Heya yall,

Do shotgun shells have an expiry date, as in the black powder or whatever? I have a box of 12 gauge bird hunters here thats about cira 1970-80... would they still work?

I don't think the propellant will go bad, but I have heard about the primers going south if the shells are very old - Somewhere in the nieghborhood of 40 years. Your shells aren't quite that old, though, so I suppose you could give them a shot.

It's unlikely that they'll blow up in your face, but there's a possibility that they'll just fail to work.

Try it and see.

~Zero

I have heard of M-80s working, and they were made right before 1966.

Most explosives don't really expire, but there are a couple of ones that do; mainly some primary explosives.

One of the explosives I know that goes "Bad" (well not really, it's still explosive but a hellva lot more dangerous) is dynamite because, the nitroglycerine separates from the stabalizer over a long time. I heard cases of people finding 50+ yr old boxes of dynamite that all the NG had seeped out and pooled at the bottom of the box.

Sometimes if you are using an unstable oxidizer like potassium permanganate or chlorate, the oxygen will be released from the reast of the molecule, and it may leak out of the fuse hole or something, but it would take a long time to do that.

Its alive(aw yeah)