we're talking out of what was basically a thicker walled 9mm case.

Typical months workout was usually around 3-4k shots fired in the city owned indoor shooting range we, as a club, had access to at all hours. So I'd shoot 10 to midnight when no one else was around, several night a week. And dry fire practice at home the other nights. While I had the property to shoot on, when practicing neighbors would almost always call the cops that 'automatic weapon fire' was occurring up over the hill, and we'd get a visit from the sheriff. It was easier to just take the practice to the range where no one noticed.

The gun I hand built is still my fav. It has over 135,000 rounds through it. It is also one of a kind.

Warning - Graphic gun porn image -

 

[gm280]

You are absolutely correct, you have an excellent memory. I tried everything, way back when IPSC/USPSA was young, to find the best powder that would take my 38 Super to major in a commander length barrel. No one else back then was shooting a short racegun, so it was new territory. Takes a slow powder, which both 296 and 571 are. 571 is more traditionally a mag shotgun powder than a pistol powder. I believe when Winchester stopped making it that it was replaced by the identical HS-7. I never bought any HS-7 as I bought up a lot of cheap cases of 571.

When I was looking for the proper powder to accomplish my task, I tried stuff like 296 and H110. They were too bulky in the small Super case. I don't know how many different powders I tried, it was a bunch and I saw a lot of flattened primers and excess pressure signs as I'd ease my way up the load chart. Pulled a lot of bullets when lower powder charges showed signs I was exceeding safe pressures. Finally though, 571 did the ticket. And one of the essentials is that it is easy to measure and stay in a narrow weight variation since it was running way up in the pressure and we were cranking out thousands of rounds at every sitting.

Understand also, that in the 80's, major power factor was 175 and we had to exceed that. In the 90's that got dropped to 165 which is a lot easier and opens up a whole lot of other powders. I always and only shot 115 gr JHP out of my compensated racegun. My target velocity was 1550 fps. Compare that to 357 magnum sometime to get an idea how much oomph we're talking out of what was basically a thicker walled 9mm case.

Typical months workout was usually around 3-4k shots fired in the city owned indoor shooting range we, as a club, had access to at all hours. So I'd shoot 10 to midnight when no one else was around, several night a week. And dry fire practice at home the other nights. While I had the property to shoot on, when practicing neighbors would almost always call the cops that 'automatic weapon fire' was occurring up over the hill, and we'd get a visit from the sheriff. It was easier to just take the practice to the range where no one noticed.

The gun I hand built is still my fav. It has over 135,000 rounds through it. It is also one of a kind.

Warning - Graphic gun porn image -

Nice, real Nice. I use to mold bullets (still do as well) AND reload ammo for a local police department (not anymore) back decades ago when my wife and I first married. Her dad owned a gun shop (since passed away) and my wife and I earned extra money reloading for the police department.Yes hundreds of thousands of round. But we both knew how and both shot guns as well.

WW 296 was originally developed for .410 skeet guns and therefore you could buy it fairly cheap. But it is an amazingly good powder for heavy bulleted magnum pistol loads as well. And that is because it literally fills the cases. So you get consistency from one round to the next because the flame front travels the same way from one shot to the next being a full loading powder. H110 is very similar too. I chronographed such rounds and was very impressed with the velocity consistency. Shot dispersion was extremely small.

The wife and I are still in a private local gun club with a 400 yard zeroing range too. One of the very few remaining around here. Seems the anti-gun groups are trying their best to close down all the gun ranges. But that is another story. :thumb:

 

[thumpar]

We still have a few public lands we can shoot on. There is a 1200 yard range with gongs near by. For powder I use Reloader 7, Varget or reloader 10x for .223 and Accurate #2 for 9mm. I used to do .40 and .45 but don't have the guns anymore.

 

[Rick Stephens]

We still have a few public lands we can shoot on. There is a 1200 yard range with gongs near by. For powder I use Reloader 7, Varget or reloader 10x for .223 and Accurate #2 for 9mm. I used to do .40 and .45 but don't have the guns anymore.

Good stuff. My issue with #2 was how dirty it made my gun compared to 231. I use Varget in my .308 and TAC for my .223. The TAC ends up making my 55gr loads ballistically identical to Lake City XM193 military surplus. Useful at times to be able to swap back and forth. I had a turret for my scope made up to set the range. Same turret works with either load.

The indoor range I spoke of is in San Jose, owned by the city, no less (right by Spartan Stadium). The City Parks and Rec was always trying to come up with a plan to close the range, which had been there since before WWII. Have pics of high school competitions inside from waaay back. Great stuff. Back in the 80's and 90's we had most nights with a different league shoot. Don't know if it is still there. I lived down south near Gilroy and could shoot all I wanted, but like I said, freaked the neighbors out. Where I live now we don't have a range, so I built one in my shop for pistol practice and head to the hills for anything long range. We're overrun by deer on the place, so we hunt m in the back yard. Not very sporting, but you let em get too many per acre and they get sick and die off.