VihtaVouri public service announcement

[CWPINST]

FYI, I have been hand loading since the 1970s. Until recently, powder stability has never been much of an issue that I have seen as long as it was stored at room temperature/humidity in its original container. In the past several years I have seen several examples of serious corrosion issues with ammo that has been loaded for sometime. The first experience was a couple of years ago when my buddy missed a deer that he thought he should have killed. He was using ammo that I loaded for him about 3 years prior. The primers were badly corroded on the outside and inside as was the inside the case and the base of the bullet. The powder was also caked inside. I asked if it had gotten wet or it was stored outside. He was adamant that it stayed inside the house with all his gear. I told a friend of mine who works for a local rifle builder doing load development. He said that they quit using VV powder because if it was left in the hopper overnight it would cake up. The powder was N-135. Several years ago I saw the same thing with some 40 cal. pistol ammo loaded with N-350, however loads loaded at the same time with Unique looked brand new.

Fast forward to tonight. I was moving some stuff around and came across some ammo that I had loaded in the late 90s. I saw a little corrosion around the case mouth. I pulled a few bullets and low and behold I found the same thing except with this caliber the powder was N-160. I kept thinking about the recall on 4007 powder because it was doing the same thing AND sometimes self igniting. I decided to dump all of my VV powder and fertilize my yard. After I dumped 2 pounds of N-133, I pulled some bullets loaded with it. As luck would have it, nothing was wrong with those loads…should have checked first. Stupid is as stupid does……

Apparently VhitaVouri has some constituents in some of their powders that collects moisture and/or causes corrosion over time. It might worthy of note that my loads with the N-160 were over 20 years old but the ones with N-135 were about 3 years old. The cases with the N-135 were much worse. Just for grins I pulled down some other loads from the same time period with the following powders: Rl-19, IMR 4064, and H-380. They were all perfect and looked like they were loaded yesterday.

After the N-350/N-135 debacle I called Vhitavouri to let them know what I experienced. They were completely uninterested and blamed it on storage and loading practices. I am pretty anal about case prep and precision loading. Note: I didn’t write all of this to slam Vhitavouri. They make pretty good stuff. Although it did tick me off that they didn’t take this situation seriously. I just wanted to put the info. out there in case some of you have loaded these powders and the ammo has been sitting for a couple of years. Might be a good idea to pull a few bullets just to spot check.